Hey there! It’s Thursday, and yesterday I asked readers what the Chicago NASCAR race should be called. John F. Phelan had a great suggestion: “The Speed Camera 500. Always a Photo Finish.” Here’s what you need to know today.

1. It could take years for students to recover academically from the pandemic

It could take at least three years for elementary students to catch up to where they would have been if the pandemic never happened. And for middle school students, it could take five years or more.

Those findings are in a report released this week from NWEA, a nonprofit organization that supplies academic assessments for students in school districts across the country.

Researchers found that “extended remote learning was a primary driver of lost learning, widening racial and economic gaps during the pandemic,” reports The New York Times.

“There would be profound consequences if we allow these achievement losses to become permanent,” Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist who has studied learning loss from the pandemic, told the newspaper. [NYT]

2. Chicago police use gun seizures to help curb violence. A fired cop illustrates the consequences of that strategy.

A police officer who seized a firearm after a traffic stop has been fired for engaging in a “scheme to recover a gun under false pretenses,” according to the city’s police disciplinary board.

As the Chicago Police Department increasingly focuses on gun seizures as an anti-violence strategy, it’s inevitable that some officers will “cut corners,” says Stephanie Kollmann, policy director at Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center.

And the strategy risks further damaging relationships with communities where gun violence is more prevalent.

“Stopping and searching vehicles based on very minor pretextual [violations] is leading to a lot of people having very negative, traumatic, dangerous encounters with police,” Kollmann says. [WBEZ]

3. A majority of Americans say Trump is to blame for Jan. 6, a new poll finds

Ahead of tonight’s Jan. 6 committee hearing, a new poll finds that 57% of Americans blame former President Donald Trump for the insurrection, including 92% of Democrats and 57% of Independents.

But just 18% of Republicans said Trump is to blame a great deal or a good amount, according to the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

The poll also found a majority of Americans — 58% — are paying attention to the Jan. 6 committee’s public hearings. [NPR]

WBEZ will provide live coverage of tonight’s hearing beginning at 7 p.m. CT. You can listen at 91.5 FM, wbez.org or on the WBEZ app.

4. The job market may be cooling down

New unemployment claims climbed last week to their highest level since mid-November, a potential sign that the robust job market is losing some steam, according to figures released today by the Labor Department.

“It definitely doesn’t look recessionary,” Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn, told The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t describe it as alarming but it’s definitely less good than it was before.”

Jobless claims rose last week to 251,000 compared to the previous week’s 244,000. Earlier this month, the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits rose to 1.4 million, the highest since April.

At the same time, the U.S. has added workers at a strong pace over the last three months. But the rate of hiring is also beginning to slow down.

These shifts are taking place as the Federal Reserve is intentionally trying to cool off the economy as it tackles inflation, the No. 1 issue for many Americans. But the Fed’s strategy carries the risk of triggering a recession. [CNBC]

5. Kid tested, CPS approved

The lunches served at Chicago Public Schools have long been a sore spot for Chicago students.

This summer, the school district is letting kids test new menu items at 40 tasting sessions ahead of the first day of school on Aug. 22. The items will be served at schools without formal cafeterias.

“Most of the food that they used to have usually looked kind of icky or gross,” said 12-year-old Kalani Brito. “Some of the bread would sometimes look gray or discolored.”

WBEZ’s Nereida Moreno went to one session and found students mostly liked the breakfast taco but were not thrilled with the pasta salad.

“Hated it. I didn’t like the flavor at all. It was caca,” said 8-year-old Aiden Montero. [WBEZ]

Here’s what else is happening

• President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19. [NPR]
• Monarch butterflies are now listed as endangered. [NPR]
• Amazon has begun using electric vans produced at Rivian’s plant in downstate Illinois. [Chicago Sun-Times]
• The pop culture bonanza known as Comic-Con is back at full force for the first time since 2019. [AP]

Oh, and one more thing …

Of course Chance the Rapper would be at the station for an interview on a day I decided to work from home.

Chance sat down for a broad and extensive interview with my friends at Vocalo, the sister station to WBEZ.

And it was also a reunion: Vocalo content director Ayana Contreras served as a mentor for Chance when he was a teenager, and they hadn’t seen each other in a decade.

After stepping off the elevator to the station, Chance stood in the middle of the foyer, tearfully reading an excerpt from Contreras’s 2021 book, Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago, reports Vocalo.

“Emotions flood the room for both him and Contreras.” [Vocalo]

Tell me something good …

I need some movie recommendations. What’s a film you enjoyed recently?

Dennis A. Rendleman writes:

“Pig is the best movie we’ve seen so far this summer. We streamed it through Kanopy, which you can access by having a library card from your local library. It is the perfect role for Nicolas Cage and he plays it perfectly. It is also a thoughtful, though unspoken, commentary on what our life has been through COVID. Give it a try … besides, pigs rule!!”

And Leslie W. writes:

“I just saw Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. The audience applauded. A person next to me said, ‘It gives us something to dream about.’ Another woman said, ‘What a lovely film.’

“I had recently watched Mrs. ’Arris Goes to Paris on YouTube with Angela Lansbury and Omar Sharif. They are different and both charming films based on the same work.”

Feel free to email or tweet me, and your response might be shared in the newsletter this week.