America’s universities may be a disgrace, but the deeper problems with our education system lie with grades K-12. Higher education still ranks as a U.S. strength that other countries might admire—but our grade schools might even be inadequate for poor, developing countries.
The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as The Nation’s Report Card, found that barely a quarter or less of students are proficient in reading, and even less are proficient in math, geography, and U.S. history. U.S. 4th and 8th graders are performing worse not only compared to East Asian countries, but also to such places as Poland, the U.K., South Africa, Turkey, and Sweden, all of which have boosted their scores.
Some of this can be blamed on the pandemic, but not all of it can. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, between pre-pandemic 2019 and 2023, the average score for 4th graders on standardized math tests dropped by 18 points, while scores for 8th graders declined by 27 points. Overall, some 40% of all U.S. public school students fail to meet standards in either math or english, up 8% from pre-pandemic levels.
The lockdowns may have accelerated the deterioration in testing, but scores have been dropping since 2015, and have continued to decline since the pandemic ended. In math, the OECD’s 2018 Program for International Student Assessment found that 36 countries outperformed the United States, including China, Russia, Italy, France, Finland, Poland, and Canada. This backs up the notion, recently expressed by Trump advisor Vivek Ramaswamy, that American kids lack the skills to compete with foreign workers.
But we are not just talking about elite skills. A recent federal survey suggests that 28% of Americans now occupy the lowest level of literacy, up from 19% in 2017. Schools have abandoned phonics and other effective approaches for “whole language” and other trendy theories, producing a population where 60% of 4th graders are poor readers. Attempts by parents to learn what their kids are actually experiencing in school creates problems, including the possibility of incurring large financial costs; in states like California, it is actually illegal for schools to inform parents about their children’s gender issues.
Progressive educrats have reasons to fear disclosure at a time when we are seeing the first reduction of the average American IQ in 100 years while China dominates STEM fields. In the lower grades, it’s now common to hear talk of “zombie schools,” which happens when more than 20% of a school’s pupils are “chronically absent.”
California’s K-12 system, which serves nearly six million students, fails to educate the majority: less than half meet national standards for literacy, and only one-third for math. No surprise then that many parents and some states are looking at alternatives, notably school choice and charter schools. This year alone 20 states expanded their charter programs. Overall, publicly funded charter schools have doubled since 2005, while the student count has grown by more than threefold. These schools have consistently outperformed their traditional public school rivals.
Yet, better performance seems barely a priority for many who run public schools, particularly in the deepest blue states. In California, charters are under unremitting attack. The Los Angeles Unified School District is working overtime to prevent new charters while harassing those that already exist. All this despite a plurality of Californians who think that their schools are getting worse.
The biggest losers are the students, particularly minorities. According to the latest California testing results, only 36% of Latino students met or exceeded state adopted ELA proficiency. Only 22% met or exceeded proficiency standards in math. The harsh reality is that nearly 70% of black students failed to meet state standards for english language arts in the 2021-2022 school year, while about 84% didn’t meet math standards.
A similar pattern can be seen in states such as Illinois, whose state system rivals California for failure. Under its clueless, well-fed, and ultra-rich governor, JB Pritzker, himself a product of expensive private schools, Illinois has dismantled much of its fledgling charter program. And why? Quality education is clearly not the issue. The Land of Lincoln boasts 53 schools where not one student can do grade level math and 30 where none can meet that standard in english. Despite increases in spending per student since 2019, there’s been apparently little effect on students.
The Windy City’s teachers are so clueless that they want a 9% raise this year, and this in a city with profound fiscal issues, as the Illinois Policy Institute has reported.
Douglass Academy High School has 35 students enrolled for the 2023-24 school year in a building with a 900-student capacity. With a 64% absentee rate, there are often more staff than students, none of whom test to national standards. And to make sure students get the whole “authentic” Chicago experience, the city’s public school district is working to replace police officers with school personnel. You can look forward not just to a subpar education but to increasing odds of getting mugged, robbed, or shot.
To make matters worse, public education is being further weakened by ideologies that are widely adopted in education programs, and often backed by teachers unions. Turning schools into indoctrination camps helps legitimize, on the basis of “social justice” ideology, lower academic standards. California students may underperform, but the state is mandating climate education for students whose knowledge of science is sketchy at best.
After all, progressive indoctrination does not require imparting a broad knowledge of the past, or even the basics of science or mathematics. California instead has rejiggered its math curricula to emphasize not high achievement but “social justice.” In some ways we are going back to the kind of education perfected in Stalin’s Russia, or, going further back, the kind that Medieval scholars embraced.
The results of this ideological orientation now seep into daily education. The basic point taught in California classrooms is that America is hopelessly racist and oppressive. Following the socialist orientation of their leaders, unions back an approach to education that stridently embraces anti-capitalist and anti-Western activism.
California’s adopted ethnic studies program, shaped by Critical Race Theory, is openly anti-Zionist, largely dismisses Jews as white oppressors, and views Israel as a cruel colonialist power. In California’s new social studies curriculum, all whites, no matter their origins, are portrayed as enjoying “white privilege.” In this worldview, groups like Jews, the Irish, and other European immigrants did not suffer discrimination but instead indulged their “white privilege,” which might have come as a surprise to our immigrant forebears.
The impact of such approaches to education was most evident in last year’s anti-Israel agitation. Schools allowed teachers to hang anti-Semitic posters in their classrooms and use curriculum created by pro-Hamas groups. In one school, students physically intimidated a teacher who attended a pro-Israel rally, forcing her to lock herself in her office.
Indoctrination is being pushed most aggressively in largely minority areas, where education levels are historically poor. The Santa Ana Unified School District months ago adopted an ethnic studies program that many Jews consider openly biased against Israel. It claims the country practices “settler colonialism,” calls Zionism “a nationalist, colonial ideology,” and condemns the “creation and expansion of Israel as a Jewish state in historic Palestine.” Fortunately, the program is now being challenged in the courts.
Like the tragic children of Gaza, California’s youth, who are primarily minorities, are being groomed to hate Israel, along with the people who live there. San Francisco has experienced anti-Israel walkouts in ten high schools that were organized by an advocacy group with access to student addresses. In Oakland teachers held an unauthorized teach-in, reports the New York Times; the materials they suggested be taught included a coloring book for elementary students with a Palestinian character who says, “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.”
All this indoctrination would be less terrifying if the schools were equipping kids for the future. But it does students little good when many school districts have rejiggered their math curricula to emphasize “social justice.” Chinese and Indian students face enormous political pressures, but their leaders still want their students to perform, particularly in math and science.
These ideological projects are undermining education across the West. So when will parents and the politicians they elect begin to stand up for young students? They must be willing to confront well-financed, militant, and politically powerful teachers unions and their political satraps. Allowing the educrats to ruin a whole generation of students would be a disaster, not only for our children but for Western societies as a whole.
There are certainly some signs of pushback. Many students are rejecting the pedagogy that seeks to steer them into four-year colleges and are looking for skills-based alternatives. Since 2010 undergraduate enrollment has dropped from 18.1 million to 15.4 million. Over the past decade 500 U.S. private schools have closed, three times the rate of the previous decade.
People are looking elsewhere for opportunity. A recent Gates Foundation study found a steadily decreasing interest among those under 30 in four-year colleges and a greater interest in trade schools, particularly in working class families. Americans have more faith in two-year colleges, where over 40% of all undergraduates are enrolled, than in four-year schools. As the number of carpenters, electricians, and plumbers grow, so too do vocational schools, which are up 15% since 2019. According to the Labor Department, there are at least 750,000 unfilled jobs in the nation’s factories.
Technology, notably artificial intelligence, seems certain to reduce the demand for many positions students are studying for, not only in computer science but finance, human resources, management, and even creative work. College degrees already have been losing value for decades while 40% of recent college graduates are underemployed, notes the New York Fed.
Besides the challenges inherent with the adoption of artificial intelligence, the current generation is being pushed into a marketplace where they have to compete with technology talent from abroad, an indirect result of a weakening competitive system. The Chinese, Indians, and Israelis would never allow their systems to deteriorate to the level where their own children could not fill coveted blue- or white-collar professions.
Today’s students are unprepared for the future, and so is the United States. Unless this dumbing down is somehow reversed, America’s road to permanent mediocrity will be well assured.
Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-great-dumbing-down-of-american-education/
