Fix America’s Schools

Maine’s education system, like so much of our nation, is in freefall and, more accurately has crashed and must be rebuilt. Serious studies confirm that state schools – like schools nationwide – are in extreme distress. In the end, America’s kids, parents, and teachers have been betrayed.

Look at the studies. One of the best, by the Maine Policy Institute, was released in mid-2024. Entitled “The Decline of Maine K-12 Education,” it was comprehensive, original, and data-rich. What it describes could be in Oregon, Maryland, New York, or the Nation – but is Maine.

Maine – like many blue states – has suffered a breathtaking collapse in NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores in 30 years. Top in 1992, Maine has plummeted to dead last. Once leading in 4^th and 8^th grade math and reading, Maine is now rock bottom.

Other studies – and rankings – confirm the heartbreaking collapse of Maine’s educational system. Heartbreaking? Yes. We get one chance to educate our kids, not two childhoods.

If a child misses critical lessons, the chance for real learning – in math, vocabulary, reading, languages, history, biology, chemistry, physical, earth science, critical thinking, shop skills – disappears/ A child’s brain is wired for lifetime success or failure. Schools must teach success.

Instead, the reverse has been happening. Teachers unions, progressive Democrat ideologues, moral relativists, and excusers of childhood failure on the basis of gender, race, economic position, national origin, and prejudice, have promoted a terrible redefinition of education.

Pushing teachers to abandon traditional learning, or the pedagogical practice of a competent teacher passing forward knowledge with accountability – the national push has been to drop hard topics, moral compass, love of country, and mental toughness in favor of Marxist ideology.

In the place of real learning – a focus on achievement, how we think (not what to think), what freedom means and how to use it well, reading books, four years of math and science, literature, moral lessons, languages, creative and analytical writing, kids get none of that.

The average Maine high school student has not read one book cover to cover upon graduation, and ditto nationally. Three in four Maine 4^th graders cannot read. They are taught to blame others.

They are taught that poor grades are “not their fault,” get grade inflation, and lower standards, can claim a disability, or personal prejudice, and that winning and losing is hard, making excuses easier.

Rather than celebrate a family’s history of achievement, service, hard work, and lifetime faith – the divine beauty of our universe and sacrifice that built America, all that is dismissed.

Truth be told, teachers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied, with hundreds leaving Maine and the profession. The freedom to make lesson plans impart wisdom is gone. Paperwork is endless.

Unlike a few years ago, when kids worked on perfect attendance, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, patriotism honored, strength of mind admired, and acting badly punished, anything goes, and leftist ideology is the norm – not an outlier.

Taught without shame are leftist notions like class warfare, political hate, diversity by skin, not ideas, equity (Marxism), “inclusion” (non-conservative, non-traditional, non-merit), critical race theory (which Martin Luther King would oppose), environmental hysteria, anti-capitalism, and constant redefinitions, from fluid genders to fluid identity.

Clever means are employed to infuse these ideas in impressionable children, often upending family values. What historians call indoctrination is insidious; it occurs. Marxist thinking undermines the Republic, families, and faith. Ideas like “restorative justice,” “equity” between groups (versus equality of persons), grievance articulation, activism, “peer juries” (communist idea reinvented), social ostracism, “social-emotional learning,” “white privilege,” confusing legal and illegal immigration, labeling conservatives autocrats, and the like are common.

Making matters worse, Maine teachers are pressured, and forced to conform. Their pay is near the bottom nationally, reporting endless. Discipline problems have tripled, and morale is among the lowest.

In the Policy Institute study – one of the best done on educational collapse – everything from charter schools, homeschooling, lawsuits, and the decline – is carefully detailed.

The question: How do we fix this? The answer is to return to what works. Admit failure, dump the Marxist agenda. Get Progressive Democrat activism out of schools, prioritize real learning, and reward quality teachers and teaching in Maine’s schools.

Needed is a statewide, arguably nationwide, re-empowerment of parents, quality teachers, and minimalist administrators, who value outcomes, not ideology, merit and achievement, lessons in history, math, science, literature, reading, writing, languages, critical thinking, patriotism, moral fiber, and industrial arts, mental toughness and can-do, make no excuses.

Bottom line:  Democrats have reshaped Maine’s education system and our Nation’s – replaced success with rank failure. They own this failure. They did this to our kids and schools. There is no time to waste. We have lost enough childhoods. Now is the time to reform, no apologies.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).