Vanishing Trust in Public Education

Colin Powell once observed, “Trust is everything in leadership.” The same can be said for public education. Parents have to trust schools to teach what really matters, or they back off, go private, or self-educate. Parents know their kids get one childhood. From Maine to America, trust in schools must be restored. Why and how?

Nationally, study after study shows the “crisis of trust” in America’s public schools, accelerating after COVID’s remote learning showed parents what and how kids were learning, and not. Maybe this was always coming, but it is here now.

National Affairs recently summed it up: “Public education runs on trust …The assumption — which, until recently, was seldom questioned — is that schools and the adults who staff them share with parents and society … a broad set of values, beliefs, and habits …”

For most of America’s history, schools reinforced widely accepted values and outcomes. They focused on teaching what mattered, math, reading, writing, and how to think, not what to think. They validated faith and family, values taught at home. They earned and kept the trust of families; this was how America worked.

The National Affairs analysis continues: “None of this should be controversial: Parents would not knowingly send their children off alone for six to eight hours every day under the control or influence of people whose values or standards of behavior were anathema to their own. Nor could anyone reasonably expect them to do so.”

Logical, reasonable, historical, right? Yet over the past decade, this foundational trust has been shattered in some states. Lost trust is always serious.

To pick a state, Maine has witnessed the insidious, accelerating import of political ideology and activism into public schools, from the primary level on up. This import has resulted in the deliberate political shaping of students and deprioritization of values iconic to Maine’s schools.

I grew up in Maine public schools, as did my siblings. My mother taught in Maine schools for 40 years. We had none of that. We started days with the Pledge of Allegiance and were expected to work hard, learn skills, use the time well, no excuses.

Schools were naturally centered on parental priorities, and community values, which included respect for family, moral compass, integrity, consequences, and patriotism – on which the nation depends. We learned facts, critical thinking, math, reading, writing, and later some got a foundation in the trades.

These foundational aspects of primary education were not partisan – at all. They were emphasized by Republican governors (e.g. McKernan, Lepage), Democrats (e.g. Curtis and Brennan), and Independents (e.g. Longley and King). Maine – and the nation – understood public education is not to indoctrinate but to train, and on some days even inspire original thought.   

Then, something changed. The long-loitering, politically progressive, largely ignored influences of Marxist political ideology made their way into the classroom, replacing a long-held consensus around merit, achievement, and family values.

Quietly at first, then more vocally, politicians and administrators abandoned historically settled understandings, undercut the teaching of moral compass, free speech, original thought, and diverse opinions, replacing achievement in math, reading, writing, biology, chemistry, physics, and history with a default to ideology.

The result has been devastating, on the numbers and self-evidently to most who know anything about our schools, explaining the “crisis in trust” of public schools.

Can this “crisis of trust” be reversed? Yes, but every year lost makes it harder. Today, Maine – to pick a state – is a poster child for that loss of “trust.” Test outcomes were at the top, now crowd the bottom (49 of 50). Teacher morale, pay, and freedom are all ranked at the bottom, while cost per student climbs to unheard-of levels and homeschooling rises, up 30 percent since 2020.

The main mission – preparing kids for life with skills that match their God-given talents, helping them be their best, and become self-reliant, and confident – was betrayed.

The result is no surprise: Cascading negative effects. As parents – and kids – lose confidence in Maine’s public education, reoriented toward ideology, parents pull out, leave the state, go private, and self-educate.

This, in turn, compounds the problem. Inflation-adjusted cost-per-student is rising, already $15,000, far above past numbers. This puts pressure on the State to make up for local operating shortfalls, long before we talk capital reinvestment.

In Maine as elsewhere, a vicious cycle has set in, failures, blame, withdrawal, higher costs, more failures – instead of restoration of trust and accountability.

Thus, in a state where the average worker takes home just $42,000, school building costs in places like Bar Harbor, Auburn, and Cape Elizabeth are unthinkably high, $63 million, $122 million, and $95 million respectively last year, not sustainable.

Meanwhile, teachers’ unions call the shots, top eight staff getting $250,000 a piece, money taken from Maine teachers. Their salaries would buy 50 new teachers.

Net-net, trust in public education is broken. Unless governors, community leaders, and administrators start listening to parents,and restoring what worked, it gets worse.

Can Maine – and the nation – restore trust in public schools? Yes. To do that requires wanting to do that, understanding that it matters, seeing the collision course we are on, and matching schools to needs, dumping ideology. As Colin Powell said, “Trust is everything.”

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).