WASHINGTON, DC, Feb 8 – America’s schools are failing to teach young learners the basics. Tweens and teens are failing to learn, it’s as simple and as worrisome as that. The proof is in assessments that show too many of our youngsters can’t read, do math and write. The pandemic has a lot to do with it, for sure; COVID restrictions have disrupted the education process.
But could it be that there is more to today’s education crisis than debilitating lockdowns and remote teaching? About 30 years ago, the Foundation for Economic Education published a paper with the harsh conclusion that: “By any reasonable measure, America’s monopolistic, bureaucratic, over-regulated system of public schools is woefully unprepared to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Political, business, and education leaders continue to talk about “reforming” the current public education system. They should, instead, be discussing how to replace it.”
That may sound like a drastic measure were it not for the fact that our kids are not learning. Take Patterson High School in Baltimore, MD. A recent assessment of the teens in that school shows that a staggering 77% of them had the reading skills of elementary schoolers. According to Fox News, 204 of the 480 students who were evaluated using i-Ready Diagnostic testing were reading at kindergarten, and elementary school levels—71 of them read at kindergarten school levels, 88 at first-grade levels, and 45 at second-grade levels.
The unidentified teacher who leaked the test results to Fox said: “It’s heartbreaking to see a child that, when you talk to them outside of the classroom setting, of what are your dreams? And they have these amazing dreams and hopes for the future. But then you realize that with the skills that they have, with the level that they’re at, they’re going to have to work a thousand times harder to achieve. Our children need a future.”
The situation in our nation’s public schools has triggered a backlash among parents who have taken matters into their own hands. Many of them have taken their kids out of school and have begun to home-school them. Others are opting to take their children out of public schools and placing them in charter schools and private schools.
A U.S. Census Bureau survey shows that toward the end of the 2019-2020 school year 5.8% of households were homeschooling their youngsters and that in the 2020-2019 school year 11.1% of households opted to home school their kids.
Says the Census Bureau: “From the much-discussed ‘pandemic pods,’ (small groups of students gathering outside a formal school setting for in-person instruction) to a reported influx of parent inquiries about stand-alone virtual schools, private schools, and homeschooling organizations, American parents are increasingly open to options beyond the neighborhood school.”
Exacerbating the public school dilemma are concerns over the teaching of the so-called Critical Race Theory. Pennsylvania mom Jennifer Stefano, vice president and chief strategist at The Commonwealth Foundation, declared that she just “Might Pull My Kids From Public School This Fall For Teaching Them Racism” in a piece she wrote for the Federalist. What prompted her? She said that she was “gobsmacked” one day when her ten-year-old came home from school and asked her, “are we segregationists?”
“After confirming we all understood what a segregationist was, I realized my child had a point. Our Catholic school had unexpectedly closed down, so we enrolled the kids in the local public school, which is predominately white. I had to explain to my child that while we are decidedly not segregationists, our public education system—which divides people based on ZIP codes and district lines—is, in fact, creating de facto segregation,” Stefano explained.
She concluded her article, saying the “spirit of community and believing in one another—regardless of race—has been lost in public school. For that reason, we might not be going back.”
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I spent 30 years in public education at a time when students actually learned. I taught elementary all the way to adults.
In Texas, public schools are bogged down with politics coming from the state education agency. Teachers are leaving in droves because they can’t discipline the students, much less teach.
I wish politics and popular viewpoints would stay out of education and let the teachers teach and the students learn
Schools are run by the unions and the teachers, if they want to keep their job, they do what they are told. Public schools are run by politics and they don’t give a shit about the kids. Today’s culture is about wokeism, racism, and any other social ill that can be blamed on the white man. Schools need to be putting more money and time into brain work, rather than sports. of course, there is no money in brain work, all the money is in sports. Until the day that order is restored in schools and that the parents are put in charge and the teachers are allowed to run the classroom and the endless mollycoddling of kids ends, this won’t end. And get rid of all the damn cell phones that kids take into class, this has made a generation of introverts. Everyone has and knows how to solve this issue, but no one has the balls to do so.
If schools were to blame no child would receive an education. The problems come from home.
Surprise, surprise. We’ve been told for years how our education system has been faltering behind other countries like Japan and India. What has our Department of Education (both State and Federal) done? They’ve emphasized people’s feelings, racism, everybody’s a winner and everything but the skills they need. The Department of Education at the Federal and State levels need to be abolished. They are failing our children and country besides sucking up billions of taxpayer money annually.
We are definitely not in the running as far as education is concerned and it has been going on for many years. First, get rid of the unions (all of them). They have done nothing but bring down the country. Shame that many foreigners are taking the good jobs. We need to do a much better job as far as education is concered.
This American general education dumn down was set in motion by Hilary Clinton when Bill Clinton was president. During that same period China was provided access to the US economy, again while Bill Clinton was president. It has clearly been a power play in action through the DNC for over 2 decades with the American people, of every color, paying for bad education from politically motivated teacher. Parents need to take the education of their children away from any politically motivated education union and bring in teachers, not union nembers, to reestablish goal oriented education back for every American.
they have been dumbing down the education of our children for more than 20 years. My grandchildren were not even taught the basics that I learned in the 50s & 60s. Critical subjects like history, math, social studies, english, spelling, handwriting. etc. It has been a Marxist (communist) agenda all these years. The national teachers unions are Marxist.
Our children are growing up incapable of applying critical thinking in solving problems and relying on their gadgets for the answer. Are we not hastening alzheimers. I ask our grandchildren for a phone number and they refer to their phone for the number when this senior knows the phone number by heart? The gadget has become their security blanket. They would be lost without it. We are relying too much on technology as shortcuts in solving problems. The gadgets are but one part of the problem with our education system. Breakup the teachers union is a start! Power to the parents! Why are the children still having summer breaks. Are they still harvesting crops?
It may not be “dumbing down”. There is no “coaching up.” Some of this could be related to possible substandard facilities and personnel/teachers. HOW CAN WE THROW SO MUCH MONEY AT AN ISSUE FOR LONG AND GET AN F GRADE ON THE RESULTS???? GOTTA LOVE THE GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
Until the unions and democrat party is removed from their destructive self serving hold on public education, nothing will change. Just like their 500 plus years of failed policies,which they still push, their involvement in school systems is also a failure!
Parents need local control and ALL school administrators must be accountable to their wishes.
Once again it’s important for ALL Citizens to remember , these people work FOR us.
If they ever forget that fact, REMOVE THEM!
Let’s start in 2022 and 2024 by REMOVING the marxist, anti american democrats who are ruining Our Country!
Now is the People’s time for America.
As I look back on my own experience, I recognize this insidious effort has been gradually invading & eroding our “actual” education system since I was a kid in elementary school some 60 years ago.
Evil is patient & relentless.
1956…. Russia’s Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within….”
GOOD!! The ONLY way to stop the indoctrination and promote REAL learning and teamwork, is to start OVER. Government has NO place in our schools, and neither does CRT, Explicit Sex Education, and One-Sided Politics. Our kids can’t READ, they can’t write cursive and have no “Signatures” anymore. Their English is abominable, their knowledge of TRUTHFUL History and the Constitution is non-existent, and they can’t balance a checkbook. It’s shameful and embarrassing, and we need to get Government OUT of the classrooms, our KIDS out of the classroom, and Marxist Teaching OUT of the classrooms. Schools belong to the communities, not the Politicians.
We homeschooled our four children. We had them tested when the school kids were tested. Our oldest boy tested out reading at a freshmsn in coege level in eighth grade. Our hlme schooling materials used the Maguffie Readers as reading material ( also spelling and grammer) One of our daughters now has a double Mastets Degree!
Keep them dumb and we can control them forever.
The children are not being educated, they are being indoctrinated! The Left destroys EVERYTHING it touches!
Direction from parents or a mentor are parallel to success in the class. Trouble/attitude at home leads to trouble in class. It’s that simple!
Teach our young people how great AMERICA is even with all of the evil entities that would like everyone,including our young people to think that AMERICA is evil.Most of the citizens in AMERICA are not evil,some of our people that are in control of our country and some outside scum are intent on turning AMERICA into a marxist country ONLY for their own gain.Believe me”it ain’t gonna happen”.Their are still many patriotic AMERICANS that will put these bottom feeders down.
A simple solution to our public school system problems is for Congress to defund and shut down the federal Department of Education. When Carter signed the bill in 1978 creating the Dept. of Ed. it was the beginning of the dumbing down and destruction of our public schools. We used to have a pretty good school system in America, but like everything the government gets involved in the feds managed to ruin what was a great school system.
This trend started 50+ years ago when curriculums deviated from standard 6 or 7 45 minute class periods to things like flexible modular scheduling. As time went on, things kept changing to “benefit” the students learning experience, when in fact, it just made things easier on the teachers. Now many necessary subjects have been dropped to make room for computer tech. So now we have kids that can’t write, can’t do basic math on a piece of paper, let alone in their heads. They don’t know if Lincoln freed the slaves or was the father of our country. They are clueless as to how our government was designed to work. Pathetic! Thanks NEA and all your local affiliates!
Am I expected to believe that high school students in Baltimore can read at elementary levels? If the truth is known (good luck with trying to get the truth in Baltimore), I feel real confident that the students there can’t read at a kindergarten level>
The sad fact is that people value new cars and vacations more than their childrens minds. That stat of 11% should be 60-70%, but very very few are willing to drive older cars and not move up in housing so that their kids minds arent poisoned. Maybe this will change but as of yet parents are closing eyes and clicking heels in the hope that communism will go away like a bad dream. It will take more than that.
This dumbing down of our kids has been a long process…My sons who are now 37,36&35 were told to bring calculators to first grade.Then comes spell check and now apps for grammar..I love my kids and grandkids, we play games like scrabble,yahtzee, monopoly, basic cards.Always baking cookies and making homemade recipes..I love them enough to teach them how to write letters,read, and basic math
There are only so many minutes during the school day. Every minute WASTED on CRT, global warming, socialism, and LGBTQ??? is STEALING from our students!!
Parents need to home school or do whatever they can to send them to a good private school. I know that would not be possible for many parents. The alternative is to fight to get teacher’s Unions abolished and to vote in conservative school board members. It’s ridiculous that as much school taxes people pay to have schools that they don’t teach the children real subjects such as true history and math. And for crying out loud, teach them correct English grammar
Except for one of my seven children, which have their children in an exceptional district in Texas, our other six have ALL taken their children out of the public school system. That comes from me working within the public school district and two of them subbing within the district and those two also subbing within districts around other states. They have put their children in charter schools and found their kids have been behind at least two grade levels. This was pretty shocking to say the least. Maybe now, they will be able to test on level with the test rather than below it. Fortunately, they have all been able to catch up. It was tough at first, but they did it.
If you need PROOF: We have a congresswomen from NY, who doesn’t know the 3 Branches of our Government! (If they haven’t deleted it, there is a YouTube of AOC stating: The President, The Congress and The Senate) Instead of Executive, Legislature and Judicial. I have a Niece that when in college was majoring in History. I told her I loved the Civil War, because I had a teacher in High School that was passionate about the subject. I asked here what year did the Civil War end. She did not know, and the excuse was, dates are not important.
Last month I, took my 100 year old father to the eye doctor. He’s a WW2 submariner.
The ophthalmologist brought in 5 of his young workers to meet a WW2 guy. All 5
young workers asked “What is World War 2 ?” This is a complete failure of the educational system.
They never heard of Korea or Viet Nam. They will loose their freedom and America, and their lives
before they reach my age. There’s your liberal leftist educational system; successful beyond belief.
Stupidity and ignorance are easier to manipulate. Just think, many years ago they taught Latin in schools. (Way before my time). I’m all for ‘Back to the basics ‘ schools like they had in AZ. Teachers and students were held to a higher standard. Homeschooling and private schools as well. Although with homeschooling, the student/teacher can’t be lazy. I’ve seen this flop.
The more children avoid ‘public schools’, the better off America will be.
Are people not aware the Left took over the schools in the 70s and there’s been nothing beyond indoctrination since?
Compared to most foreign countries, our children are idiots! Thank you Dept of Edu!
Re: next to last and last paragraphs –Since when is it a bad thing to rent or own a home/apartment in the best school district you can afford? Stop apologizing for wanting the best for your kids. Do you think rich folks like JZ and Beyonce who live in a former slum area, turned trendy (williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY) send their kids to the local public schools?
I taught in the public school system for over 13 years, first in middle school, then at the high school level. High schoolers came to me not knowing ANYTHING about fractions, percentages and only had the bare minimum grasp of the 4 basic math functions. Since I taught technical education, which included construction and drafting, it was imperative that they needed math skills. The hardest thing they had to do was thinking in 3 dimensions. It was an uphill battle, but we started with the basics and worked from there. Some made it, many did not. I only had them for a semester to try to teach them what they should have learned in elementary school. It is a tragic situation. I am retired now but I am making darned sure my grandsons know the basics.
Bring back what we used to call the three Rs. For those of you who don’t know what the Rs were let me enlighten you. Those three Rs stood for Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Now you’re probably thinking that’s not three Rs and you’re right about that but, if you say them out loud they kind of do sound like three rs.
“and that in the 2020-2019 school year 11.1% of households opted to home school their kids.” So things are so bad, so backwards, that the school years themselves are getting reported backwards?!
This started with “affirmative action” over 50 years ago to “level the playing field”. I have yet to understand how lowering the standards helps anyone, it just harms us all.
The curriculum has been politicized too much! The schools have lost focus and need to return to teaching the basic ABC’s learning skills. Instead of lifting up slower students, the requirements were decreased to provide the “No Child Left Behind” mentality.
I have grandchildren who cannot read or write cursive. So sad that Mom and/or Dad have to interpret Grandma’s correspondence. Without the cursive skill our children are unable to read the historical documents or census reports because they can’t read cursive.
The “new” math is absolutely ridiculous and getting the answers close and not exact is causing our young ones not being able to compute the correct math answer unless a calculator tells them the figure. Math is a basic that goes back centuries and without the right knowledge how can they become the scientists, architects, mechanics, bakers, investors, etc. 2+ 2 still equals 4. Don’t go around the barn to find the right door. You memorize the basics and then can apply higher formulas.
Get the politics and different adult lifestyles out of our schools and just give them the basic ABC’s in the lower K-6th grade. As they move up then teach science, music, athletics, speech, art, domestic programs etc., so they can be introduced with advanced learning skills. Set the goals to know all the basics and please help the challenged learning students to have special tutoring. (College students, who are studying for their teaching degree would make excellent tutors for both the future teacher and the student.
Just this Grandma’s thoughts.
Boost School Choice, Home Schools, Voc/Tech Schools alone
Dump the College Debt trap (save business, science, eng degrees)
When public school began, the government was not the one to be involved in teaching them!
One shining hope for these educationally neglected kids will be tech schools; there will be many, many jobs in the trades!
For the most part, yes
Oh! but our kids are learning, learning how to hate America, learning how to suck-up to big Government, how to view their parents as Racist, Homophobic’s, and how they themselves can become transgender, dope smoking crack head moron’s, they are learning to not respect our Founding Fathers, they and their parents have let them become a tool of the Communist, left corrupt Educational System, most but, not all are tools of the destruction of America.
God Bless America!
On top of which is the recent report on the shortening of attention spans. How much is the result of 30 second advertisements and the proliferation of “smart” (not really, just quick) phones? Of non-scientific studies based wholly on government gross data?
Actually, in Chicago, since there is no in school classes the kids are instructing each other on the fine art of Car Jacking and getting their asses shot off from the increasingly armed Public.
I have seen education go down the tubes all my life (I am 84) and when I see what I learned in school and what my children did in school, it broke my heart. I did work in a public school system in a small rural area and have seen firsthand how the education system is mandated by textbooks that do not teach and since they removed civics and American History from the curriculum, the kids know next to nothing about this country which would explain how this ignorance has contributed to their total disrespect of all forms of leadership as they do not know the difference between brainwashing and truth. I truly fear for my grandchildren and their children. God help us all.
Rush Limbaugh said this decades ago. Now we see it s happened
The democrats do not want our children to be smart then they would vote republican
schools stopped doing what they are supposed to do 30 years ago we ha 2 generations of semiliterates
Crazy and sad! At first it was that they just weren’t teaching math, cursive writing etc. And they don’t teach civics so people will learn what the electoral colleges, the Constitution of the United States of America! But now they teach children to hate! And they allow boys to wear dresses to school! This must end we must fight this!
If we are going to truly be honest, the majority of failing schools and students are those with large minority populations. The US has been lowering standards since the 1960’s and all it has done is hurt these students and all of our children overall. On the sports field we require that only the best actually make the team. In the classroom we have continuously lowered the standards so that kids “pass” and get a high school diploma. Let’s be honest, many of those diplomas aren’t worth the paper they are written on. We see young people that can’t spell, definitely are not articulate and they have teachers that can’t use grammar as well. How did these people become teachers? Because of the lowering of standards. Now, we have teachers that shouldn’t be teachers that are actually “teaching” our youth. Until we admit that certain portions of our society are not keeping up, we won’t fix anything. If it’s ok to have a strict cutoff in sports, we sure as heck need a stricter cutoff in the classroom. And for those that are having trouble, we need to put teachers in place that can actually teach these students, instead of just passing them on the next grade.
With any job if you do not have performance goals, reviews on now you did to your goals, and pay based on the performance you will not get results.
Teachers do not have any of those things. As a result they do not perform and children do not learn.
You want it to change?
Force 100% school vouchers. The problems with the schools will disappear over night.
Vote no on all school funding.
Vote yes on school vouchers
And shutting down the advanced scholarly programs will make everybody dumber and more compliant to the Chinese.
Some people will get this, could it be that someone invented Honeybadger ammo in anticipation of the Chinese?