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.
Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Pexels in Public Domain.
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