Get Caught Up on Education
Recent developments point to further decline.
Bubba
07 Feb
Get Caught Up on Education
If you’ve been following recent news in education, you’ll notice a pattern—these aren’t just isolated issues. They point to a system showing cracks that go far beyond ideological or cultural concerns.
The latest NAEP report: New scores from an assessment widely dubbed the “Nation’s Report Card” shows a continued decline in student achievement, with 4th and 8th-grade reading performance falling nationwide since 2019 and one-third of 8th graders now below basic literacy levels, the worst result in the test’s history.
While 4th-grade math scores rose slightly (+2 points since 2022), they remain below 2019 levels, and 8th-grade math declined in every state except Tennessee, widening achievement gaps to historic levels.
The macro trend: Between 2003 and 2013, student performance rose steadily across the board. After 2013, however, scores began to decline, with a troubling gap emerging between the highest and lowest performers.
The contrast: While public school student performance has lagged, their counterparts in charter and Catholic schools have far outperformed them.
The vibes: Per a new Gallup poll, American satisfaction with the quality of public education has fallen by nearly half since 2002, to just 24%. Out of 31 American institutions surveyed by Gallup, education ranks among the lowest when it comes to public satisfaction, beaten out only by the state of the climate and poverty.
The take: Fordham Institute senior fellow Robert Pondiscio argues in a new essay that conservatives should shift their critiques of the educational system to address the underlying challenges rather than fixating on DEI and culture wars.
A core conservative critique is that public schools have become hostile to the country that funds them, prioritizing ideological activism over academic excellence. It’s a valid and important critique. Yet, while conservatives rightly challenge ideological capture, they must also recognize that the greatest failure of K–12 education is not ideological but operational. … Before DEI, SEL, and CRT in schools became culture war flashpoints, systemic issues—such as poor teacher training, ineffective curricula, and weak accountability—were already limiting student success.
Bubba’s Two Cents
Here’s a crude but effective illustration—courtesy of Florida Republican Shawn Frost—of the problem with focusing critiques of education solely on “anti-wokeness”:
“We would rather fight over the icing flavor on a manure cake than ask ourselves ‘who thought it was a good idea to make a manure cake? Who’s going to eat this thing and how do we fix this recipe?’”
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