Shaking Up the American Classroom

By Dave Trecker

Things keep getting worse. Based on national and international test scores, American youngsters keep slipping further and further behind as criticism mounts about our public education system.

Reports from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed 4th and 8th grade literacy scores dropped to 1992 levels and 8th grade math scores fell to 1995 levels. Those are terrible numbers. And COVID, the usual scapegoat, can no longer be singled out as the sole cause of the problem.

The plunge in reading skills is particularly troublesome. “Students who are struggling readers become adults who are struggling readers if we don’t do something about it,” warns Excelin Ed’s Kymyona Burk, who advocates for education changes. The results came to light as school districts began to emphasize phonics-based instruction, focusing on context to frame the meaning of words – a new and essentially unproven approach.

As criticism mounts, school boards have become increasingly defensive. According to The Wall Street Journal, educators complain about rising student misbehavior, teacher burnout, chronic absenteeism and cell-phone distractions. And everyone agrees that problems from virtual teaching, one of the true disasters of COVID, haven’t completely gone away.

Against this troublesome backdrop, let’s take a look at some of the things that are happening.

Big City Problems – Deteriorating education throughout the country is amplified in big cities. WSJ columnist Andy Kessler looks at Chicago, that toddlin’ town, long held captive by the Chicago Teachers Union. He writes, “In 2024, only 22% of 11th graders could read at grade level. Only 19% were proficient in math.” Maybe teachers aren’t being paid enough? “As of December 2024,” Kessler writes, “so-called ‘regular teacher’ salaries with benefits was about $120,000 a year.” Chicago is not unique. Urban areas across the country are dealing with similar problems.

Scuttle the Education Department – The new administration in Washington wants to do away with the Department of Education, created in 1976 as a payoff to the National Education Association. Five decades later the cabinet-level agency is the picture of bloated bureaucracy, soaking up taxpayer money while contributing little to the education of America’s youth.

Although congressional approval will be needed (and impossible to get) to deep-six the department, it can be whittled down and more responsibility shifted to the states where at least some progress is being made.

In fact, most of the Education Department spending will continue. Federal grants and loans will not be cut back, and little of the research funding will diminish. The WSJ points out that the typical K-12 school normally receives only about 10% of its funding from the federal government.

Bloated Overheads – An enduring problem with colleges, government agencies and other organizations that feed from the taxpayer trough is they have vastly inflated overhead costs compared with true marginal costs needed to do research or otherwise function. So says columnist Jason Riley, who calls for a 15% cap on administrative overhead. Paying more, he says, has not improved education one iota.

Hands-on Skills – While college loans proliferate and graduates scrape to find jobs, a subset of students are pursuing the trades. Lorenzo Walker and Immokalee Tech are local success stories. Long disparaged as consolation prizes for those who can’t cut it academically, degrees from tech schools are now held in high esteem. WSJ reports that school districts around the U.S. are pouring big money into vocational education and seeing hefty returns as welders, electricians and plumbers routinely pull down six-figure salaries. “Kids can see these aren’t knuckle-dragging jobs,” said an ironworking teacher in rural Wisconsin. “Blue collar is where the big bucks are now,” added a shop teacher in Oregon.

Meanwhile Florida is turning the screws. New legislation that will cement the state’s conservative position on education is being teed up. Love it or hate it, we are on the way to less woke, less diverse and less sexually explicit teaching. We’ll see how it all turns out.

Dr. Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Naples.