A Half Century of Miseducation

The New York Times reported December 4 that math and science test scores for U.S. fourth and eighth graders have been essentially stagnant since 1995. Nor have they have been stagnant near the top — lots of countries outrank us — but rather in the middling middle. American elementary/middle school students perform behind Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, England, Ireland, and Poland. The Worm in the Apple:... Brimelow, Peter Best Price: $1.77 Buy New $11.95 (as of 08:27 UTC - Details)

“’This is alarming,’” opined a Department of Education commissioner.

Yes, it is, but perhaps not just for the reasons the article identifies.

The spin of the article is that scores are down and American kids have lost significant ground as a result of the pandemic. Author Dana Goldstein says the results corroborate “a large body of research showing significant academic declines since the Covid-19 pandemic began.” “Experts are debating potential causes,” reports Goldstein, including maybe the fact that American public schools were shuttered comparatively longer than in other countries.

Let me argue that spin is far too limited and selective.

While the “experts” debate, American kids continue to move through the public-school industry, advanced perhaps more for social promotion than mastery of skills. Eventually, they’ll hit college where freshman year will be spent in math remediation before they can undertake a required general education math or science course. I know. I worked as an associate dean at a private, tuition-driven Catholic university. One year, a fifth of the freshman class was in math remediation prior to regular college-level math classes.

You can argue the young people shouldn’t be admitted and it’s not a college’s role to make up deficiencies in elementary and secondary schooling. But somebody’s got to do it. These kids relied on what their schools told them, credentialing them with diplomas after going through multiple “proficiency tests” (that more often were “teaching to the test” than teaching). At some point, somebody’s actually got to teach them.

The Theory of Educatio... Nock, Albert Jay Best Price: $3.09 Buy New $8.00 (as of 09:21 UTC - Details) Goldstein’s article blunts the fact that the public-school industry stayed out after COVID long after private schools resumed… and resumed safely. (We won’t ask how many DoE employees may still be out). Anecdotal information: Back in 2021-22, I would often attend noon Mass at my local parish, which had a Catholic school attached. The kids were in school long before the neighboring school districts were. I did not see ambulances regularly coming to the school to retrieve victims of the “irresponsible exposure.” There was no uptick in youth funerals at the church.

Yes, the pandemic did contribute to suppressing scores, just as it contributed to parents discovering all the ideological nonsense crammed into the curriculum that displaces time for substantive education. Kids might not know what it is to diagram a sentence (and where the “pronoun” fits in that diagram) but they waste plenty of time picking their “pronouns.”

No, while the pandemic affected scores, Goldstein’s article notes that America’s mediocre scores have been stagnant since 1995. That’s thirty years ago. That’s over three, almost four complete cycles of elementary school students.

Which means the problem is not just the pandemic. It’s the Department of Education.

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