The 3 Things Experts Say Would Make US Education World Class

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Plummeting reading and math scores are often blamed on COVID-19, but negative trends in U.S. public school performance compared with that of other developed countries predate the pandemic.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported at least six years of steady decline in reading and math scores on domestic standardized tests leading up to the 2024 results.

Sixty-nine percent of fourth graders scored below grade level in reading last year, and the rate was 70 percent for eighth-grade students.

NAEP’s 2024 math results were equally disappointing: 60 percent of fourth-grade students and 72 percent of eighth graders scored below their respective grade levels.

Martin West, vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees NAEP, said student skills have eroded for more than a decade.

He attributed the downward spiral to two significant events: a softening of public school accountability and a new era of “screen-based childhood,” in which students spend far more time on smartphones and social media than on schoolwork.

“‘Sobering’ would be a good word for it,” West said during a February panel discussion with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Education policy experts identify three significant barriers to catching up to higher-performing nations in classroom performance: lack of accountability, relaxed standards, and lack of engagement.

On the global stage, the 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study assessment ranked the United States 22nd out of 44 nations.

On average, American eighth graders scored more than 120 points below their peers in Singapore and Taiwan.

The 2022 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds in math, science, and reading proficiency, ranked the United States 18th out of 80 nations.

It finished ninth in reading, 16th in science, and 34th in math. The next PISA exams take place this spring.

David Steiner, director of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University, said U.S. results in the PISA global assessments were respectable but not ideal.

U.S. standardized tests are more difficult for kids raised on social media because they are less visual than the PISA questions and require longer reading passages.

President Donald Trump has already initiated reforms that he says will improve classroom performance and global rankings for the United States’ 50 million K–12 public school students.

They include shrinking the Department of Education and streamlining its funding with state block grants, outlawing curricula based on progressive ideologies, and promoting universal school choice.

The United States leads the world in education spending despite its poor test results.

The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that U.S. per-pupil spending exceeds $15,500 (local, state, and federal total), which is 38 percent higher than the average of 79 other developed countries.

The U.S. Department of Education in Washington on June 10, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Lack of Accountability

Public schools are required to participate in standardized tests as a condition of federal funding, but any results, good or bad, satisfy that requirement.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama tried to incentivize improved test scores via the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top programs, but school communities resisted and complained about increased pressure.

Under President Joe Biden’s administration, $190 billion in post-COVID-19 emergency funding was quickly and unconditionally allocated to help schools reopen safely after the pandemic and accelerate learning recovery.

Many districts used their grants for athletic facilities, capital projects, and staffing unrelated to academics as scores continued to drop, according to the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

Today, most states have decoupled or are in the process of decoupling teacher evaluation and tenure decisions from students’ scores on standardized tests, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Instead, teacher unions and district leaders negotiate alternative metrics, such as student grades and teacher observations.

In Texas, several districts filed lawsuits against the state education agency in 2023 and 2024 to prevent it from releasing the results of its school accountability system that grades districts based on standardized test scores and other metrics. The Travis County Court has yet to issue a final ruling to release and continue the accountability reporting.

Catrin Wigfall, a former charter school teacher in Arizona and now an education policy fellow at the Minnesota-based Center for the American Experiment think tank, told The Epoch Times that this opposition to standardized tests as school and teacher assessment tools indicates that teacher unions, not school boards or state education leaders, are in control of a “top-down system.”

Declines in math and reading have been pervasive since 2013, after the National Assessment Governing Board reported big gains in both subjects across all grade levels from 1994 through 2010.

“It was driven by gains for the low-achieving students, but still not up to the expectations of No Child Left Behind,” West said.

“There was bipartisan [support] for standard-based reform and accountability measures. I do think we’ve seen a softening of accountability.”

President George W. Bush speaks on the No Child Left Behind Act with students from New York Public School 76, flanked by (L–R) New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, First Lady Laura Bush, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Kline in New York City on Sept. 26, 2007. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Relaxed Standards

The Golden State’s report card notes that less than half of California public school students in grades three through eight met or exceeded grade-level standards for English Language Arts, and only about one in three students met or exceeded math standards.

Still, its high school graduation rate was 87 percent, the highest in six years, and its chronic absenteeism rate has declined since 2021.

Most states, in fact, don’t require diploma candidates to pass a final high school assessment, which is more common in other countries, Steiner said during a Feb. 7 panel discussion.

“If we stop measuring, the idea seems to be that the kids will stop doing poorly,” he said. “I don’t know where this mania for retreat from using a thermometer comes from. It strikes me as rather dangerous.”

Without that thermometer, Steiner said, students can slip through the cracks.

Last year, a student who could not read or write graduated from high school in Hartford, Connecticut, and was admitted to the University of Connecticut–Hartford.

The student, Aleysha Ortiz, is now suing the school district.

Her lawsuit notes that she was served by a team of case managers and special education teachers during her entire academic career as a special education student.

She completed assignments using a talk-to-text function on her smartphone because she didn’t understand the words in front of her.

Carol Gale, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers union, previously told The Epoch Times that the district doesn’t police its chronic absenteeism policy and has lowered student expectations to improve the high school graduation rate, which was below 70 percent the year before Ortiz was awarded her diploma.

In a March 7 email response to The Epoch Times, Hartford Public Schools declined to comment on the Ortiz case.

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