SYDNEY WILLIAMS;EDUCATION MATTERS
A recent editorial in The Washington Post, lamenting threats to close the Department of Education, referred to a “landmark” 1983 Reagan Administration report, “A Nation at Risk.” The editorial divulged “that 13 percent of American 17-year-olds – and up to 40 percent of minority youths – were functionally illiterate” at the time. The editorial claimed the United States had been falling behind its adversaries, which caused businesses and the military to spend millions of dollars on “costly remedial education and training programs.” The editorial added: “Test scores have improved (apart from an alarming slippage in recent years), and presidents from both parties have worked to make American schools more accommodating for children with disabilities, and to improve low-performing schools.” But has that been true?
Today, the Department of Education spends approximately twenty-two times as much per student as it did forty years ago, yet the results are dismal. According to the recently issued report from the U.S. Department of Education – the bi-annual National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card – 60% of fourth graders scored below what the NAEP deems a proficient level in math. 8th Graders fared worse, with 75% performing below proficiency. In reading, almost 70 percent of students scored below the NAEP proficiency level. In the report, the author Stephaan Harris quoted Governing Board member Patrick Kelly of Columbia, South Carolina: “Student academic achievement is the cornerstone of national success and security. This makes a lack of academic progress today a direct and urgent threat to our collective future.” It does; education is the foundation on which our democracy is built.
Internationally, our students are not where they should be. According to the 2022 to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, American students did best in reading, ranking 9th overall, behind Macau and Canada. In science, however, they ranked 16th, behind Slovenia and the UK. And in math, the ranked 34th, below the average and behind Norway and Malta. The scores, according to Education GPS, “…are among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics. In reading and science, results confirm a long-term stability in result,” albeit at a mediocre level for a nation that prides itself on its schools.
These tests foretell a depressing story. We are a nation that has been the technological, medical and science leader of the world; and some might argue its cultural leader. Yet our public schools are a disgrace, with minorities and the poor suffering the most.
School choice is the obvious answer, but it is widely opposed by teachers’ unions, and therefore by most Democrat politicians. Open Secrets reported that, for the 2024 election cycle, the two largest teachers’ unions, National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave a combined $32 million to candidates, with 94% going to Democrats. That dollar amount was up from $4 million twenty years ago. In the meantime, a Heritage Foundation survey (2023) found that 47% of House members and 51% of Senators enroll their children in private schools. In a February 1 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Bloomberg wrote: “In New York, the teachers union has fought to maintain a cap on the number of charter schools, [schools that] have dramatically raised achievement levels, even as student waiting lists grow longer.” Hypocrisy thrives.
The world faces many problems, and it is not simply the threat of foreign powers, like China with its Belt-and-Road initiatives, a revanchist Russia wishing to reclaim its lost empire, a Middle East under the threat of Iran and Islamic terrorism, or African Christians having to live with daily threats. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing are in their infancy. We must, as J.D. Vance warned our European partners in Munich, confront “the enemy within.” We must not allow fear of censorship prevent us from speaking out. We should, as Noah Rothman wrote in the January 2024 issue of National Review, “summon the courage to repudiate what passes for sophistication in the academy and renounce the trite moral relativism that cannot distinguish between the Western world and its enemies.” Western liberalism, which dates back two-hundred-and-fifty years to the Enlightenment, is under attack. One consequence has been the divisiveness of our political parties. Another is manifested in the current crop of political leaders from both parties.
The best antidote is an educated populace. “Education is the movement from darkness to light” is a quote attributed to Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Martin Luther King believed that the purpose of education was to help people “to think incisively and to think for one’s self.” This is particularly true as it applies to our roles as citizens. Our youth must read our Constitution, understand what makes our government unique, and how rare it is in the annals of mankind. All public school students should have some familiarity with the canon of classical liberal Western thought.
Recently, Jason Riley, writing in The Wall Street Journal, noted: “Given the strong correlation between educational achievement and life outcomes, a society that allows such a large fraction of its youth to fall by the wayside academically is asking for trouble down the road.” We cannot allow this decline in education to be the “canary in the coalmine,” predicting a decline in our nation’s democracy and its global leadership. Education trains the mind to question assumptions, to challenge authority, to think, to be open to new ideas. It is the resource, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, that “most to be relied on…for advancing the happiness of man.”
For forty-five years, Congress has shoveled increasing amounts of money into public school education. By itself, that money has not worked. Like other businesses, our schools need competition – not just the private schools primarily available to the wealthy – but charter schools and voucher programs that allows all parents to choose the best alternatives for their children. They need home-schooling and Catholic schools that once educated many of the nation’s neediest. Albert Einstein is alleged to have once said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Yet that is what has become of our public schools. The poet William Butler Yeats once said that education is the lighting of a fire, the instilling in young students a passion to question, to learn. That is what our future demands.
Yes, education does matter.
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