RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/nations-report-card-education-students-math-reading

The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress—also known as the “Nation’s Report Card”—is now out. It shows 12th-graders’ performance slipping to a record low.

According to the report, one-third of seniors are reading at a below-basic level, and only 35 percent are proficient or above. In math, 45 percent are below basic, with just 22 percent meeting proficiency. The proportion of students at the 10th and 25th percentiles has fallen to historic lows, widening the gap between the highest-and lowest-achieving students and leaving many unprepared for life after high school.

The declines reflect the failures of more than a decade of educational policy—specifically, a retreat from expectations that began under the Common Core Standards and continued under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Declines have not always been so predictable. Under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, passed in 2002, results were more stable. Reading scores remained 25 percent below-basic and 37 percent proficient, while math scores remained 33 percent below-basic and about 25 percent proficient. As Roberta Rubel Schaefer recently explained for City Journal, NCLB established rigorous, content-rich curriculum standards and tracked schools and students’ performance through regular testing, encouraging a culture of educational excellence.

After 2013, as states adopted the Common Core Standards and later, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) took effect in 2016, progress declined. Proficiency remained stagnant, while the number of students reading and doing basic math below the basic level increased.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/12/schools-are-in-hooky-hell/

It’s early September, and children should be back at school, right?

Well, many aren’t. With data from 44 states and Washington, DC, the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) director of education policy, Nat Malkus, discloses that the chronic absenteeism rate—students missing more than 10% of school days each year—was an alarming 23.5% in 2024.

Malkus notes that the surge in absenteeism affects districts of all sizes, racial backgrounds, and income levels, but the data does reveal significant differences by race and ethnicity, with 39% of Black students, 36% of Hispanic students, 24% of white students, and 15% of Asian students chronically absent.

Additionally, while students from both low- and high-income families often miss school, the highest rates occur in low-income districts, where 30% of students are chronically absent. Still, the rate has gone up even in low-poverty areas, increasing from about 10% to over 15%.

High-achieving districts have also been affected by the new normal. Over 15% of students in the top third at those schools are chronically absent, compared to 10% before the pandemic.

States vary significantly in the number of student absences. While Alabama, New Jersey, and Virginia have a 15% rate, Alaska’s is 43%, Oregon’s is 34%, and Michigan’s is 30%.

The problem is particularly egregious in our big cities. According to a recent report, in Los Angeles, where over 32% of students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year, 34 elementary schools have fewer than 200 students, and 29 use less than half of the building.

Even worse, in Chicago, the chronic absentee rate is 41%. The city’s dwindling enrollment has left about 150 schools half-empty, while 47 operate at less than one-third capacity. One Chicago high school had just 33 students last year.

No matter. The district’s spending of taxpayer dollars appears to be unaffected. On August 28, Chicago Public Schools approved a $10.2 billion budget, and at the same time, it is facing a $743 million deficit. Before the budget was approved, three major credit rating agencies each rated CPS General Obligation Bonds as “non-investment grade speculative,” also known as “junk bonds.”

What are education leaders doing to stem the tide of student flight?

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/10/the-southern-surge-in-education/

These four states have a lot to teach the country about teaching

It’s been a grim stretch for America’s schools. Reading and math achievement are in a decade-long swoon. This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) yielded the worst fourth-grade reading outcomes in 20 years, with 40 percent of students scoring below basic proficiency. For eighth-graders, reading scores hit a historic low — with 33 percent below basic. Meanwhile, chronic absenteeism is way up, as are grade inflation and misbehavior.

At this point, the nation’s most popular K–12 reform is the push to let families opt out and choose new schools. There is, however, one notable good-news story when it comes to school performance that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: A handful of red states are making notable gains — and putting their big-spending peers to shame. Their success has come to be called the Southern surge.

On the new NAEP (better known as the Nation’s Report Card), just two states, Alabama and Louisiana, had math or reading scores higher than what they were in 2019, pre-Covid. When researchers at the left-leaning Urban Institute adjusted 2025 NAEP results based on state demographics, Mississippi fourth-graders topped the country in math and reading. Louisiana’s fourth-graders led the nation in reading growth for the past two NAEP cycles and rank fifth nationwide for math growth. In fact, the two states were in the top four in every category. These accomplishments have taken many by surprise, perhaps because of a habit of imagining the South as a cultural backwater.

The Education Recovery Scorecard, a Harvard-Stanford research collaboration, tracks how well states are making up academic ground lost after 2019. The most recent results offer an eye-popping portrait of the Southern surge: Alabama was first in math recovery and third in reading recovery; Louisiana was second and first, Mississippi sixth and fourth, and Tennessee third and ninth. Chad Aldeman, a respected education analyst and old Obama hand, makes clear the extent of the “Mississippi miracle,” noting that Mississippi’s black students “rank third nationally, and its low-income kids outperform those in every other state.” Mississippi is the “only state to see gains across all performance levels over the last decade. Its average went up, but so did the scores of its highest and lowest performers.”

What’s driving these results? A commitment to basic skills, especially through phonics-based early-literacy instruction, and rigorous classroom materials.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/school-choice-battles-are-widespread/

On June 11, New Hampshire became the 19th state to implement a universal private school choice program when Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed Senate Bill 295. The law eliminates the income threshold from the state’s Education Freedom Account Program, making it accessible to all students.

Parental freedom is spreading rapidly across the nation. In the summer of 2024, the number of students participating in school choice programs exceeded one million for the first time, with an estimated 1,038,500 opting in. By July 2025, that number had grown to approximately 1,300,900, a 25% rise.

The surge in parents leaving government-run schools isn’t surprising, given the latest PDK poll results released on August 19. The survey showed that Americans’ confidence in public schools is at an all-time low, with only 13% giving them an A or B, down from 19% in 2019 and 26% in 2004. Nearly 60% of parents nationwide say they would choose a private or religious school for their child if offered public funds.

The expansion of parental freedom has created an interesting political scenario. Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, states, “For too long, the political Left has allowed the debate over school choice to be defined and dominated by conservatives. In doing so, we’ve neglected the most dynamic lever for equity and innovation in American education while alienating the Black, Latino, and working-class families we claim to represent. It’s time for progressives to come to the school choice table—not to dismantle public education, but to reinvent it for a new era.”

Elorza adds, “To reassert leadership on education, progressives must do more than say ‘no’ to choice plans. Instead, we need to lay out a vision of choice. That starts by breaking the monopoly of the traditional, top-down system and making room for bottom-up, community-driven innovation. We must empower communities to create new and different school models that can meet the unique educational needs of each child.”

Elorza’s words are especially timely because on July 4, President Trump approved legislation allowing the federal tax scholarship program to proceed. The Educational Choice for Children Act offers a tax credit that individuals can use to reduce their tax bills by donating money for private school expenses for students. ECCA is set to begin in 2027.

But the law’s final version allows states to opt out of participating, meaning no students in those states would be eligible for the program, which could have political consequences. It might be advantageous for Republicans because, clearly, Democrats are divided on the issue.

Additionally, the teachers’ unions are taking note. Open Secrets reports that in the 2024 election cycle, over 98% of the National Education Association’s political spending went to Democrats. While all teacher union leaders and some white progressives strongly oppose public funding for private schools, school choice remains popular among Black and Hispanic communities. In a recent poll, 63% of Hispanics and 68% of Blacks—typically Democrats—voiced support for a private option.

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/09/09/epic-failure-of-american-students-on-the-nations-report-card-n4943482

Johnny can’t read. Johnny can’t count. Johnny can’t reason.

Johnny is an unemployable bum.

“The Nation’s Report  Card,” AKA the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP), was released on Tuesday, and, quite simply, the state of learning by America’s 12th graders has never been worse.

“Students are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Center for Education Statistics, the group that oversees the NEAP. “This is happening at a time when rapid advancements in technology and society demand more of future workers and citizens, not less.”

“Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

The percentage of students judged “proficient” in math and reading skills dropped by two percentage points between 2019 and 2024, to 35% in reading and 22% in math.

“Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows, continuing declines that began more than a decade ago. My predecessor warned of this trend and her predecessor warned of this trend as well, and now I am warning you about this trend,” said Matthew Soldner, acting director of the Institute of Education Sciences (ES). ES is a research arm of the Department of Education. “These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted, focused action to accelerate student learning.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/stanford-student-union-graduate-workers

Graduate students enroll to teach, do research, and pursue knowledge, not to be conscripted into political organizations. Yet at America’s top universities, a new model of progressive campus unionism is rising—one that prioritizes progressive activism over workplace concerns like wages or benefits and coerces students into bankrolling causes many find deeply objectionable.

At Stanford University, the Graduate Workers Union—a local affiliate of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)—has demanded the dismissal of teaching and research assistants who refuse to join or pay union dues or agency fees. In June, students who had not paid them, including myself, received an ominous email titled “Termination Request” from union leadership, urging administrators to fire graduate workers for nonpayment.

Rather than defending student choice, Stanford promised—in a 2024 collective-bargaining agreement that it signed to avert a strike—to treat union membership as a condition of employment for teaching assistants and research assistants. Because California is not a right-to-work state, the contract now makes union membership or fee payment a condition of employment. That means Ph.D. students can’t teach or conduct funded research unless they subsidize the union.

The majority of union dues collected by the student union go to the national body, whose agenda extends far beyond typical concerns like wages or hours. The UE, for example, was the first national union to endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel in 2015. It also advocates for defunding police, taxpayer subsidies for “gender-affirming care,” and other controversial causes. Its website prominently features a “political action” tab highlighting protests and lobbying campaigns like the anti-Trump “No Kings” protest.

Objectors have a few legal outs, but these lack teeth. Federal law technically allows graduate students to opt out of full membership by paying “agency fees” under the Supreme Court’s Communications Workers v. Beck (1988). However, those fees are nearly identical to regular dues and still end up in union coffers.

https://www.thefp.com/p/in-defense-of-inequality

Earlier this week the University of Austin (UATX)—a new university, whose founding was announced four years ago in these pages—welcomed its second class of undergraduates. At the school’s convocation ceremony, UATX president Carlos Carvalho delivered an address you won’t hear at any other university: a defense of inequality.

Good evening—students, parents, and all the supporters helping us build the University of Austin. I am honored to be with you today at your convocation, at the most important and exciting university in America.

Thank you for trusting us with your education. We are thrilled to welcome you into the UATX family.

Tonight, as we gather on the threshold of America’s 250th anniversary, I want to share why this moment and UATX represent something essential about the American experiment.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, King George III formally declared Americans to be rebels and traitors. This dashed the colonists’ hopes for a peaceful reconciliation, and set the path to declare a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal.

But on the heels of America’s quarter-millennium since the Declaration of Independence, I want to do something a bit unfashionable: I want to defend inequality.

Of course, all men are created equal. But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement.

I want to defend this kind of inequality because I believe it is the most important way that UATX distinguishes itself, and because being honest about inequality is the most important way that UATX can help you be extraordinary.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/26/college-crackdown/

Diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates, race-based hiring, and safe spaces are just a few of the noxious turns that have become the standard in American colleges and universities in recent times.

Examples of universities practicing preferential treatment are countless. John Sailer, director of higher education policy at the Manhattan Institute, reports on a faculty job rubric he obtained from the University of Texas at San Antonio, which listed “female/URM” (underrepresented minority) as a scoring category.

Similarly, in an email he received from Northern Illinois University, a computer science professor shared the department’s search committee evaluation rubric, which scored applicants on their “diversity” and awarded points for those who were “non-male or non-Caucasian.”

But change is afoot.

On July 29, the Department of Justice sent a letter to all federal grant recipients reaffirming a core principle of American civil rights law: discrimination is illegal. The nine-page missive, signed by U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, lists several practices that constitute unlawful discrimination—many of which are common in higher education.

Shortly thereafter, a memo signed by President Trump instructed colleges receiving federal funding to submit admissions data to the Education Department to ensure they comply with the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Supreme Court decision. Colleges are already required to provide specific data about the students they enroll. Now, they must also submit detailed information about those who apply.

The memo declares that “the lack of available admissions data from universities—paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies—continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice.”

The memo also states, “American students, parents, and taxpayers should have confidence that our nation’s higher education institutions are recruiting and training our next generations with fairness and integrity.”

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/25/no-more-coordinators-and-bloat-audit-colleges-for-civil-rights-instead/

Trump’s war on self-serving colleges and universities appears to be going well. Settlements from race and sex discrimination investigations have been reached with Columbia, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. However, one provision in these Resolution Agreements is a problem: the requirement that schools hire yet another bureaucrat on campus, often called a Title VI Coordinator. The idea comes from Title IX practice after Obama officials demanded that each school hire a Title IX coordinator to fight the phony sexual assault crisis. The idea was bad then, and it’s bad now.

For those unaware, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause ban discrimination based on race—the former applies in the private sector (so to private schools), while the latter applies to governmental action (so to public schools). Meanwhile, Title IX is the Congressional ban on sex discrimination in federally funded education, which is to say, most colleges and universities. Already, schools complete paperwork assuring the federal government that they comply with these civil rights laws. In fact, student loan money is conditioned on this paperwork, called the Program Participation Agreement or “PPA.”

While many Americans see race-based civil rights laws as protecting minorities, the laws are actually written broadly to protect all citizens. They ban discrimination “on the basis of race,” for example. So those protected also include citizens of European descent, or what are now called “whites” (though Irish and Italian Americans used to feel pretty different), as well as those of Jewish ancestry.

The President’s most high-profile Title VI investigations have been of Harvard and Columbia Universities, stemming from campus protests over Middle East conflicts. The protests targeted and threatened Jewish students, prompting Title VI complaints. When libraries and classrooms were taken over, educational access was compromised.

The Resolution Agreements are generally good news, as lawful, peaceful protests can continue provided Jewish students are not the target or intimidated by a hostile environment directed at them. Many of the agreements require schools to pay fines for past oversights and to be more vigilant about possible threats to educational access in the future.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/classroom-disorder-student-learning-schools-discipline

Since at least 2022, the education world has been preoccupied with the “teacher exodus”: a troubling trend of teachers quitting at record rates. Though attrition has eased somewhat since its pandemic peak, it remains stubbornly high. Deteriorating classroom conditions are a big reason. Teachers cite chronic student misbehavior as the top source of stress and burnout, ranking it above workload and even pay.

Longtime educator Ben Foley is one of many who found the situation unbearable. After more than two decades teaching middle school in California, he resigned midyear, worn down by classrooms that had descended into chaos. He described the daily environment as “anarchic,” with students routinely ignoring basic instructions, roaming the room, throwing things, and roughhousing. Foley likened the experience to “death by a thousand cuts,” explaining that “for every request I make, several kids flat-out defy it.”

Foley blamed the breakdown on lax discipline practices introduced under Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a widely adopted framework for managing student behavior. In debates over weak school discipline, PBIS often escapes scrutiny, overshadowed by its more politically charged cousin, restorative justice. But PBIS is no less problematic; it simply masks its anti-punitive bias behind uncontroversial goals like improved data collection and clearer communication. It’s also far more widely used than restorative justice and has been a fixture in school discipline policy for decades—backed by a dedicated, taxpayer-funded center run by the U.S. Department of Education.

When I began asking teachers about PBIS, I heard no shortage of complaints. Educators described how it drove disruptive classrooms, undermined their authority, and made effective teaching nearly impossible. Yet when I spoke with PBIS trainers and reviewed official materials, the disconnect was striking: trainers insisted that the teacher accounts didn’t reflect the structured framework they endorsed. It quickly became clear that PBIS is complex and highly adaptable, with implementation varying widely from school to school. To understand how one discipline model can produce such divergent outcomes, we need to examine what PBIS is, where it came from, and how it rose to dominate school discipline in the United States.

PBIS is designed to promote positive student behavior—and, ideally, to reduce the negative kind. Trainers emphasize that PBIS is a management system, not an intervention. It doesn’t mandate specific behavior expectations or consequences for misconduct; instead, those decisions are left to each school’s discretion, with PBIS offering tools to manage and assess them. Still, the framework strongly encourages rewarding positive behavior over punishment, and newer versions take ever-firmer stances against punitive measures.

PBIS operates through a three-tiered system, with each tier offering increasingly targeted support for students struggling with behavior. Tier 1 is universal: school leaders set conduct expectations for all students. While full implementation includes all three tiers, many schools—and most PBIS studies—focus only on Tier 1, due to limited resources. Tier 2 provides extra support for students who don’t respond to the universal approach, using tools like regular staff check-ins. Tier 3 delivers individualized strategies for students with the most serious behavioral challenges. This layered model is also used in related frameworks like the Multi-Tiered System of Supports and Response to Intervention.