Why America’s government-run school system is failing.
In a memorable April 1995 video, Apple founder Steve Jobs declared, “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible….”
Then in January 2006, John Stossel’s eye-opening documentary, Stupid in America, was aired. The investigative ABC show was billed as “a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America’s public schools, and it’s about time we face up to it…The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic, and South Korea…This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.”
Sadly, since Jobs’ comments and Stossel’s documentary, public school performance has not improved. The latest example of our descent is shown by the scores on the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), an assessment administered to 650,000 4th and 8th graders in 64 countries.
The 2023 test, the results of which were released on December 4, revealed that average U.S. math scores declined sharply between 2019 and 2023, falling 18 points for 4th graders and 27 points for 8th graders. Internationally, this puts the U.S., a purported world leader, at 22nd of 63 education systems for 4th-grade math and 20th of 45 education systems for 8th-grade math.
Additionally, average U.S. math scores for both 4th and 8th graders reverted to performance levels of 1995, the first year the TIMSS assessment was administered, meaning any progress made since Steve Jobs’ damning comments has been erased.
Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics Commissioner, summed up the dreary results, asserting that the phenomenon is particularly troubling because the U.S. is an outlier compared to other countries. She added that among 29 education systems that participated in both the 2011 and 2019 iterations of TIMSS, the U.S. was the only one that saw widening score gaps between top and bottom-scoring students in both subjects and both grade levels. --->READ MORE HERE
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Conservatives have been trying to close the Department of Education since the Cabinet-level agency was created by an act of Congress signed by Jimmy Carter in 1979. Creating the department was among Carter’s campaign promises in 1976; closing it was among Ronald Reagan’s in 1980.
Today the department trundles along with the same modest 4,000 employees it had back when it was created, but its outsize influence on lightning rod issues such as racially disparate school discipline and transgender issues have made it a target once again. This year, Donald Trump has reiterated Reagan’s promise saying elimination of the agency is a priority early in his administration.
Democrats see the possibility as alarming; Kamala Harris called it part of a plan “to return America to a dark past.” The National Education Association, which was instrumental in creating the department, calls the effort “disastrous for the nation.”
Carter certainly saw the creation of the department as a bright new day for America. “I came to the office of the presidency determined that the American people should receive a better return on their investment in education,” Carter said optimistically as he signed the law creating the agency. “The Department of Education bill will allow the federal government to meet its responsibilities in education more effectively, more efficiently, and more responsively.”
A close look at the Department of Education reveals it has utterly failed at all of the goals Carter outlined for it. Today, America’s public schools are every bit as ineffective, inefficient and impenetrable as they were in 1979, but at vastly greater expense for federal, state and local taxpayers.
Consider SAT scores taken by college-bound juniors and seniors in high school. In 1980, the average combined score was 994. By 2016, the year before the tests and scoring were significantly changed, it was 1002, an increase of about 1%. From 2017 to 2023 scores have gone from 1060 to 1028, down a little less than 3%.
Or consider the government’s own test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress given to 9- 13- and 17-year-olds. Reading scores in 2024 are the same as they were in 1980. Math scores have risen from 219 in the late 1970s to 234 today, a rise of about 1% a decade. --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a relevant story:
+++++Government-run schools keep failing. It shouldn’t surprise us.+++++
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