Saturday, July 15, 2023

Covid exposed the fragility of American education

City Journal: "Our Failing Schools Are a National Crisis - Recent test scores show a 50-year downward trend for American students. We need to change course immediately."
Most analysts blame students’ dismal showing on the Covid-induced shutdowns that gripped public education in 2020 and 2021. The hysterical response to the pandemic certainly did damage. But, as Kevin Mahnken notes for The 74, the latest scores, which highlight long-term trends that extend back to the 1970s, “widen the aperture on the nation’s profound academic slump.” In doing so, the latest test serves “as a complement to the 2020 iteration of the same test, which showed that the math and English skills of 13-year-olds had noticeably eroded even before the emergence of COVID-19.”
If I were President-for-a-day, I would disassemble the Department of Education and salt the earth.  There is absolutely no evidence that there is a national policy for incremental progress in education.  We'd be better off just dispersing all that federal waste to charter schools. 

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