Op-Ed: America’s Education Crisis, and How to Solve It

The problems facing America are many, unmistakable, and largely immediate. Anyone with even the slightest ability to fog a mirror knows that concerns include affordability, public safety, drug addiction, terrorism, healthcare costs, and political dysfunction.

Yet, among those issues and others, the quality of our public schools rarely ranks among our top 10 challenges requiring prioritized attention.

However, such omission portends less America’s renewal than America’s decline. That is, since the future of our nation largely depends on educating future generations, it’s worth noting that by virtually any metric, our schools have increasingly become far less an incubator for leaders than a blackboard bungling catalyst spawning the aimless and dependent.

Undeniably, student test results have declined for more than a decade, and that trend has not reversed post-COVID. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the congressionally mandated measure of what students should know, declining student performance is significant, long-running, and not solely COVID-related.

Examples of blackboard bungling are widespread across subject areas and grade levels. Among 12th graders, scores are at historic lows: only one-third are considered “proficient” in reading, and just 22 percent are equally able in math. In fact, reading proficiency has fallen from 40 percent in 1992 to just 35 percent in 2024, and math scores for high school seniors are at their lowest level in more than 20 years.

But declining test scores are not limited to 12th graders. With few exceptions, math and reading results among younger students have followed the same trend. Overall, only four states have shown measurable gains in reading and math proficiency since 2022, and national averages for fourth and eighth graders remain well below pre-COVID levels.

But comparing our students with those from around the world is only slightly more positive. In a global assessment measuring how well 15-year-olds from over 65 nations apply knowledge to real-world problems, our students ranked sixth in reading, about average in science, and math results were described as “among the lowest ever measured.”

So how is it that the children of the only remaining superpower perform so poorly? Is it that we spend less on education? Or is our instructional time below that of other nations?

While there is no single cause for our scholastic malaise, its source is neither of the above.

Statistically, only Luxembourg and Norway spend significantly more per pupil than does the United States, which already spends 38 percent more than the average of almost 40 other advanced nations. And as for instructional time, the U.S. is also well above average, ranking third among those same countries.

Thus, if scholastic time and financial resources are not causes of our ever-greater blackboard bungling, we are left with the likelihood that American children receive inferior instruction. And that instruction is often delivered by tenured educators, guided not by rigorously assessed national standards but by a patchwork quilt of state and local curricula.

When instructional delivery is irrefutably linked to substandard student achievement, it is easy to blame veteran teachers, who legally enjoy enhanced job security. Given human nature, mediocrity may then result when seasoned instructors are retained by statute despite unexceptional performance.

Even so, because many teachers still maintain high standards and since academic tenure is also widespread in nations with outstanding student achievement, faulting tenure alone for our scholastic decline is not the whole picture.

Differences in student achievement between the U.S. and other developed nations also stem from a far more selective teacher-entry process, rigorously assessed national curricula, and greater school choice for parents moving their children to higher-performing schools without economic penalty.

Nations outperforming the United States in student achievement have national standards for teacher training and curriculum. We do not. They have national teacher standards and exams. We do not. They require professional development for teachers, mandate remediation for low-performing teachers, and allow for extensive school choice with public funding that follows students. And again, we do not.

Furthermore, unlike nations with a highly selective, prestige-enhancing teacher entry process that attracts the best candidates, the status of American instructors is underwhelming at best. As a result, salaries are well below those in top-paying countries, leading to teacher shortages and compelling districts to retain educators they might otherwise dismiss.

A quality education can, at least indirectly, translate into many dimensions of well-being, including income, career opportunities, health, creativity, and overall life satisfaction. These relationships are well supported by strong, consistent evidence from numerous longitudinal studies. A nation will inevitably suffer when its citizens are poorly educated.

Thus, our continued inability or unwillingness to address our blackboard bungling will have long-term, catastrophic effects on America’s standing as the leader of the free world.

Years ago, the documentary “Waiting for Superman” exposed the deplorable state of schooling in America. That was in 2010. Unfortunately, and to our detriment, the “Man of Steel” is still nowhere to be found.

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