I didn’t start out to hit education three days in a row like this, but when stories drop in your lap, sometimes you have to adjust fire and move forward.
On Wednesday, I addressed a proposal as to why homeschooling should be regulated and then took issue with a lot of teachers, particularly with regard to their demand for more and more money and more benefits.
But here’s the thing, if public school teachers were good at their jobs, I don’t think I’d say much. In far too many cases, though, they’re not. There are exceptions, but as a whole, we don’t see metrics screaming to us that our educational system is working as intended.
And we now have yet another example of just how bad it is. Ostensibly about learning loss following COVID, I think there’s a bigger issue at play here.
Key findings from the most recent school year available (2021-2022) include:
◼ In 2022, Only 26% of eighth graders were at or above proficient in math, much worse than before the pandemic (33% in 2019).
◼ Less than a third of fourth graders (32%) were at or above proficient in reading, two percentage points lower than right before the pandemic (34% in 2019).
◼ Thirty percent of all students (14.7 million students) were chronically absent, nearly double pre-pandemic rates (16% in 2018–19, the final school year fully unaffected by COVID). Two out of three students attended schools plagued by chronic absence.
◼ Four out of ten (40%) had undergone at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE), such as family economic hardship or their parents having divorced, separated or served time in jail. These averages mask even worse educational outcomes for students of color, kids in immigrant families and children from low-income families or attending low-income schools. The gaps they face can affect their ability to succeed and thrive as adults.
These averages mask even worse educational outcomes for students of color, kids in immigrant families and children from low-income families or attending low-income schools. The gaps they face can affect their ability to succeed and thrive as adults.
There’s a lot of legitimate focus on the drop following the pandemic, and for good reason. The response to the pandemic in our schools—a response that involved prolonged periods of at-home, by internet schooling that just didn’t do much followed by bizarre masking policies that did nothing except hurt students’ ability to learn—was a disaster.
However, let’s take a look at where we started from.
Yes, fewer than a third of students listed above were proficient in math or reading—different grades, mind you, but these are considered two benchmark subjects for evaluating education—yet before the pandemic, it wasn’t much better.
This tracks with the Nation’s Report Card data that shows not just a learning loss following the pandemic, but lackluster performance before it.
Learning loss is a problem no matter what, but when you’re already close to the bottom of the barrel, there’s not a lot of room to go.
See, this is part of the problem. Teachers are venerated. They’re treated like heroes. Politicians can easily score points by saying they deserve to be paid so much better. They’re considered above reproach and trusted like few other professions.
Schools are treated as sacred institutions that should have taxpayer money flow into it like the Mighty Mississippi River flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. It should be a flow so powerful that it will sweep away any who oppose it.
And yet, the system doesn’t accomplish anything.
Learning loss hit worse because barely a third of the students we’re talking about were proficient in reading and math before the pandemic played havoc with their education.
For all the talk earlier this week about how homeschooling hasn’t been sufficiently proven to have better outcomes than traditional education, I have to counter that homeschooling could hardly do worse. At least it seems that kids are able to read proficiently and are on grade level with math at a minimum.
The truth is that our educational system is broken and many seem to feel like the best solution is to keep doubling down on something that can’t be fixed.
Then again, the purpose of our educational system is not now nor ever was really about educating people.
Our current system was basically pushed into being here starting around 1850 by a man named Horace Mann. He borrowed the Prussian educational system—called the Humboldt System over in that neck of the woods—where it was first enacted for one simple reason: Control.
Mann was concerned about “unruly” children and wanted to enact a system that would mandate they be in centrally-controlled educational institutions for a set number of years. It laid the groundwork for modern teacher education, though that’s morphed a great deal over the years—and maintains a certain level of control over them during key points in a child’s development.
Agustina S. Paglayan, a UC San Diego assistant professor of political science, found that this wasn’t just the case in the 19th Century but continues on to this very day. And let’s be real here, based on Paglayan’s comments, I don’t think she’s got a red MAGA hat in the back of her closet.
When it comes to schools, it’s never been about results but about indoctrination, control, and maintaining the power of certain segments of the population.
Teachers’ unions support Democrats and Democrats promise increased school funding regardless of outcomes, so Teachers’ unions continue to support Democrats, creating a vicious cycle hinging on taxpayer money.
For example, in 2024, according to Open Secrets, the National Education Association, or NEA, donated nearly $1.1 million to Democrats and a whopping $17,000 to Republicans.
The American Federation of Teachers, another teachers’ union, has donated nearly $1.3 million to Democrats and absolutely nothing to Republicans.
So what incentive do Democrats have for trying to revamp our educational system that clearly doesn’t work? Especially when those same teachers indoctrinate our students to think in leftwing ways?
What’s actually happening is that our tax dollars are being used to fund what amounts to a massive psyop where children are fed into an indoctrination machine and come out as far more inclined to vote for Democrats than they might otherwise have been. Republicans, libertarians, and independents are being forced to pay for a system that tries desperately to make our kids stand for the polar opposite of what we do, and when we decide to homeschool or find some other education option, we’re blasted for trying to indoctrinate them.
At least they’re our kids, for crying out loud.
And this is why school choice is a problem for them. It gives parents the power to take their kids and put them in schools that don’t indoctrinate them with leftist talking points.
It’s not about results with regard to education, it’s about results at the polling booth.
That’s why Democrats are resistant to change. That’s why teachers refuse to accept that maybe what they’re doing isn’t working.
It’s because, on some level, many of them believe that it is. It’s just not working in the manner we’ve been led to believe it would work.
The proof that they’re failing is obvious and plentiful. The lack of proof is in the pudding. It doesn’t matter because making our kids more educated is completely irrelevant.
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seems both of the Von Humbolt bros were quite the thing.