Here’s one more reason to detest teachers-unions and other special interests who prioritize everything but getting the kids to learn: US high-school seniors in 2024 posted the worst results on record in reading, and about as bad in math.
This, when research has conclusively proven how to get those scores soaring — if we can get the education “stakeholders” out of the way.
The bottom line of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report is beyond ugly: 12th-grade math scores last year were the worst since the current test started in 2005, and reading the worst since the NAEP itself started in 1992.
A mere one in five (22%) seniors tested as “proficient” in math, and just a third (35%) in reading.
Both figures dropped two percentage points from the last 12th-grade NAEP results, in the pre-lockdown year of 2019; these kids were in 8th grade when COVID hit and teachers unions across America did their damnedest to keep schools closed for years while pretending that “remote learning” was anything but a farce.
This week’s NAEP release follows earlier reports on also-grim results for 8th- and 4th-graders starting in 2022.
And it’s the bottom half of kids who are pulling the averages down — that is, high-scoring children are doing fine; it’s those in areas and schools that were already underperforming who are now doing even worse.
In other words, children in public schools where the establishment has given up on them — and the true focus is entirely on keeping teacher unions happy.
This is why the best hope for underprivileged US kids is school choice — access to public charter schools that operate outside the control of unions and the bureaucracies they control, and/or to scholarships or other help that lets them flee to private schools, including the Catholic schools that have long provided refuge in our cities.
It’s maddening, because we know how to reverse this decline.
A few Deep South states led by Louisiana are showing exactly what’s needed in reading: Requiring K-3 teachers to get intense training in scientifically tested methods of instruction based on phonics and phonemic awareness, followed by engaging, content-rich lessons in later grades.
Harvard’s Roland Fryer, meanwhile, proved a decade ago that a few basic approaches (learned from studying effective charter schools) can get big-city, low-income, minority kids fully up to speed in math.
America can solve its education crisis, it just needs the political will.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
