September 24, 2024
Federal control of public education has been a disaster, and it’s only getting worse. A cursory look at the most basic educational statistics is horrifying. Scientific American estimates that two-thirds of elementary schoolchildren lack fluency in English, while an astonishing 40% are flat-out illiterate.
Further, teacher’s unions have become a political cudgel, wielded by ideologues like Randi Weingarten. Covid-19 served as the perfect magnifying glass of the degree to which the unions have become a tool designed to support a progressive narrative, children be damned.
So when Donald Trump calls for an end to the Department of Education–another Statist platform long overdue–expect liberal heads to explode. Predictably, they have.
Trump held another huge rally in Pennsylvania last night. During his remarks, he called out the failure of the DoE, citing poor American performance versus other countries, despite massive per-pupil spending. His proposal, to return educational control to the states, mirrors his approach to abortion.
Leave it to the simpletons on the left to claim that this position in some way harms children.
Any of the fifty states would be hard pressed to do worse than the DoE. And the Democratic Party, with all its bluster over DEI issues, should be especially concerned, given educational outcomes based on race. But of course they are more concerned with power than actual education.
EdTrust, a nonprofit “committed to advancing policies and practices to dismantle the racial and economic barriers embedded in the American education system”, reports that literacy, race and poverty are intertwined [emphasis ours]:
There is overwhelming evidence that nearly all children can learn to read. But in schools across the country, many students — especially students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities — are not yet skillful readers. Last year, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), “the nation’s report card,” showed that not even half (43%) of fourth graders in the U.S. scored at or above a proficient level in reading. And for marginalized students, the numbers are much worse: just 17% of Black students, 21% of Latino students, 11% of student with disabilities, and 10% of multilingual learners can read proficiently by fourth grade.
In the meantime, Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, busies herself with LGBT issues and fighting against school choice in order to maintain the monopoly on young American minds.
Kamala Harris calls Weingarten her “incredible friend”. A Harris presidency with Weingarten occupying her current role (or a cabinet position) would be disastrous for American parents, writes Mark Mix in a recent article for the National Review. The furthering of trans ideology, legislation to keep parents out of the loop on gender discussions, and of course putting teachers ahead of student learning, as families experienced en masse during unscientific Covid school closures, would all be on the table.
The path is clear: return education to the states. Create a sense of competition around literacy and test scores. May the best state win, and in the process, so will our children.
