American Education is a Failure, and It Is The Teacher's Fault

By Rich Kozlovich

On May 3, 2023 Frederick M. Hess published this piece, America’s Students Flunk Civics and U.S. History on Nation’s Report Card, stating:

The “Nation’s Report Card” is out with new results on what our eighth-graders know about U.S. history and civics, and the results are grim. The National Assessment of Educational Progress today reported that this is the first time civics results declined significantly on the quarter-century-old exam. In history, the results continued a nearly decade-long decline.

The U.S. history test covers key figures, dates, and events, as well as student familiarity with key historical ideas and movements. The civics test gauges students’ knowledge, their ability to take or defend positions on political issues, and their understanding of democratic participation. The tests were administered in spring 2022, with a nationally representative sample of 8,000 eighth-graders who took the history test and 7,800 the civics exam.

The upshot: Just 13 percent of students were deemed “proficient” in U.S. history and just 22 percent in civics. After peaking in the early 2010s, scores are now back to where they were when the tests were first administered in the 1990s..

 When pointed out over and over again:

“Our schools,” reports a knowledgeable observer, “are producing ignoramuses.” The average graduate, he explains, “does not know how to read critically, write expressively, or debate intelligently and politely.” Meantime, the unions are opposing huge, proposed increases in beginner-teacher salaries because, instead, they want higher pay for teachers with seniority, regardless of individual performance"

American students are terrible at just about everything the schools are supposed to be teaching them, and the teachers, who always claim if they had more money that would fix it, keep claiming this isn't their fault.   So, if more money is the fix, then can we then deduce from that the teachers are either incapable, or deliberately, failing to do what they're being paid to do?  The fact is we've been giving them more and more money for decades, and things not only didn't get better, they've gotten worse.

Okay, so, in spite of all that, I can live with their excuses if they will just tell us whose fault it really is then.   The parents?  We're being told by the leftist in the socialist indoctrination system in America's schools that parents need to mind their own business.  

The system?  Okay, who created the system?  It appears to me it was the teachers, their unions and the leftist politicians elected to the school boards, all in lock step with the anti-American, anti-Constitution Democrat bureaucrats at Department of Education, created this mess.   

In some systems they lied about the scores to hide just how miserable their students are doing, and to cover up their incompetence.   In February it was reported not a single student can do math at grade level in 53 Illinois schools. For reading, it’s 30 schools. And Chicago's teacher's union is demanding big increases in wages and benefits, and are directly responsible for the election of the new mayor, an out and out socialist, who will negotiate the contract with them.  

They are failing everything, and it turns out the Governor of Illinois is outraged!  Outraged I tell you!    Yes, he's going to punish schools that keep porn away from kids.

Our culture?  That's clearly a major component of the failure in America's schools.  However, the culture that created a great system of public education has been ripped apart by the leftists in America, and it starts at Kindergarten and continues right up to and through all the levels of academia, and the teachers played a major role in that destruction, and the excuse, "it's the unions", doesn't fly.  They chose those insidious and corrupt organizations.  Now the culture is cancerous. 

These kids are failing at reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, and each and every one of the fundamentals needed to see the world as it is, think clearly and logically, make good decisions and have a successful life.  Instead they're promoting racial lies that's inspiring violence right in the schools, punishing the brightest students with equity unfair and most likely unconstitutional diversity standards, gender bending concepts with unpleasant consequences, socialist values, and environmental nonsense, and that's the pattern all over the western world. 

About 15 years ago I read an article saying that students in England were asked who Winston Churchill was, and less than half knew, but over 90% believed Global Warming was going to destroy the world. 

It's been said, "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging".  Apparently the Department of Education didn't get that memo, or the one that said, "Never miss a good chance to shut up", since they just won't shut up and they just keep digging.  Biden Ed Sec says low civics scores show students need Critical Race Theory.

These students are not being challenged to succeed, they're being programed to destroy society with false narratives on race, the environment, our culture, the economy, and morality. Schools aren't turning out sharp thinking, positively motivated, energetic young people with skills that make them responsible to themselves, to their families, or to society. They're turning out lazy, weak minded, irresponsible anchors on society.  And they want more money to do it.

Now, how can anyone find fault with that? Actually, I think a lot of people.  Here's what we've lost, Judge Paula Schlichter RIP, the end of an era.