Kerby Anderson
In April 1983, the US Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration created the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The panel discovered that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Perhaps the most famous line from that report was this. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.”
I read that line from the report on the radio the other day while doing an interview with Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. He quoted from that original study to emphasize that education hasn’t improved very much in the last 40 years since that dismal assessment.
He cited the NAEP, often known as the “Nation’s Report Card.” It documented that less than a third (29%) of 8th graders are proficient in reading and less than a third (29%) are proficient in math. The average scores from college exams have fallen the last six years in a row.
He explained that schools seem to be spending more and more valuable class time on wokeism. He gave many examples, but one of the most concerning is how federal money is being spent on younger and younger students. An organization called Woke Kindergarten trains teachers to “confront white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression, and remove those barriers to learning.”
No wonder that the latest Gallup poll shows just a quarter (26%) of respondents said they have a “great deal/fair amount” of confidence in our public schools. We have had an educational crisis for decades. It is time to address this chronic problem.