Fixing Education May Take More Than the Stroke of a Pen

The Trump administration is reportedly drafting an executive order to eliminate the Education Department (ED), something the president has long championed. But he may need Congress’ approval to make it stick. Still, the action raises many questions, especially since new data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show scores nationwide in all tested grades and subjects remain below pre-pandemic levels. Reading assessments for fourth- and eighth-graders declined again. A third of students in eighth grade do not read at a basic level. Would abolishing the ED benefit students’ learning? Perhaps, but there’s more to this issue than just one agency.

The Fall of Education

“Federal programs encourage a compliance mindset that is anathema to excellence, experimentation, and improving student outcomes,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas Fordham Institute, in a recent article on the organization’s website. Moreover, the relentless push to promote educational equity through “well-meaning but naïve policies” forces schools “to make compromises that aren’t always good for kids.” The nation’s schools are rife with “bad ideas,” said Petrilli, “like recent efforts to ‘reform grading’ by never giving kids a zero, to ‘reform discipline’ by, well, not disciplining students, to teach reading by not explicitly teaching reading, to teach American history as a story of the oppressors versus the oppressed, and on and on ad nauseam.”

Another issue, which coincidentally seemed to develop alongside the rise of smartphones and social media, is that “over the past decade or two, those who lead and train educators got fixated on quasi-mystical fever dreams,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, in the journal Education Week. Teachers were urged to “deconstruct privilege” and to be “on the lookout for microaggressions.” Instead of science and math, many have devoted their time to teaching beliefs about gender identity while “interrogating privilege,” all of which “undermine academic pursuits.”

The pandemic set kids back, but it might be time to stop using that period as a scapegoat for why kids still struggle to learn. They were already behind in 2019. Even kids who had yet to enter the school system when the pandemic disrupted daily lives are now behind academically and delayed developmentally. It’s not just what is happening inside schools but also outside: The mental health crisis among adolescents is likely exacerbating their difficulty in retaining and comprehending information.

It’s hard to tell just yet whether President Donald Trump will manage to get rid of the Education Department entirely. Even if he did, however, without terminating some progressive and federal policies and adding better teachers, eliminating it would likely be nothing more than a symbolic gesture.

1. American students have fallen behind in every subject in every tested grade level.
2. The pandemic set back American students for sure – but tests show they were behind before COVID-19 shut down schools, and many kids entering school after the pandemic ended are also behind.
3. President Donald Trump hopes to do away with the US Department of Education because it has failed to help students achieve success. However, it may be beyond his power to abolish the ED, and he may need the help of Congress.