The recent national education report card makes one thing abundantly clear: The U.S. desperately needs better teachers.
There are so many issues plaguing our education system in the U.S., but at the base of it is the reality that our educators are more interested in teaching their students to become left-wing activists than they are in math, science, reading, and writing.
While the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessments in mathematics and reading showed improvement in some areas depending on the subject and grade, the overall report was a dismal accounting of where our children’s education level is at.
When focusing just on 8th grade as a benchmark, the gap between low- and high-performing learners increased significantly. The 2024 NAEP assessment for reading and writing was the worst 8th-grade literacy rate in our nation’s history, showing that one in every three 8th-graders does not meet basic literacy standards. This means that a third of students who are expected to enter high school in just one year cannot read or write on grade level.
In Detroit, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Milwaukee, and Baltimore, less than half of 8th graders can read.
In Philadelphia, it’s a coin toss. pic.twitter.com/i8cMdW7iIs
— Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) January 29, 2025
The 8th-grade math scores are just as depressing, with the average score 8 points lower than in 2019 before the pandemic and 11 points lower than in 1990. No state in the U.S. increased its NAEP math scores between 2019 and 2024. In fact, all but two decreased.
It’s not that American kids attending school in 2024 are functionally unable to learn as well as students in 2019 or 1990. It’s that most (not all) U.S. teachers are more focused on left-wing ideologies than they are on educating our children. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
I always like to say that Covid was both a blessing and a curse. It was truly a dark period in our nation’s history filled with death, despair, and tyranny. However, one of the bright spots that came out of this time was that parents across the country were given a front-row seat to witness what was going on in their child’s classroom.
1/@joyannreid says Critical Race Theory (CRT) is not being taught in a single k-12 School.
Meanwhile, a teacher on Tik Tok explains why he uses CRT in the classroom…because CRT really is becoming common in education.
So, Critical Race Theory in k-12 education
A thread🧵 https://t.co/gc86eVhSBK pic.twitter.com/gVua9mDK79
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) June 21, 2021
For the first time, parents became aware that rather than focus on the basic educational principles, teachers were using lesson plans wholly devoted to left-wing ideologies. During Covid, the term Critical Race Theory (CRT) and radical gender ideology became household terms.
Parents quickly mobilized at school board meetings to demand pedagogy changes to the curriculum. And for good reason. There is no explanation for introducing books about anal sex, transgender ideology, or anti-white racism into a reading list.
These images are from the library at @ConardCHS. They suggest that kids read p**n0gr*phic books and display LGBTQ+ propaganda.
It’s very concerning that educators are so desperate for minors to be reading p**n while at school. pic.twitter.com/7ZXj4FVdDs
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 21, 2024
Children as young as kindergarten were being taught that their race and nothing else determined whether they were an oppressed or an oppressor. In older grades, teachers were professing political views aligning with Marxism and communism as positives while claiming that conservatives were a threat to American democracy. The final embodiment of this type of education was on full display when students occupied and destroyed college campuses while calling for the irradiation of Jews. (Trump’s Crackdown On Violent Illegal Immigrants First Used By Democrats’ Favorite President)
College professors constantly complain on social media about their new students’ inability to have basic reading comprehension or write a college-level paper. Still, hardly ever (if ever) do we see them ask why this is happening. Why is each year’s crop of students worse than the last?
Critical race theory is turning k-12 students into avowed anti-American radical activists. This high schooler was taught these divisive ideas and she is being praised for it.
This is what CRT looks like. Taken from an “anti-racist” New York educators video submission contest. pic.twitter.com/RiZwOwJatk
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) June 28, 2021
The simple answer is that modern teachers want activists, not educated students. Their focus is not to mold the next brilliant mind but to create another misguided monster who demands child mutilation. When you see this and understand it to be accurate, the failing math and reading scores make more sense. (ROOKE: The Nerds Are Unknowingly Creating Perfect Storm Targeting Americans)
We need an education revolution in our country. Trump set the tone with his recent EO prohibiting federal funding to K-12 schools that teach CRT or radical gender ideology. The order will also reinstate the 1776 Commission, previously set up under the first Trump administration, to “work to improve understanding of the history and the principles of the founding of the United States among our Nation’s rising generations.”
Jerry Goodnight, a teacher at @CabCoSchools in NC vows to continue pushing DEI, CRT, and “any other acronym” in his classroom after Trump signed EOs dismantling DEI programs.
Any comment @CabCoSchools pic.twitter.com/s9ntspQMTY
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 24, 2025
However, our country needs more than an EO to fix the massive problems in our education system. America needs better teachers.
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This article was originally published at dailycaller.com