A recent nation’s report card that showed reading and math scores have not rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic is renewing efforts for President Donald Trump to abolish the Department of Education.
Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress offered an abysmal picture of student achievement.
Reading scores among fourth graders were at a low not seen since 2000, and eighth grade reading scores continued a downslide with scores lower than at least 1992.
However, eighth grade math scores remained steady compared to 2022 but were still below pre-pandemic levels, and fourth grade math scores slightly increased from 2022 but were also below pre-pandemic levels.
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The results, released on Wednesday, were another sign for some activists and leaders that Trump should fulfill a campaign promise to abolish the Education Department and bring control back to the states.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former education secretary, called the department’s efforts to close achievement gaps an “abject failure” in an interview with the Washington Examiner. DeVos supports the dismantling of the department she once ran.
“You can’t be doing any worse than what the Department of Ed is doing now with regards to student achievement,” DeVos said Wednesday. “So it really is an argument for a total reset and pivot away from what’s been done to something completely different.”
Congress previously allocated $189.5 billion through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to aid in education recovery after the pandemic.
But that funding proved unable to reverse the decline among schoolchildren, which the Defense of Freedom Institute report deemed a “failed experiment.”
“We were already doing very badly with our students before the pandemic, and now we’ve watched this downward plunge since that should be a wake-up call to everyone that we have to do something about our education system,” said Defense of Freedom Institute co-founder Jim Blew.
In a new paper, Nat Malkus, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote that “student test scores across numerous assessments peaked in the early 2010s.”
The paper attributes steep declines beginning in 2012–2015 “driven largely by lower-performing students.”
Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, similarly noted that test scores have been decreasing prior to 2020 but cited former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which stressed standardized testing as one reason why this is occurring.
“Basically, under No Child Left Behind you had a heavy emphasis in all public schools on standardized testing, and that coincided with the increases that we saw in NAEP generally from 2002 to about, I think it’s around 2013,” said McCluskey.
Public backlash against the legislation led to its repeal and replacement with the Every Student Succeeds Act under former President Barack Obama that eliminated the yearly progress measures and sanctions.
“The test scores could put energy back into the standards and accountability movements that peaked with No Child Left Behind and the Common Core that people eventually rejected,” added McCluskey.
A November poll from YouGov on behalf of yes. every kid. foundation., a national nonprofit group that promotes family-first education policy, showed a majority of people, 68%, support ending residential school assignments. Included in that 68% of people who support school choice are 75% of K-12 parents.
“The message is clear: It is time to implement universal school choice, empowering every family with the ability to steer their child’s education away from a system that has failed them for too long,” said Matt Frendewey, vice president of strategy at the nonprofit group.
Before his reelection, Trump had vowed to dismantle the Education Department sending key responsibilities back to the states.
“The Trump Administration is committed to reorienting our education system to fully empower states, to prioritize meaningful learning, and provide universal access to high-quality instruction,” Trump’s Department of Education said in a statement. “Change must happen, and it must happen now.”
The effort is likely to be an arduous task. It would need 60 votes in the Senate to bypass a filibuster unless Trump and the GOP decided to include programs stripping the department of power in a reconciliation bill.
But DeVos pointed to other executive actions the president could take to revamp the education system as well as working with Congress.
“The president also is taking a chopping block to a lot of other areas and really directing creative thinking about how to render the department less powerful than it’s been for decades,” said the former secretary. “And that can really be achieved with block granting the funds to the states to do the best thing on behalf of their students, unique to each state. The better thing, in my view, is to send the money directly to the families and to support education directly with kids.”
She said the funding being pumped into the federal department is being “washed away with no results.”
Late last year, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) introduced the Returning Education to Our States Act, which would have abolished the Education Department.
The bill did not advance any further but lawmakers could once again reintroduce the bill during this Congress.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, scheduled a hearing on “The State of American Education” on Wednesday, Feb. 5, presumably to address the low scores.
“When we fail our children, we fail our nation’s future. … This is clearly a reflection of the education bureaucracy continuing to focus on woke policies rather than helping students learn and grow,” Walberg said.
“I’m thankful we have an administration that is looking to reverse course, and I look forward to helping reform our education system to better serve our youth,” Walberg continued.
In the meantime, the president signed an executive order on Wednesday backing school choice programs but does not explicitly eliminate the Department of Education.
“Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Education shall issue guidance regarding how States can use Federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives,” according to the order.
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Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Education, has not yet had her Senate hearings scheduled, but she is expected to be confirmed and tasked with implementing Trump’s order, which activists are championing.
“President Trump seems to be on the right track. He’s identified the need for more school choice in this country so that parents can determine where a good fit is for their children,” said Blew. “He’s identified that the federal government is part of the problem and has to be scaled back and have power returned to state and local governments.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
