by Larry Sand
American children scored poorly, yet again, on the latest nationwide test; school choice is a way to right our sinking ship.
The headlines last week told the sad story. The New York Times’ title read, “American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows,” while The 74 proclaimed, The New NAEP Scores Are Alarming. Hope Is Not a Strategy for Fixing Them.” The Wall Street Journal announced, “American Kids Are Getting Even Worse at Reading, Test Scores Show.
The stories shared lowlights from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test given periodically to the nation’s students. The results from the 2024 reading and math test, given to 4th and 8th graders, were announced last week and showed that 4th graders continued to lose ground, with reading scores slightly lower, on average, than in 2022 and much lower than in 2019.
In 2019, 35% of 4th graders scored at or above the test’s reading proficiency standard, but that figure dropped to 33% in 2022 and, further, to 31% in 2024. The percentage of fourth graders at “below basic” was the largest in 20 years, at 40%. Some 33% of 8th graders scored below “basic” on the exam—a record low.
The news was especially bleak for our lowest-performing students, who are “reading at historically low levels,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP. “We need to stay focused in order to right this ship.”
Worsening reading skills have wide-ranging consequences. Poor test scores have been linked to the economic success of both the nation and individuals. Students with limited reading skills are less likely to graduate from high school, and as adults, they are more likely to be incarcerated.
Mindy Sjoblom of On Your Mark Education, a group dedicated to using the science of reading to promote literacy, asserts, “When students are not reading on grade level by third grade, their life-long choices are severely limited. One long-term study found that students who fail to meet this bar are 4 times more likely to drop out of school. In fact, 88% of these dropouts were struggling readers in third grade.”
It is worth noting that we’ve seen the same pattern recently on other tests—TIMSS, PIAAC, i-Ready, MAP, and state assessment results—explains Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
The only bright spot on the NAEP was very slight progress by higher-achieving children in math.
Why is this happening?
The teachers’ unions, of course, say we don’t spend enough money on education. Union boss Randi Weingarten, who never misses an opportunity to say something absurd, claims the “stagnant” NAEP scores show the need for “expanding community schools to provide wraparound services”—e.g., social and healthcare services—and “securing investments for smaller class sizes, good ventilation, and the tools and technology for 21st-century learning.”
If lack of money is an issue, perhaps Weingarten would like to explain why the results were so poor after taxpayers forked over $190 billion to aid students in the pandemic recovery period.
Others blame the excessive student use of cell phones, too much TV watching, social media addiction, the pandemic, etc. While these factors may have had some effect on the abysmal test results, there’s one fix that would significantly improve our educational woes: parental freedom.
Coincidentally, the NAEP scores were released in the middle of National School Choice Week, and indeed, parental freedom is certainly on the move.
Ed Tarnowski, policy and advocacy director at EdChoice, affirms that in 2024, five states created new school choice programs and six expanded existing ones. Alabama and Louisiana now have universal programs, while Georgia’s Educational Savings Account law provides limited eligibility. With Gov. Lee’s expected signature, Tennessee will soon become the 13th state to enact universal school choice. Moreover, Texas, Idaho, North Dakota, and South Carolina could adopt universal choice this year.
All in all, more than one million students in America are participating in private school choice programs, EdChoice’s Colyn Ritter reported last week. “Participation growth has climbed rapidly, having more than doubled since the beginning of 2020.”
Drawing on the most current data, Ritter claims that 2.2% of students attend private schools through an educational choice program, 6.8% participate in private school by other means (paying tuition themselves, private scholarships, and the like), 74.8% attend a traditional public school, 4.9% attend a magnet school, and 6.6% attend a charter school.
Additionally, about 3.2 million students are currently educated at home in grades K-12 in the U.S. (roughly 6% of school-age children), compared to 2.5 million in spring 2019, according to Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute.
It’s worth noting that while traditional public schools did poorly on the NAEP, Catholic school students are one to two years ahead of students in TPS in reading and math.
The National Catholic Educational Association reports, “13.7% of Catholic school students are there because of a choice program. For the first time in nearly a quarter-century, Catholic school enrollment in 2023 increased slightly to 1.7 million students.”
On the national level, President Trump signed an executive order last week directing federal agencies to find ways to prioritize school choice programs.
The order instructs the Department of Education to favor school choice programs when awarding discretionary grants. It also mandates that the DOE and Department of Health and Human Services issue guidance on how states can use specific grants to encourage families to pursue educational alternatives.
A recent National School Choice Awareness Foundation survey showed that zip-code-mandated education is unpopular. The poll found that 60% of U.S. parents considered finding a different school for at least one of their children last year. According to the NSCAF, parents of elementary- and middle-school-aged children were most likely to indicate they searched for new schools, at 66% and 69%, respectively, compared to parents of high schoolers (57%).
“Black parents were most likely to say they considered different learning options, at 68%, compared with their Hispanic (63%), Asian (59%), and white (58%) peers.”
It’s no secret that school choice has the same effect on the education establishment, especially the teachers’ unions, as the sight of the cross had on Dracula. Typical arguments they use against choice include: private schools lack “accountability,” they impose “additional taxpayer burdens,” and “disproportionately benefit the rich.” All bogus assertions.
Thankfully, more and more parents and voters are seeing through this malarkey. May the trend continue!
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a
non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and
the general public with reliable and balanced information about
professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views
presented here are strictly his own.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/05/the-national-assessment-of-educational-regress/
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