FROM PUBLIC: 'No Adults in the Room'
By Alex Gutentag
There are certainly pertinent questions surrounding CRT-themed lessons and the controversial introduction of unscientific and psychologically untested ideas of gender and sexuality in the public education system. Much more consequential, however, is the catastrophic degree of educational failure that we see in many K-12 public schools. There are entire schools (not a few - hundreds) without a single minority student testing at grade level in reading and math. COVID introduced a number of damaging factors to an already bad situation, and the fact that the policies which were nationally created and promoted by teachers’ unions and Democrat politicians have cratered educational metrics and badly worsened race- and class-based disparities is something that few reporters or union officials seem to want to acknowledge, even if this means that the damage will persist. THIS problem is 1000x larger and more pervasive than curriculum changes relating to racial segregation or gender theory, I’m afraid.
No Adults In The Room
FROM PUBLIC
by Alex Gutentag
Over the last two years, a growing body of research has shown that school closures during COVID-19 temporarily pushed students behind academically.
But there’s now strong evidence that this learning loss wasn’t temporary. “I teach seventh grade,” one teacher said in a viral TikTok video. “They are still performing on a fourth-grade level.”
A second teacher responded in another viral video. “I also teach seventh grade,” she said, “and we have kids that have math grade level equivalents of first and second grade, third grade, many at fourth grade. Very few at grade level. Very few. If any, in some classes.”
Her students, the teacher explained, cannot read or decode and have no vocabulary or background knowledge. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.
Some of this we already knew, and the teachers’ observations are in line with national data. Test scores have plunged, and chronic absenteeism shows no signs of improving.
But it is shocking to hear from teachers about just how poorly their students are still doing. Academic recovery has stalled for most kids in what some researchers call “education’s Long Covid.”
This is a national crisis that is likely to affect society for years, if not decades, to come.
“This should be a national emergency, yet outside of a small group of policy experts and academics and a handful of politicians, the reaction to America’s massive learning loss has been eerily quiet,” wrote Michael J. Petrelli in The New York Times.
There are many reasons for this lack of outrage and lack of action.
One of the main reasons is that parents have no idea how far behind their kids really are.
Another reason is that many of the people we entrust with children’s education share much of the blame for this crisis, and they, therefore, have no desire to amplify it on the national stage.
Apart from COVID-19 policies, one of the primary factors behind the country’s education fiasco is the use of bad, poorly tested teaching methods and curricula.
For years, schools moved away from phonics-based early literacy instruction in favor of the “balanced literacy” approach developed by Lucy Calkins of Columbia Teachers’ College. This approach was not based on solid research, and it led to a major illiteracy catastrophe for generations of students.
Two weeks ago, in the midst of this growing scandal, Columbia decided to quietly “dissolve” Calkins’ program and put her on an indefinite sabbatical.
One might think that the teachers union would try to address the disaster caused by clueless academics and policymakers, but many union leaders have little concern for the real issues plaguing schools.
This month, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, Stacy Davis Gates, revealed that she was sending her son to private school despite having called school choice “the choice of racists.” Gates explained that she made this decision because public schools were “struggling to recover.” (Gates herself had advocated for school closures as late as early 2022.)
National union leader Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, appears to be more concerned with fighting culture wars than with fixing public schools. On Wednesday, Weingarten tweeted about a teacher who, she said, had been fired for reading The Diary of Anne Frank to her class.
“THIS Speaks for itself!!!” wrote Weingarten.
The teacher had not, in fact, been fired for reading The Diary of Anne Frank but for reading a graphic adaptation that included sexual dialogue. Parents’ complaints about the sexual content led to the teacher’s firing.
It could still be argued that this firing was unjust, but the fact that Weingarten is spending her time on Twitter misleading the public while seventh graders struggle to read is telling. It “speaks for itself,” as she would say.
American education has become a dysfunctional circus, and most politicians, academics, and union leaders have washed their hands of the problem. No one wants to take responsibility, and everyone wants to pass on the blame. What can we actually expect children to learn in this situation when there are no real adults in the room?
— AG