America’s athletes once again excelled at the 2024 Olympic games. Without the benefit of massive government-controlled sports programs enjoyed by many of their competitors, they proved their superiority while representing their homeland with sportsmanship and respect.
It’s not jingoistic to point out that America, in spite of some worrisome decline, is still number one in many other spheres. In terms of military might, industrial capacity and technological innovation, we enjoy preeminence.
Yet our educational system, which in the long run may matter most, is below mediocre. We consistently score below average in math and literary achievement tests versus students from other developed countries.
Worse, we are producing graduates with scant knowledge of their own history, ignorant of the political and economic principles that created their privileged world. Many seem emotionally fragile, enthralled with identity politics and unable to tolerate those with opinions different from their own.
The reason for this is no mystery. American education policymaking is dominated by the federal Department of Education (DOE). The department was created by President Jimmy Carter in gratitude to the teachers’ unions for their support in the 1976 election. It has been the gift that keeps on giving as the Department has faithfully represented the unions’ interests ever since.
Unfortunately, the union/DOE priorities are more directed to sweeping left-wing political agendas than the education of America’s school children. For example, Education secretary Miguel Cardona enthusiastically supports radical gender ideology.
At this year‘s “Trans Day of Visibility,” he advised children that choosing and changing their own gender is expressing the “gift to see things as they could be.” Our chief educator would serve better serve children by encouraging them to see things as they are and avoid life choices they may bitterly regret later.
Carmona also has strong feelings that teachers, not parents, should direct children’s education, even where values and morals are concerned. “Teachers know what is best for their kids because they work with them every day” he assured us in a since-deleted tweet.
The two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), exposed their near total disregard for the educational progress of their charges during the recent Covid epidemic. They refused to provide in-person teaching long after the scientific evidence was clear that no harm came to children from school attendance.
AFT President Randi Weingarten, in her address at its recent annual conference, didn’t bother to address the enormous educational deficiencies caused by the lockout or exhort her members to focus on the needs of students struggling to catch up academically. Instead she ranted hysterically about the “violence and fascism” looming if Trump were to win the presidential election. The main obstacle to educational success she perceived was those who question the resource materials that her unionized teachers select for their students of any age.
These unions’ all-purpose remedy for academic shortcomings is more funding. Yet decades of funding increases have produced no positive results.
For example, the Chicago Teachers Union, holding that testing is “junk science rooted in white supremacy,” argued against reopening schools on the grounds that resuming teaching was mere “sexism, racism and misogyny.” Instead, they demanded a $51,000 salary increase, 45 additional days off and more annual LBGTQ training.
The result: the district now spends $29,028 per student, a 97 percent increase since 2012. Yet during that time, proficiency in math has dropped 78 percent from an already low level and reading proficiency has declined 63 percent. In other words, Chicago public school students are being sent into the world illiterate and mathematically incompetent. But their teachers are well paid.
America has no prospect of improving our educational system until the DOE and the unions are stripped of their influence. It won’t be easy.
Realistically this is totally impossible under a Democrat administration, giving the strong bonds between the unions and their captive party.
The DOE in its 60-plus years of existence has failed to provide any academic benefits for our students. The consequences are now becoming apparent.
Somehow, we must find the will to eliminate the Department and move forward. It’s for the children. And the future of America.
Tom Patterson is a retired physician and former state senator who lives in Paradise Valley.
