The latest release of The Nation’s Report Card should alarm anyone who still believes the United States remains a global leader in education. The numbers are stark. Just 31% of eighth graders are proficient in science. Only 22% of high school seniors are proficient in math, the lowest level since testing began. A mere 35% of seniors are proficient in reading, also the lowest on record. These results are not anomalies. They are the culmination of decades of educational malpractice and political cowardice. Since 1979, the U.S. Department of Education has spent over $3 trillion, and per-pupil spending has increased by more than 245%. What do we have to show for it? Flat test scores, widening achievement gaps, and international rankings that place American students near the bottom in subjects that determine economic competitiveness.
Why has so much money achieved so little? The answer lies in the stranglehold of teacher unions, the corrosive spread of DEI ideology, and the metastasis of bloated school administrations. Unions block meaningful reforms, shielding bad teachers from accountability and fighting against merit-based advancement. DEI programs divert resources from real learning into ideological re-education, undermining both academic rigor and social trust. Meanwhile, school districts hire more bureaucrats than teachers, swelling administrative costs while classrooms go underfunded. This combination has produced a system designed to protect adults, not to educate children.
The numbers from NAEP make this clear. In 2024, the average grade 12 math score was the lowest since assessments began in 2005. Nearly half of twelfth-graders performed below the NAEP Basic level, meaning they struggled with simple tasks like determining probabilities or calculating tips at a restaurant. In reading, 32% of seniors scored below Basic, unable to identify details in a text. In science, more than a third of eighth-graders could not grasp fundamentals like body system functions or microbial processes. These are not just academic shortcomings. They are failures that limit students’ futures, diminish national competitiveness, and weaken the civic foundation of the republic.
The teacher unions bear much of the blame. They oppose school choice, charter schools, and vouchers, even though these alternatives often outperform traditional public schools, particularly for minority students. They lobby to lower standards for teacher performance reviews, ensuring that incompetence is tolerated so long as dues keep flowing. During the pandemic, unions pressured governments to close schools far longer than necessary, even as evidence mounted that children were suffering catastrophic learning losses. The unions’ priority was not children but political leverage, and today’s NAEP scores reveal the devastating consequences.
DEI ideology has compounded the problem by subordinating learning to politics. Instead of teaching students how to master mathematics, schools instruct them that math is a tool of oppression. Instead of cultivating excellence in reading and writing, they prioritize identity-based grievance and subjective “lived experiences.” This obsession with equity has eroded meritocracy, replacing it with a race to the bottom. Worse, it has widened achievement gaps. The lowest-performing students, whom DEI is supposed to uplift, have seen the steepest declines. NAEP data confirms that the gap between high- and low-performing students is larger than ever. When standards collapse, it is the disadvantaged who suffer most.
Administrative bloat has siphoned resources from the classroom to the boardroom. From 2000 to 2020, the number of non-teaching staff in public schools grew at more than twice the rate of student enrollment. Instead of hiring math tutors or science specialists, districts created positions for diversity officers, compliance managers, and assistant superintendents of equity. These jobs do not improve student outcomes, yet they consume budgets that could fund better teachers, updated textbooks, or advanced labs. The result is a system top-heavy with bureaucracy but starved of classroom excellence.
Some argue that declining scores are the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to some extent that is true. But this excuse collapses under scrutiny. The downward trend began long before 2020. NAEP data shows that twelfth-grade reading scores were already falling between 1992 and 2019. Math scores stagnated for more than a decade before dropping further after the pandemic. Science performance for eighth-graders was flat for years before it declined in 2024. The pandemic did not cause these failures; it merely exposed and accelerated them.
The Trump Administration has rightly challenged this failed status quo. Returning control of education to the states, empowering parents with school choice, and breaking the monopoly of teacher unions are essential steps forward. States are better equipped to tailor education to their communities, free from the one-size-fits-all federal bureaucracy that has wasted trillions without results. Parents, not bureaucrats, should decide where their children go to school, whether that means public, charter, private, or homeschooling. And teachers should be rewarded for excellence, not seniority or union loyalty.
The stakes could not be higher. A nation that cannot educate its young cannot remain free or prosperous. Math, science, and literacy are not optional in a world defined by technology, competition, and civic responsibility. Our adversaries understand this. China and other nations are producing students who outperform Americans in every major category. If the U.S. continues to fail its students, it will cede its economic and technological leadership within a generation.
We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results. The unions must be confronted. DEI must be dismantled. Administrative waste must be cut. The focus must return to rigorous academics, discipline, and high expectations. Our children deserve better, and our nation’s survival depends on it.
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