Primary and secondary public schools spend more than $100,000 to educate students through 12 grades. The results catalogued by the National Center of Education Progress and the National Assessment of Educational Statistics paints a bleak picture of the results of all this money and time. Sizable populations of graduates are barely semiliterate with only limited knowledge of math and verbal/written skills and hardly any proficiency in science, history or civics.
Obviously, lesson plans are not accomplishing their intended goal; either the curriculum is not robust or the teaching methods are faulty. Another possible explanation is that instruction time is being diluted by disruptive student behavior. Perhaps nonscholastic social/political indoctrination is supplanting basic knowledge instruction.
Whatever the root causes, the outcome is deeply suboptimal and damaging today’s youth. Other educational opportunities exist but for the majority of public students, it’s time to “hit the reset button” and reform this broken system.
