Backtalk LAURA HOLLIS / GUEST COLUMNIST F Trump Can Fix Failing Schools
ormer presidential candidate robert f. Kennedy Jr. speaks often about how the health of American children has declined during his lifetime.
Since Kennedy ended his campaign in August and
endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, both he and Trump have stated that Kennedy will hold a prominent position in Trump’s administration if he wins — perhaps secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, or head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — tasked with improving American health. Now if only we could find someone to tackle the declin-
ing quality of American education. According to a December 2023 article in Education
Week, U.S. teens scored 13 points lower on the 2022 Pro- gram for International Student Assessment than their peers did on the 2018 PISA. The United States ranks 10th in math internationally,
with fewer than 10% of American students testing at an “advanced” level. More than a third of U.S. students did not even meet basic achievement levels in math. And in schools where most of the students live in pov-
erty, the scores were abysmal: 50 points below the U.S. average (not the overall average) in math, 48 points below the U.S. average in reading, and 53 points below the U.S. average in science. Half of American high schools no lon- ger even offer courses in calculus or computer science. Violence in our schools is another terrible problem. Pub-
lic schools that responded to a 2021-2022 survey collected by the National Center for Education Statistics disclosed 857,000 violent incidents in that one academic year. Then there are the students who don’t show up at all.
Recent data from the Department of Education reveals that nearly 30% of American students in kindergarten through 12th grade were “chronically absent” (missing more than 10% of the school year) in both the 2022-2023 and 2021-2022 school years. This is a 13% increase from 2019 (pre-pandemic) —
which suggests that the damage done by COVID-19 lock- downs is not limited to the loss of educational content during the school closures themselves. Defenders of the U.S. educational system often point to
our colleges and universities as proof of the excellence of the American educational system. But this misses at least two important points. First, although less than 6% of all U.S. college and uni-
versity students are foreign, fully 56% of students enrolled in science or engineering programs are foreign-born (in
106 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2024
some programs, the number is over 80%); the number of foreign students in bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. pro- grams in STEM fields has doubled since 1993. Second, more than two-thirds of Americans do not have
college degrees; for the majority of our citizens, therefore, it’s the quality of our K-12 educational system that matters. Declining performance. Shrinking numbers of Ameri-
cans qualified to enter technical fields. Violence. Truancy. Faced with these trends, one would think that school
boards and K-12 administrators would be frantically work- ing to improve the quality and rigor of public education, and to strengthen the preparedness of all students, includ- ing and especially those facing the greatest obstacles to achievement. Instead, educators are busy eliminating the proof of underlying problems. For example, public and private high schools are offer-
ing fewer Advanced Placement college preparatory cours- es. Why? Because activists claim that racial disparities in enrollment and performance in those courses make them discriminatory.
T
he state of Oregon has gone even further. In 2023, its Department of Education eliminated the require-
ments that students graduating from high school had to be able to “read and comprehend a variety of text, write clearly and accurately,” and “apply mathematics in a variety of settings.” It isn’t just minority or poor students who are nega-
tively affected by misguided decisions like this; only 43% of Oregon’s 2022 high school graduates were proficient in English, and only 30% were proficient in math. Teachers and administrators are focusing on helping schoolchildren “explore” their gender identities, hiding gender “transitions” from their parents, and exposing them to vulgar and explicit sexual content in the curricu- lum, in clubs and other extracurricular activities, and in a ready supply of library books. This obsession with chil- dren’s sexuality is grossly inappropriate. It is made even more bizarre and inexplicable when one considers how poorly schools are performing their primary functions. If our schools cannot successfully execute their most
basic and fundamental responsibilities, they have no reason to exist.
Laura Hollis is an attorney and university professor who has taught law and business for more than 30 years. Her legal publications have appeared in the Temple Law Review, Cardozo Law Review and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
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