America Isn’t Ready for the School-Funding Crisis Ahead
The education system is headed toward a cliff at a moment when it most needs to help students who fell behind during the pandemic.
For nearly a decade, America’s students have been backsliding on the nation’s report card, which evaluates their command of math, science, U.S. history, and reading. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, first began displaying the decline in 2015—when math scores were, on level, five points lower than expected. But even those numbers could fall, and during the pandemic they did.
[From the June 2011 issue: The failure of American schools]
Roughly 40 percent of eighth graders scored below the basic level in U.S. history, and only 13 percent of students were “proficient” in the subject, according to NAEP results released this month. Civics scores in math, science, and reading.
