As a parent with two children in a North Carolina public high school, I can unequivocally state that American public education is in a state of crisis. U.S. News and World Report gave my kids’ school a college readiness score of 27.4 out of 100 (2020-2021). This comes as no surprise given that only 46% of the students there can read “proficiently.” Today, less than half of North Carolina’s public school students test at grade level in math or reading.1
North Carolina is not an anomaly. According to the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics, between 2019-2022 the overwhelming majority of American states saw significant declines in K-12 math and reading scores.
In 2022, one disgusted Baltimore high school teacher leaked test scores and data showing that 75% of the students at Patterson High School, a school with a 61% graduation rate, were reading and doing math at an elementary school level. Out of the 628 students that took an iReady assessment test in 2021, 484 tested at an elementary school reading level, 71 at a kindergarten level, 88 at the first-grade level, 45 at a second-grade level, and only 12 were reading at their grade level. When asked how the students could reach high school with such poor academic performances, the anonymous teacher said, “They're pushed through. They're not ready for the workforce. They're not ready for further education.”2
Long before COVID there was a mountain of empirical evidence showing that America’s public schools were failing to teach students how to read, write and do basic math. The nation’s largest national teachers' union, the National Education Association (NEA), pronounced in a 2022 tweet reminiscent of Soviet grain harvest propaganda during the Great Famine, “Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and thrive.”3
When Wilhelmina Yazzie’s son Xavier, an ambitious straight-A student, did not score at grade level on a standardized national achievement exam, she asked his school for a tutor to help bring up his scores and was told that there were none. After she spoke to other parents, Yazzie realized that many students were in far worse shape than her three children, who had laptop computers and broadband. “The struggles they encountered and the limited access: not enough books, limited computers, even teachers asking students to help bring classroom materials,” wrote Yazzie. “We’d have substitute teachers for half or the whole year! Limited programming and social services are nonexistent in some schools.”4
Yazzie worried that her three children, despite their best efforts, were being left behind by a broken, top-heavy educational system and remembered the words of her Navajo grandmother and mother who taught her that “children are sacred and it’s our responsibility to prepare them for ‘iina,’ what we call ‘life’ in Navajo.” Inspired by her mother who raised four college graduates on a schoolteacher’s salary, Wilhelmina Yazzie, a paralegal who had passed the Navajo Bar Association Exam, spearheaded a lawsuit against the state of New Mexico and its governor. In March 2014, she and others filed Yazzie/Martinez v. New Mexico. The plaintiffs argued, “The state of New Mexico is failing its public school students and has failed them for so long that there now exists an entire generation of children in this state who do not possess the basic capabilities to meaningfully function in modern society.”5
On July 20, 2018, First Judicial District Judge Sarah Singleton handed down a withering decision that declared New Mexico’s public education system a “dismal failure” that violated students’ constitutional right to a sufficient education. “When I heard the news that we won, I really couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I looked up, and I said, ‘Mom, you know what? We did it.’” After four years of waiting, the state’s Public Education Department finally released a draft of their plan to improve education in that state.6
Parents, I cannot overstate the importance of getting involved in your child’s education. By this, I don’t mean shouting into the wind at school board meetings. I mean taking the time to make sure that your child can read and write and work for real change. “Oftentimes I get approached and asked, ‘Aren’t you mad?’ Or the person will say, ‘Doesn’t this just make you mad too?’” said Wilhelmina Yazzie. “And yes! Of course, it does, but I have to go back and remember who I am standing for, and how important our children are. It is our responsibility to protect and teach them. We all want our kids to be successful, but today they are hurting because they are being left behind.”7
In addition to writing books and articles for Sour Milk and other publications, I also run a nonprofit called Fainting Robin Foundation (FRF) that I established in 2018 to support underserved scholars, journalists, teachers, veterans, and deserving others. Since 2018, FRF has awarded Distinguished Scholar prizes to three selfless educators, a fearless journalist, and a linguistic savant.8
Wilhelmina Yazzie, FRF’s 2023 Distinguished Scholar, should serve as a model and inspiration to all parents who are frustrated by the state of American public education. The loud and passionate debates over Critical Race Theory and Transgender bathrooms overshadow a much more serious problem in U.S. public education. K-12 public schools are failing to teach our children how to read, write, and do basic math.
Endnotes
http://www.faintingrobin.org/mission-statement.html. On Labor Day 2022, the AFL-CIO honored me and FRF with a Unions Power America Labor Day Award for the foundation’s work.