It comes as no shock to most people reading this that the state of education in this country is more dismal than ever before. As just one example, according to The Nation’s Report Card website, just 30% of American public-school 4th graders are proficient in reading according to government standards as of 2024, which is two points lower than 2022.
As a rookie in the field of education, I have recently experienced these failures first hand. I had begun to substitute teach. Most positions have been aide positions, which have allowed me to observe the modern American classroom up close and personal, and I am sorry to report that the findings are disturbing.
So for the sake of this article, I will walk you through my recent three days. Wednesday, I get to the school, a public middle school in South Jersey for context, and I am placed in a small special education class. My duty is to follow two students around and assist them if necessary. A student calls me over to help him with an assignment, and by help, I mean he expected me to give him all the answers, just like his regular aide did. I said, I can help you, but I will not give you all the answers, so what I want you to do is read the text and work through it the best you can and ask me for help only if you are truly stuck. To my astonishment, he tells me “I can’t read.” The next day, I find out from the teacher I am working with that the majority of children at the school are reading at a second-grade level. This school serves 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.
Later that day, in “math” class, if you can call it that, I am asked to assist another student. I observe that both the student I was assigned to supervise and the other student I volunteered to help, as 6th graders, were still counting on their fingers for single-digit addition problems. These kids were in 6th grade, and not only had they not learned how to multiply, they couldn’t even add basic numbers in their head. And it wasn’t as if the “teacher” was of much help, as the teacher, who spoke with such a thick Spanish accent as to be almost incomprehensible (all the more reason for the mass deportations, but that is a subject for another day), stuck the class on their computers and told them to do math problems online. No lecture, no question and answer, no guidance.
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