A mass shortage of teachers. Falling test scores. Students being held back to make up lost ground.
It’s no wonder that educational reform has been a major political issue, even elevating the candidacy of now-governors and senators across the country.
Concerningly, many people think the answer can be found through an earth-scortching approach, rehauling or eliminating longtime programs and centerpieces of the education system. But with a myriad of solutions (and non-solutions) being thrown around in the wake of this problem, one thing has become clear: now is not the time to play with fire when it comes to education.
In 2024, then presidential-candidate Donald Trump made headlines when he controversially pledged to completely eliminate the Department of Education. Regardless of how people may view this, there are a variety of misconceptions surrounding such a change.
Contrary to what many may think, the Education Department does not set national educational standards or establish curricula for students. Instead, it mostly serves to ensure that schools meet requirements and treat students fairly, alongside granting loans and other funds to students and schools in need across the country
While eliminating the Department of Education would have little to no bearing on the quality of the nation’s education, there would be a loss of critical funding to programs that help disadvantaged and lower income students to be on a level playing field.
At the state level, many proposed policies that could cause even larger-scale change have already begun to do so.
One of the most popular ideas in recent years is the school voucher system. Under such a system, parents would be given the option to choose a school to send their children to, usually a private school, with a ‘voucher’ granted by the government. In February, the Texas Senate voted to implement this kind of program in the near future.
This solution does have promise: parents will have more choice about where to send their kids to school, meaning their education can be more suited to each child’s individual needs.
The change could also promote academic competition between nearby schools for high-achieving students, raising the bar for education.
But beneath the surface, a number of problems threaten to compromise the potential benefits of this idea.
First off, it’s not immediately clear how these vouchers would be distributed, to whom and to where. Legal controversies could arise if it means state funding for religious schools — a potential violation of the separation of church and state.
In many cases, school vouchers aren’t enough to cover the full cost of a private education. So while the vouchers often help those that could already afford private schools, many of the poorest and most underserved communities will still miss out.
At the same time, the money going towards vouchers will come directly out of the budget of public schools, meaning those left behind may actually see their education decline. As public schools suffer, they will also lose part of their inherent benefit: being a common forum where all students study together, regardless of the differences in their backgrounds.
This creates a stark dichotomy: a thriving, but small section of the population able to attend private schools, and an abandoned majority left to fight for a fraction of the resources they had access to before.
With both potential positives and negatives for vouchers, the data may answer some of the questions surrounding this policy. Texas is the biggest state so far to move towards such a system, but it isn’t the first, so there is a solid track record across 20 or so states that have already implemented some form of voucher system. So far, the data has come up short: students granted vouchers seem to have no distinguishable difference in performance compared to those at public schools.
With a number of ideas similar to school vouchers but no clear solution, fixing America’s education system seems as perplexing as it was at the start. But when it comes to tackling the fundamental problems, sometimes the more simple explanations should take precedence.
For example, it’s clear that test scores began to fall after a pandemic that saw most students out of school or learning in a limited fashion for an extended period of time. While it may be easy to chalk up the resulting decline to politically controversial issues, the simple truth is that a black swan event of that nature will inevitably have a negative impact on student outcomes.
There’s also the truth that teachers are infamously underpaid and overworked, and the increasing scrutiny on their performance has only served to further push them out of the most critical job to ensuring the quality of education. An immediate solution would be to create more incentives, such as higher wages, for teachers to remain in their current posts and to encourage new ones to enter the market.
Another possible solution would be to address the root cause of many students’ underperformance in school: their family income. Research has shown a massive correlation between child poverty, which affects nearly one in six children, and underperformance in school. Less than 30 percent end up going to college afterwards, and even less graduate. By working to improve these issues, school scores would likely jump, and the disparity between the best and worst students would narrow significantly.
And while it’s easy to look in on these issues from an outside point of view, it’s important to remember the effect that education has on the future of our country and its well-being. From the perspective of a school where money is abundant and students are far beyond proficiency, it’s easy to forget the reality that millions of students face on a daily basis. What these students learn in their youth will have a permanent effect on their lives and that of the next generation. Their issues will be everyone’s issues, so it’s time to give these issues the attention they deserve.
