Our Schools Are Struggling. That's Not an Opinion. It's a Test Score.

Two-thirds of American students cannot read or do math at grade level.

Not failing students. Not kids in struggling districts. Two-thirds. Across the board.

If this is the first time you're hearing that, you're not alone — and that's actually part of the problem.

We've Been Arguing About the Wrong Things

Every few months, a new battle erupts about what's happening inside our schools. One side insists teachers are indoctrinating children. The other insists that concerned parents are paranoid and uninformed. Both sides have screenshots to prove it. Both sides are loud. And in the meantime, the actual crisis — the one backed by test scores, not Twitter — keeps quietly getting worse.

I want to talk about that crisis today. Not to take a side on the culture war, but because I genuinely believe that if we stay distracted by the loudest version of every school debate, we will miss the one thing that actually matters: our kids are falling behind, and the system that was supposed to prevent that has been failing them for over a decade.

That's not an opinion. That is a data point.

The Report Card Nobody Wants to Talk About

Every few years, the U.S. Department of Education releases what's called the Nation's Report Card — a national assessment of how 4th, 8th, and 12th graders are performing in reading, math, and science. The 2024 results came out in waves across early and mid-2024, and they are hard to read.

Average reading scores for 4th- and 8th-graders fell 5 points below 2019 levels. Eighth-grade science scores dropped four points since 2019. Twelfth-grade math scores are now three points lower than they were in 2005. And here is the number that stopped me cold: only 22% of high school seniors are proficient in math, and only 35% are proficient in reading — the lowest numbers in more than 20 years.

The acting director of the Institute of Education Sciences put it plainly: "Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows — continued declines that began more than a decade ago. My predecessor warned of this trend, and her predecessor warned of this trend as well. And now I am warning you of this trend."

Three generations of education officials. Three warnings. One unchanged outcome.

And the gap between high-performing and low-performing students has widened every single year. More than two-thirds of students in the bottom 25 percent are economically disadvantaged. When the education board's own member says, "the rich get richer, and the poor are getting shafted," that is not radical language — that is a summary of the data.

This predates COVID, by the way. This predates any single administration or policy swing. This is structural.

So What Are We Actually Fighting About?

I want to address the curriculum debate directly, because it's real — and it deserves more nuance than it usually gets.

Right now, 50 states have 50 very different answers to the question of what children should learn about LGBTQ people and history in school. Eight states — California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington — require LGBTQ-inclusive content in curricular standards. Eighteen states have passed laws that restrict or outright ban classroom instruction on LGBTQ topics in some or all grades. Nineteen more have at least one related censorship or notification law on the books. The remaining states have no specific law either way — local districts decide.

That is a genuinely complicated landscape, and parents on all sides have real concerns.

Some parents believe schools have gone too far, too fast, without their input. Some feel their children were exposed to topics they weren't developmentally ready for, or that they — the parents — should have been consulted first. That is a legitimate conversation.

Other parents believe restricting these topics erases children who come from LGBTQ families or who are figuring out their own identities. They argue that invisibility carries its own harm. That is also a legitimate conversation.

What I am not willing to do is pretend that either side has cornered the market on "caring about kids." Both sides do. And both sides have, at times, mistaken noise for nuance.

Here is what I keep coming back to: in the states with "Don't Say LGBTQ" laws and in the states with inclusive curriculum mandates, reading scores are still down. Science scores are still down. The achievement gap is still widening. Whatever your position on what should be taught, we cannot fight our way to literacy. And right now, a third of eighth graders can't read at a basic level. That is the emergency.
You may be interested in "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" and "Are You Afraid of the Wrong Things?"

Meanwhile, Somewhere Else, Something Is Working

I recently watched the documentary The Death of Recess — filmmaker Spencer Taylor's decade-long investigation into what's wrong with American education and, crucially, what's actually working elsewhere. I'll be honest: I expected to agree with some of it. I did not expect to feel as unsettled as I did by the end.

The film covers a lot of ground — standardized testing, creativity, mental health, and the industrial model of schooling that has barely changed since the 1800s. But the international comparison is where it gets uncomfortable.

Finland. Again.

I know, I know. Everyone points to Finland. But here's why it keeps coming up: their results are not a fluke, and their methods are the opposite of ours in nearly every measurable way.

Finnish students don't start formal school until age 7. They get a mandatory 15 minutes of outdoor recess after every 45 minutes of instruction — by law. Their school day is about five hours, including those breaks. There are no national standardized tests until graduation. Every teacher holds a master's degree, and only the top 10% of applicants are admitted to teacher education programs. Teaching in Finland has the same social status as medicine and law.

And the result? Finland consistently ranks in the top 10 worldwide in education. Their dropout rates are among the lowest in Europe. And their students report — this is the part that got me — actually liking school.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., kids get less than 30 minutes of recess per day on average. Seven-plus hours in a classroom. Teachers are leaving the profession at alarming rates, citing burnout, low pay, and lack of support. And we keep cutting the things that research says children need — play, movement, unstructured time, the freedom to be bored — in favor of more test prep.

The documentary also highlights schools in the U.S. that are doing things differently — and it's worth naming them, because the picture is more varied than just one flashy model.

Acton Academy is one of the most well-known alternatives, with campuses across the country. Founded in Austin, Texas, Acton uses Socratic discussion, self-directed "quests," and real-world projects instead of lectures and worksheets. Students are called "heroes" — not for performance, but for ownership of their learning. Teachers are called "guides." Early results from the original campus showed students gaining roughly 2.5 grade levels in their first ten months. Acton has since expanded into a network of over 200 campuses worldwide, with tuition generally ranging from roughly $8,000 to $15,000 per year, depending on location — meaningfully more accessible than some alternatives, though still out of reach for many families.

Then there's Alpha School, a newer private network using an AI-driven model called "2 Hour Learning," where students complete core academics in two focused morning hours using adaptive software and guides. Afternoons are devoted to life skills, real-world projects, and experiences you won't find on any state standards test. Some families report their children advancing years ahead of grade level. One family described their kids progressing three times faster than their peers.

Here's the catch: Alpha School tuition starts around $40,000 a year. Some campuses go as high as $75,000.

The documentary also traveled internationally — to Finland, Canada, and China — to interview educators, researchers, and thought leaders, including Sir Ken Robinson, author of what became the most-watched TED Talk of all time. The throughline across every model that works? Less rigid structure. More trust in children. Teachers who are respected professionals, not compliance officers.

Let that sink in alongside the price tags. The model that might actually work — personalized, mastery-based, curiosity-driven learning — is largely available to families who can write a very large check.

Alpha does have a lower-cost campus in Brownsville, Texas, at around $10,000 a year. That's still $10,000. For one child. Per year.

The question The Death of Recess quietly forces you to sit with is not whether better education is possible. It clearly is. The question is: why are we only allowing it to be possible for people who can afford it?

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What Parents and Teachers Are Both Missing

Here is where I'll probably irritate both sides equally, which means I'm probably close to something true.

Parents who believe the school system is actively working against their children are not entirely wrong — but the threat is less conspiratorial and more systemic. It's a system built in the 1800s to produce factory workers, updated with standardized tests in the 1980s and '90s to produce test-takers, and now asked to produce curious, resilient, emotionally intelligent humans equipped for an AI-driven world. It was never designed for that last part. The system isn't evil. It's obsolete.

Teachers who feel unsupported and under attack are not imagining it. They are asked to close widening achievement gaps with shrinking resources and increasing political pressure — often in classrooms where 30% of kids are chronically absent, and another 40% are performing below basic. The ones who stay are doing something extraordinary under impossible conditions. They deserve far more than they get.

But here's the thing neither group can afford to keep doing: treating each other as the enemy.

The parents who are most engaged in their children's education — who ask questions, who push back, who show up — are also, in many cases, the reason some schools still work. And the most effective teachers are the ones who feel trusted enough to teach with creativity and autonomy, as Finnish teachers do.

The problems in American education are not going to be solved by more bans, more mandates, or more social media outrage cycles. They will be solved by the same thing that solved Finland's education crisis in the 1970s: a collective decision that children's well-being matters more than our ideological preferences.

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✨ Kismet Fact: In the 1970s, Finland's education system was performing roughly on par with the United States. They decided that wasn't good enough — and over the following decades, overhauled everything: the teaching profession, the school day, the role of standardized testing, and the value placed on play. The U.S. spends approximately 23% more per primary student than Finland. Finland ranks #8 in the world. The U.S. ranks #31.

We're not losing because we care less. We may be losing because we're measuring the wrong things.

My Take — For What It's Worth

I told you I had an opinion, and here it is.

Both the parents, worried about the curriculum content, and the teacher, fighting for professional autonomy, are right about their own experiences. What they are often wrong about is the assumption that the other side is the cause.

The cause is a system that was never designed to do what we're asking it to do, run by institutions that have not fundamentally reimagined themselves in generations, producing results that, by every objective measure, are getting worse — and affecting the most vulnerable children most severely.

The children whose parents can afford Alpha School, a private school, enrichment programs, and tutors? They'll probably be fine. They have always been fine.

It's the other children I keep thinking about, and that's MOST children.

If you are a parent — regardless of where you stand on any curriculum debate — the most powerful thing you can do is stay engaged. Know what your child is learning. Ask questions. Build a relationship with their teachers. Advocate for more recess, more play, and less meaningless test prep. And resist the urge to make teachers the villain in a story where they are, more often than not, trying as hard as you are.

The system needs to change. That change will not come from either side winning. It will come from parents and teachers deciding they are on the same team.

The data has been screaming this for twenty years. At some point, we have to decide we're ready to listen — and that the child sitting in a classroom right now can't afford to wait for us to figure it out.

If this stirred something in you — frustration, clarity, or just a lot of feelings you haven't sorted out yet — I'd love to hear it. This is one of those topics where the conversation in the comments matters as much as anything I could write.

And if you're navigating how to talk to your kids about the world they're inheriting — including AI, the school system, and what "being future-ready" actually means — come join us in Raising Digital Natives, my free community for parents and grandparents, and educators

Hit reply and tell me: what's one thing you wish the school system would change tomorrow? I actually read every one.

— Debra

Dak-Life.com