Jennifer Berkshire interviewed education journalist Karen Chenoweth about the Trumpian assertion that US students are stalled and unsuccessful.
Jennifer Berkshire: OK – let’s kick this off with a quote from President Trump from his dramatic signing of an executive order to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.” Are you ready?
Karin Chenoweth: As ready as I’ll ever be.
“Closing the Department of Education would provide children and their families the opportunity to escape a system that is failing them. Today, American reading and math scores are near historical lows. This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 70 percent of 8th graders were below proficient in reading, and 72 percent were below proficient in math. The Federal education bureaucracy is not working.”
Berkshire: Now we’re going to delve into the specifics of what Trump is alleging here but first I just want to get your immediate response. Is he right?
Chenoweth: He is not right. The average student is reading and doing math better than the average student of their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. And while we’re not where we want to be or where we should be, it’s just a lie to say that there’s been no improvement in academic achievement over the decades.
Berkshire: Trump and his allies, meanwhile, are taking this claim even further, basically making the case that American students have made no academic progress at all since the 1970’s–more proof, by the way, that we need to get rid of the Department of Education.
Chenoweth We can look at the data to see that this is completely false. Starting in the 1970’s up through 1988, we saw a huge improvement in reading in math for all groups of kids, but especially African American and Latino students. They were the kids who had been most harmed by segregation and underfunded schools. Instead of federal involvement failing these kids, which is what Trump is arguing, we can look pretty closely at the data and conclude that improvement was the result of federal engagement: desegregation and Title 1. (I highly recommend Rucker Johnson’s book Children of the Dream if you want to know more about this history.)