It used to be that when a student told me they had never read a book, I scoffed at it as youthful hyperbole, but I tend to believe them now. A) When I talk to them, it becomes starkly apparent they are not literate people. B) Who’s making them read books? Teachers and parents have largely abandoned this mission.

Every time we ask schools to solve another societal problem, we pull them further from their core mission: education. The result? Kids can’t read or do math. Schools can’t fix poverty, cure mental illness, or parent your kids. But the knowledge of how to teach math, reading, science, and history is freely available. It’s time to eschew the nonsense and just get to work teaching.

I can't wrap my head around why there aren't teaching prerequisites for administrators. How can you manage a school of teachers, students, faculty if you've never managed students at a high level, consistently? Great teachers don't necessarily make great managers, but surely ineffective teachers almost always make for ineffective managers. You can't intentionally affect what you don't know.

The U.S. Department of Education's statement on the 2024 @NAEP_NCES scores: