Students declining in civics and history

A few weeks back, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) issued a press release detailing the results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the “nation’s report card.” This particular release focussed specifically on trends in the areas of civics and U.S. history and it probably won’t shock you to hear that it wasn’t good.

The NAEP is based on the testing of cohorts of various grade levels in schools across the country and reports trends in a variety of disciplines, specifically mathematics, reading, writing, science, technology, civics, geography, and history. More specifically, the civics and history tests are given to 7,800 eighth-grade students in 410 schools across the U.S.

The results? Since the last tests in 2018, average civics scores have dropped by two points and history scores have dropped by five. History was already on a steep slide, so current scores are a full nine points down from 2014. Do you remember being impressed by kids in 2014? Well, now you would be 9% less impressed.

The covid shutdown is easy to blame for the drop since 2018. Scores in reading and math dropped during that time as well. The economic destruction resulting from the imposed lockdown destabilized families, and good study habits are hard to maintain in an atmosphere of instability. Households were challenged by access to technology, and students who were already on the academic margins were handed an excuse to fail.

Covid does not explain away the drop between 2014 and 2018, so there has to be something else driving the decline. One theory blames Bush 43’s “No Child Left Behind” initiative, which focussed on reading and math, and often did so at the expense of other subjects. No Child Left Behind raised hackles from the teacher’s unions because it tried to impose uniform standards across education systems that are wildly different in focus, philosophy, and resources. Teachers' Unions also distrust Republican education initiatives in general and have well before Mr. Trump hired the Amway lady to run the Department of Education as a patronage post.

My friends on the right will argue that the schools are too busy promoting social and political agendas to provide a suitable academic education. That may be an exaggeration, but there’s no shortage of evidence that social activism has crept into some elements of the curriculum, and parents pushing back have swayed elections in Florida and Virginia.

Personally, it doesn’t bother me if some wish to present a less-varnished version of our national history. I think we can handle that. The idealized account of history that I learned as a kid can only result in disappointment when reality sets in. What I do mind is that future voters won’t understand the function of the electoral college, and 55% of the students tested in the NAEP did not. If sparsely populated states like ours wish to have any say in national government, we need to make sure that every citizen understands why we elect national leadership the way we do, and how it protects us all.

It should also be noted that while some teachers think that the NAEP is a valuable diagnostic tool, others believe that it is too limited in scope and doesn’t provide feedback that is timely or specific enough to inform teaching practices. They also express concerns about the pressures of standardized testing distorting academic priorities.

Naturally, people will want to blame teachers. We shouldn’t ever blame teachers. We can dislike their union and giggle when their finished product attempts to count 23 cents in change, but we shouldn’t pick on teachers. There is something seriously out of kilter with the way that we recognize and compensate our teachers. We leave our most precious assets in their care and control but pay them like mattress salesmen. They deal with mountains of bureaucracy and parents who are either crazed or indifferent and the stories about teachers dipping into their own pockets for supplies? I have heard from multiple, well-informed sources that it is not only true but not at all uncommon.

When I think of teachers, I can’t imagine that the increasingly divisive political climate would make it fun to teach history or civics in recent years. I don’t recall ever taking those classes without some discussions of current events creeping in, and current events have been quite ugly lately. I wonder which would be worse: the student who is afraid to express their views openly for fear of ridicule, or the student who discovered politics two weeks ago and can’t wait to repeat what he heard on the radio. The latter would be disruptive and annoying, but the former is the real tragedy.

Regardless of the reasons behind the drop in scores, the result is that fewer future voters will have an understanding of the machinations of elected government, nor will they have the benefit of history and those mistakes that tend to repeat themselves. The good news is that Nebraskans did as well or better than their peers throughout the country. The same goes for rural versus urban folks. We did ok there too, but there is one more factor to consider–private schools scored better than public schools across the board, and until we can persuade teachers sincerely and convincingly that school choice and a consumer-driven education model are in their best interest, academic entropy may be inevitable.