While the Left loses its mind about President Trump dismantling the Department of Education, sane Americans ask one simple question: What has the DOE done to improve the state of American public education?
The answer is not much.
Educational standards have declined. As a mom, I can tell you Common Core has been a disaster. I've spent many nights with a crying boy, frustrated by the long, drawn-out process of doing math under Common Core, only to have him scared and frustrated to be taught the "old school" way.
"No, mom! The teacher said we have to do it this way!"
In 47 of 50 states, literacy rates have declined, too. Math skills aren't much better.
What do we lose if the DOE goes away? Nothing of value, it seems.
So when someone says we don't know why K-12 educational declines have been happening, I have to laugh. Not because it's a joke, but because the answers are so obvious.
No one really knows why K-12 educational declines have been happening.
— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) August 25, 2026
And worse, no one in the K-12 community really has a plan to address them. https://t.co/NOdm9h9miB
We know exactly why educational declines are happening. Instead of being focused on education, most public school districts — often beholden to the radical teachers unions — have turned into indoctrination centers. Critical race theory (CRT), "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI), and the interjection of "anti-Zionism" and the trans agenda into classrooms. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has also been coaching teachers in how to indoctrinate your children.
Instead of being taught that two plus two equals four, children have been taught that math is racist. Here's an hour-long YouTube video specifically devoted to "a pathway to equitable math instruction." Canada is where the idea that math is white supremacy was born. The Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (OMCA) said that white supremacy was prevalent in Math education.
They've been taught that learning to read and write proper English is — you guessed it — racist as well. Teaching students literacy, according to some on the Left, is akin to killing people of color.
One required video framed teaching standard written English as tantamount to "killing people of color."
— Students For Liberty (@sfliberty) August 26, 2026
Instructors were pressed to grade students differently by race.
Clear prose and standard grammar were labeled white supremacy in the writing classroom. pic.twitter.com/cVXDJX2aBq
Reading to your children is racist, too, and gives them an unfair advantage over other students.
In California, for example, where only 30 percent of black students met reading standards and 16 percent met math standards, the state's public schools instead devoted time to "A Week of Action." What was that, exactly?
Well, here's what we reported back in 2023:
The "Week of Action Toolkit – Elementary," sent from the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education, outlines suggested lesson plans for elementary students around LGBTQ+ topics. The document, which a teacher shared with City Journal, noted teachers can adapt the lesson plans to better suit the needs of their students.
The toolkit includes an "Identity Map activity" for students to complete at the start of the week, preparing "students to think critically about identity and intersectionality." Teachers are encouraged to have students create an image representing their identity that includes features like their race, ethnicity, gender identity, religion, sexuality and mental health.
California is also where activists want schools to teach "black English" to students. Because expecting one colorblind standard for all students is, once again, racist.
It's been ingrained in our society that all the behaviors that make someone successful, that make society function — being literate, being on time, working hard, respecting the rule of law — are simply "white supremacy" and not part of the social fabric of a functional culture.
That's why the Cherry Creek School District in Colorado introduced a race-based disciplinary program that said the disruptive behavior of black students was "culturally appropriate" and therefore must be tolerated. If it harmed other students, disrupted learning, or made for untenable classroom environments, that discomfort was simply borne of "white supremacy."
There are only so many hours in the school day, and most public schools have class for only 180 days a year. With that finite time devoted to woke nonsense and putting up with "culturally appropriate" misbehavior, there's just not room for actual education. The decline is a choice, and it's born not only of the soft bigotry of low expectations, but the Left's twisted love of "equity," which means that if black students can't be held to high educational standards, we have to knock every other student down a peg or two as well.
Educational standards have declined because we've allowed the Left to have a stranglehold on our public schools. As a result, they've infused politics into every aspect of education, viewing it all through an intersectional lens. Lower standards and outcomes are the inevitable result. It's not a mystery to me, and it's not a mystery to anyone else.
The only question now is: do we have the spine to call this out and turn things around?
