We send our children to public schools — funded by taxpayer dollars — with the expectation that our children will learn things like math, reading, and civics. There was a time when they did, but that time has passed. For many students, public schools are no longer a place of education. Sometimes, they're places of indoctrination, where LGBTQ and CRT and DEI invade the curriculum. Most of the time, they just plain stink.
One mother in Queens is learning this the hard way, after believing her son was very good at math in middle school, only to learn he doesn't understand basic things like fractions.
A Queens mom thought her son was a math whiz. Middle school math grades: 92, 89,
— Scarlett Johnson (@scarlett4kids) October 31, 2026
93.
Then, as a high school freshman, he scored 10 out of 100 on a math exam. Her story in today's NY Post is every parent's nightmare. 🧵https://t.co/xe5qjnNH1R pic.twitter.com/4bRUDtsjzF
I’ll never forget seeing tears well up in my son’s eyes as he was only able to answer the first couple of questions on the worksheet.
He couldn’t solve basic algebra. He couldn’t do geometry. He couldn’t compute elementary-school fractions.
Yet at PS 221Q, the North Hills Elementary School, he regularly received the highest grade in math. At MS 67Q Louis Pasteur Middle School in Little Neck, his lowest math grade on an end-of-term report card was an 89 in seventh grade. He got a 92 in sixth grade and a 93 in eighth grade — the equivalent of A’s.
When he was admitted to his first choice high school, one New York’s top-rated schools, we had every reason to believe he would continue to excel.
What I saw when I sat down with my son to study shocked me to my core.
He stared blankly at the page, completely puzzled by the material. He was completely thrown off by equations that contained fractions.
My shock soon gave way to heartbreak, then anger.
This is similar to what happened to Nikole Hannah-Jones and her daughter. The difference is, Hannah-Jones deliberately sent her daughter to failing public school that spends $52,000 a year per student, only for her daughter to come out of it unable to read, write, or do math. And Hannah-Jones had the money to send her daughter somewhere better, but chose not to in the service of her political agenda.
This mother, however, did not.
Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican running for Senate, has made education reform a major plank of his platform. Students who fail at school, Rogers said, have a 70 percent chance of ending up in prison or on welfare. The Democrats do not care about the former; they do want more people on the latter.
There have been numerous stories about teachers being told to inflate grades, pass failing students, and ignore academic struggle, often at the request of administrators. This is done to meet government mandates, appease parents, and skirt accountability for the failure of a public education that sucks more in tax dollars while producing poorer and poorer outcomes.
Democrats love to talk about "investing" in education. Gavin Newsom did that not too terribly long ago, bragging about how much his state spent — sorry, invested — in public education. But what is an investment? You invest in something expecting a return. You invest in the stock market hoping it will go up and you'll earn more money. You invest in a savings account for the same reason. You buy property hoping it's value increases so you get a return on your investment.
While I don't believe public spending is an investment, for the sake of argument, I'll use the Democrats' terminology here. If we're "investing" in schools, what should we get in return?
The answer is simple: students who know how to read, write, and do math. But despite exponential increases in spending, despite billions funneled through the Department of Education, despite myriad reforms, literacy rates have dropped in 47 of 50 states. America, once the world leader in education, has fallen to somewhere in the mid-20s among nations. Here in Milwaukee, we spend just under $20,000 per student per year and black kids in the district test at the bottom in reading and math.
The mom featured in The New York Post, Adriana Aviles, said she was heartbroken and angry. We are not angry enough. If this were a private business taking our money and giving us a terrible product in return, they would go out of business. Possibly face investigations and criminal charges. But when it's a public school, we shrug and Democrats demand more money to fix the problems.
Money isn't the problem here. The government is. It cannot do anything well, and that will never change. The simplest solution is to take education away from the government and put it in the hands of private schools, charter schools, religious schools who actually do care.
