I was not surprised by this bad news. As NHPR reported:
“Test scores released this week by the U.S. Department of Education show New Hampshire students’ reading and math test scores on the decline, continuing a trend seen over the last nine years.”
According to 2022 assessments taken by a sample of students, 30% of the state’s eighth graders and 40% of fourth graders are proficient or above in math. The same assessments showed 33% of eighth graders and 37% of fourth graders are proficient or above in reading. In both subjects, scores were lower than prior to the pandemic.
One can certainly blame the pandemic for some of this. Many school administrators and unions ignored parents who were pleading with them to reopen schools. Some schools opened before others. Parents could see their children were failing to receive a proper education while school board members rubber-stamped these foolish decisions. Well, reckoning day is here, and you can see the school shutdowns contributed to the decline in literacy in New Hampshire.
But there is more to this story.
This problem has been going on pre-pandemic. The paradigm shift to dumbed-down workforce training began with the dumbing down in our public schools when the New Hampshire State Board of Education adopted Common Core Math and Next Generation Science Standards. We cannot ignore this enormous problem. Until that is remedied in this state, our kids will continue to suffer.
Now that children are back in school, what do parents see? A new focus on Critical Race Theory, SEL/Social and Emotional Learning, and Gender Ideology. Way to go, administrators!! You failed by locking kids out of schools then you invite in social engineering, which contributes to this illiteracy problem.
To the school board members who allow this injustice, shame on you too. These are YOUR kids who are suffering. Anyone who has watched this self destruction pulled their kids out a while ago. Some private schools were having too close due to low enrollment numbers, now they have waiting lists.
Not only are the proficiency scores declining, so are the enrollment numbers.
I get it that the feds are pushing this garbage on our schools, but there are ways to minimize the damage. You don’t embrace it, you do as minimal damage as possible. You’d be amazed at how parents will unify and rally behind you and your teachers when academic excellence becomes a priority again.
Stop going along with this nonsense, and start defying this purposeful attempt to destroy our public schools. Parents will fight for their children and their public schools. However, they will only fight for so long. Eventually, they will remove their kids and become school choice supporters. You will cry and whine that money shouldn’t be removed from the public schools, but YOU are the ones responsible for their actions. You drove them out. They had no choice because you refused to listen to them. They were the ones fighting FOR public education, but they weren’t going to stand by and watch their children suffer. If you don’t want more school choice programs, then do something.
Provide quality curriculum in your schools. Stop the social engineering, dividing our children by race, pushing radical gender ideology on kids, acting as if schools are good at psychology in the classroom, and do what you are supposed to do–educate children with quality academics. It’s not that hard, ask a home-school mom how to do it.
Parents are not fighting to push their political agenda in the schools, they just want a neutral atmosphere where their kids are learning the best academic content in the core subjects. That’s not too much to ask for.
