That there is a crisis in American schooling is almost too trite to write anymore, yet there is news confirming this just about every week.
ACT scores in 2023 were the lowest since 1991. That is bad enough but it’s just a continuation of a trend: 2022 scores were 30-year lows too.
The second piece, from the Journal of Pediatrics, mentions that children today have much less unstructured time, that this decline has had a negative effect on their mental well-being, and that this decline has been “continuous over at least the last 5 or 6 decades,” although I can anecdotally report that as late as 1986 I often disappeared into some then still-extant woods in northern Virginia for hours and hours with my brother and other kids (the woods were then slowly becoming construction sites, but we hung out on those too). One of those guys got the original Nintendo Entertainment System (the very original NES), and suddenly we hardly saw him anymore. I am not saying the paper is wrong; maybe I had less unstructured time than did kids in the 60s and 70s. And I suppose my friend’s Nintendo time was “unstructured” in its way, but he was definitely in his house, one room over from his mom for many more hours than he had been.
These problems are related. I agree that kids’ independent time is declining, and I agree that test scores (and not just the ACT) are dropping to historically low levels. I disagree with a lot of people about why.
These kinds of things lead to more calls for school reform. We hear a lot about the need for more school choice in various places, and I do agree with that. Let’s explore some of the reasons we don’t have choice, despite the problems above. Another way to phrase this: What are some of the barriers to increased school choice?
Nice Try, Feds
If we could just elect the right President, he could enable more school choice. Both No Child Left Behind (Republican) and Race to the Top (Democrat) had provisions promoting school choice built into them. The recent push for a federal school choice bill was not popular even among school choice advocates.
States: Laboratories of Democracy
Is it not the case that the states are where the real action is? This is more true. But the outcomes are still not very high. According to data reported by EdChoice earlier this year:
1.2 percent of students are utilizing an educational choice program
7.4 percent attend private school by other means
76.5 percent attend a traditional public school
5.1 percent attend a magnet school
6.8 percent attend a charter school, and
3.0 percent are homeschooled.
Charter school attendance is up over time, homeschooling is up more recently, and the number of students just heading to their locally zoned school is down over the decades, but these numbers still are not amazing.
Maybe the call is coming from inside the house school.
Perhaps the answer is inside the building. There is certainly a lot of evidence that teachers are struggling, or are concerned about things other than education. Arguments abound that perhaps conventional teacher certification is a problem and should be either reformed or ended. But things may be trending that way regardless as fewer people seem interested in following conventional pathways to teaching careers. In fact, teachers and teacher preparation programs do have a huge impact not just on conventional public schools, but on most schools across the country because most teachers are prepared within very narrow philosophical boundaries. There are ways around that which would help improve schools of choice of all kinds:
These kinds of teacher preparation programs are in the place hybrid and microschools were a few years before COVID; boutique and under the radar, but ready to take a big step up in popularity. Maybe they will get more notice soon (without another pandemic, hopefully).
So back to the original examples and question: Why are scores dropping? Why is kids’ mental health declining? Of course I think smart phones are a huge cause. That is undeniable, even though we constantly deny it. But that’s not the ultimate reason. Smart phones don’t jump into kids’ hands and stay there for hours on end. We adults let all of this happen. We built these failing school programs, we keep using them, often out of convenience. We built the structures that fostered these bad test scores and bad mental health outcomes for kids, but we can unbuild them. As a country lately we tend to do a lot of blaming and a lot of waiting. CS Lewis wrote in a letter to a reader:
I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, ‘WE’, the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious ‘US’. WE are apparently perfect and blameless. Don’t you believe it.
— CS Lewis, May 30th, 1953
What are the barriers to school choice in your local area? A big one is “precious US.” We are all busy, but not productive, or not in the right areas. The fact that adults are letting smart phones raise kids is a problem. And the fact that we are falling into the rat race of kids’ athletics and activities, taking away their unstructured time is a problem too. Changing all of that is going to require a cultural change on an individual level of the same kind that is moving many new parents to try out new school models. Waiting for Superman, or for someone else to come in and build schools, or replace a bunch of teachers, and solve the problem for us is itself a major problem. But things are happening:
Homeschooling is legal everywhere in the US, and increasing:
Families and parents are starting up schools all over the place. Like these.
And teachers are getting into it too. Like these.
We can help with these problems. I’m going to repost a quote by Duncan Moench from one of my first posts because it is so great:
It’s time Gen X and everyone younger realize that there’s no cavalry coming to save us…If there is an American future, it won’t be built by participating in identitarian battles fought on handheld screens... Only by creating our own organizations and institutions—outside and separate from the unsalvageable ones now in power—can anything change.
And as Lewis’s friend Tolkien wrote,
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Schools and kids are struggling. Policy can be helpful but lots of school founders are not waiting around for help. That’s true with hybrid and microschools in the U.S. and it’s been true internationally for a long time too. There will never be a perfect time to start something up. But there’s no cavalry coming. We have DIY answers that more and more families are taking advantage of in various ways. So: What are you going to do, Precious?