40 Photos That Prove Not All American Schools Are Created Equal

Many believe that American education is in shambles. The Covid pandemic highlighted a lot of the flaws in the system. And while some blame the pandemic for the poor state of learning, others say it isn't so. In a piece published on the Fordham Institute's website, David Steiner notes that too many people are stuck sending their kids to underperforming schools.

"Despite nearly $200 billion in emergency federal spending on K–12 schooling, students are doing worse than a decade ago, and lower-performing students are today less capable of doing math than they were thirty-five years ago," writes the education expert.

Steiner was commenting on what's known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. It's basically "The Nation’s Report Card," and according to the National Center for Education Statistics website, it's "a resource—a common measure of student achievement—because it offers a window into the state of our K-12 education system and what our children are learning."

What stood out in the NAEP results was the fact that Math and reading scores for 13-year-olds have hit their lowest scores in decades. Steiner cautions that the system is failing children from a very young age.

Steiner likens Pre-K to the Wild West... He explains that students are entering kindergarten with large gaps in their readiness to learn. "Children aren’t seriously assessed until they are 8, by which time it’s too late for sustained intervention; the gaps never close," he wrote.

And from there, it's a vicious cycle where the kids pay the price. "Curricula, tests, and teacher education programs exist in deep silos, creating a fragmented system where teachers aren’t trained to teach the materials their schools use and tests don’t test students’ mastery of those materials (with a tiny exception in Louisiana)." the expert added.

According to education sector marketing company MDR Education, there are a total of 115,171 schools in the United States. This number is made up of K-12 public and private schools, adult education, and career/technical schools. "With the current U.S. population of about 333 million people, that breaks down to one school for every 2,892 people," notes the MDR site.

The country is also facing a severe lack of educators. American schools have high student-to-teacher ratios driven by a massive K-12 teacher shortage, warns education institution Elevate K-12. "Faced with disciplinary problems and low school funding, schools have focused on staffing classrooms at all costs," reads that site, adding that class sizes have become larger at the expense of quality teaching.

According to Elevate K-12, the number of under-qualified teaching hires increased by 69% from 2022–2023. "When students have underqualified teachers or full-time substitutes, they’re more likely to experience learning delays, low graduation rates, and test scores below grade level," notes the site.

It's often the poor that feel it the most... And the institution warns that the crisis in public education is "widening student achievement gaps, causing a dangerous feedback loop that disproportionately affects Black students, low-income students, and students with special educational needs."

Social media isn't helping when it comes to the poor state of education and the well-being of learners. "American teenagers stare at social media on a screen almost nine hours every day, with one result being surging loneliness and depression," wrote Steiner.

As we have sown, so shall we reap, warns the expert. He believes that learners are losing out thanks to the very people who are meant to nurture them. "The unique sense of achievement that a student experiences when she or he masters a rigorous skill, digs into deep knowledge, creates a piece of writing or art, completes a challenging science assignment or piece of music—this is all being washed away," writes the expert.

"We are tired of bad news, and our instinct is now to punish, or at least ignore, the messenger. But our students are desperately the worse for the mess we have made of their schooling."