America’s Dead Ed A detailed analysis of the most recent NAEP reveals the deterioration of American public schools, and not surprisingly, the teachers’ unions are a significant contributor to the decline. By Larry Sand
https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/28/americas-dead-ed/
On May 15, the Manhattan Institute published a brief on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Also known as the Nation’s Report Card, it is the gold standard assessment for measuring American students’ proficiency in various subjects. As a former middle school testing coordinator, I helped administer the exam once and saw the test delivered with the utmost professionalism. Students are randomly selected without cherry-picking, and the test is handled with great attention to detail.
Unfortunately, the 2024 scores reveal that American schoolchildren are on a downward slope. Only about a third of 4th- and 8th-grade students are proficient in reading or mathematics. A few of the key findings from the Manhattan Institute report include:
- Student proficiency levels have stagnated or declined since the early 1990s, with 4th- and 8th-grade reading proficiency at an average of 30%–31%. Math proficiency for both grades peaked in 2013 (42% for 4th grade and 35% for 8th grade) but has declined to 39% (4th grade) and 28% (8th grade).
- Between 2013 and 2024, the lowest-performing public school students (25th percentile) lost an average of 12 points, compared with an 8-point decline among charter school students. Among average-performing students (50th percentile), public schools declined by 5 points, while charter schools remained stable. Charter schools provided more stability across all student performance levels.
- States with collective bargaining laws for educators saw steeper declines in reading (–3.7% in 4th grade, –4.9% in 8th grade) and math (–2.7% in 4th grade, –4.4% in 8th grade) compared with smaller declines in non-collective bargaining states. While non-collective bargaining states started with lower scores, their rate of decline was smaller, suggesting that greater flexibility in adapting instructional practices is beneficial.
- Even with record-high education spending per student in some states, such as New York, student achievement remains low, demonstrating that funding alone does not drive academic success.
“Our lowest-performing students are reading at historically low levels,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP. “We need to stay focused to right this ship.”
When test scores show that the system is failing, the typical response is that we must spend more money. However, as noted in the Manhattan Institute paper, this argument is flawed. New York, for example, spends $36,293 per student—more than any other state. Yet its 4th-graders rank 32nd and 46th nationally on reading and math NAEP exams.
Just Facts reveals that, nationwide, average inflation-adjusted spending per public school student has risen by 31% since 2000, 111% since 1980, 4.1 times since 1960, and 25 times since 1920. As of the 2020–21 school year, the U.S. spent an average of $18,614 per student enrolled in K–12 public schools. In contrast, the average tuition for students in private K–12 schools was $14,566, while Catholic schools charged an average of $11,069 per student.
Importantly, as the Manhattan Institute paper discloses, teachers’ unions, especially with their mandatory collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), are a significant contributor to our educational woes.
“The Long-Run Effects of Teacher Collective Bargaining,” a 2017 study by researchers Michael Lovenheim and Alexander Willen, found that, among males, exposure to a CBA law in the first 10 years after passage depresses students’ future annual earnings by $2,134 (3.93%), decreases weekly hours worked by 0.42, and reduces employment and labor force participation. The adverse effect of CBAs is particularly pronounced among black and Hispanic males. In these two subgroups, annual earnings decline by $3,246 (9.43%), while employment and labor force participation are reduced.
The Lovenheim-Willen study was not the first to detail the harm of collective bargaining to students. In 2007, Stanford professor Terry Moe reported that CBAs appear to have a strongly negative impact in larger school districts.
Caroline Hoxby, also a professor at Stanford, made a three-minute video in 2009 in which she explains in plain language how CBAs stifle any management flexibility in determining the best slot for a teacher at a given school, as well as denying schools the opportunity to remove underperformers.
Collective bargaining, a term first introduced in 1891 by socialist Beatrice Webb, is a process of negotiations between employers and employees to reach agreements that establish wage scales, work rules, etc.
CBAs dictate that teachers’ unions treat teachers not as professionals but as interchangeable parts, all of whom are of equal value and competence. Differentiating between effective and ineffective educators based on what their students learn would necessitate revising their industrial-style work rules. Those include one-size-fits-all salary scales, tenure (contractually known as “permanence”) and seniority or “last in, first out (LIFO),” whereby if a teacher must be laid off due to budgetary belt-tightening, it is not the least talented teacher who is on the chopping block, but rather the newest hire. Hence, a teacher-of-the-year could lose her job before Mr. Mediocre.
Regarding salaries, teacher quality doesn’t matter to teacher union honchos, only the number of years they have on the job. Teachers can also increase their salary by taking “professional development classes,” the great majority of which have no impact on student learning.
Teacher union-mandated permanence clauses make it just about impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. In California, it was disclosed during a court case in 2012 that, on average, just 2.2 of California’s 300,000 teachers (0.0008%) are dismissed yearly for unprofessional conduct or unsatisfactory performance.
As Hoover Institution scholar Eric Hanushek points out, if schools cut the bottom-performing 5% to 7% of teachers—a common practice in the private sector—our education system could rival that of highly ranked Finland. If California adopted Hanushek’s idea, about 18,000 teachers in California would be let go. However, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon, which means about 450,000 kids are getting an inferior education year after year.
The report also notes that charter schools provide more stability across all student performance levels. Although there was no mention of Catholic schools, students are one to two years ahead of their peers in public schools in reading and math.
The brief mentions several fixes to the nation’s ongoing educational downfall, the most important being that we must embrace educational freedom. To that end, there is some good news. There are currently 76 private school choice programs in 35 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, with 18 states offering universal choice. In total, 45% of students nationwide are eligible to participate in a private school choice program, and over 1.2 million students partake in one.
Since eliminating teachers’ unions is highly unlikely, we need more parental freedom. For the future of our children and the country, we must right our sinking education ship immediately.
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Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.
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