The Biden Administration Politicizes an Education Crisis

E ducation wonks like me consider the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) examinations to be America’s report card. Using validated test items over time, these exams measure how much students know compared with their older siblings and parents. The just-released NAEP history results should be a wake-up call for anyone who wants to strengthen, rather than erode U.S., democracy. So why is the Biden administration playing politics?

Last week, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner Peggy Carr released the 2022 results for the NAEP history exams. They weren’t pretty. Only 13 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient in history, which is even lower than the mediocre scores for reading (31 percent proficient) and math (26 percent).

Further, unlike the declines in the NAEP scores for math and reading, historical knowledge had begun dropping at least four years before Covid-19 disrupted schooling, falling by a statistically and substantively significant four scale points from 2014 to 2018 and another five points from 2018 to 2012. (The NAEP history tests are administered every four years.) The declines wiped out decades of slow improvement, making the 2022 history scores statistically identical to those of 1994. The dip occurred across all four thematic areas (democracy, culture, technology, and America’s world role) and among most demographic subgroups.

As Commissioner Carr noted, to put this historical failure in perspective, 40 percent of eighth-graders (up from 34 percent in 2018) cannot understand simple concepts expressed in historical documents, such as that Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address commemorated U.S. soldiers who had died for our nation in the Civil War.

The bad scores are good news for those who seek to undermine our democratic processes, such as those who did so on January 6, 2021, or during 2020’s deadly George Floyd riots — in both situations, people used violence rather than their First Amendment rights, which they likely hardly understand. American historical illiteracy is even better news for authoritarian leaders, such as those of China, Iran, and Russia (the latter being a former KGB colonel — not that students would know why that matters), who are in long-term competition with the United States. Increasingly, young people don’t even understand what U.S. democracy is, so they are ill-prepared to defend it against threats foreign and domestic.

In the face of all this, why is the Biden administration politicizing what should be a bipartisan fire alarm? In a prepackaged reaction to the bad news from NAEP, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona blamed recent red-state efforts to limit the teaching of certain topics and ideas, hinting at Republican-led legislation against critical race theory.

Secretary Cardona’s claim is deeply problematic in at least two ways. First, as noted above, the declines in the 2018–22 NAEP history scores were almost identical in magnitude to the 2014–18 declines, which came before Covid and well before Republican efforts to use legitimate democratic means such as legislation to shape public-school curricula — schools that are, after all, supposed to be democratically governed. Second, those Republican efforts to shape public schooling came in response to the prevalence of critical-theory-based instruction that rejects the Enlightenment tools of free speech, open discussion, and reasoned inquiry and deems them trappings of white supremacy. The teachings in question go far beyond the important task of looking at this country’s history honestly, encouraging instead a kind of self-flagellation that seeks only to tear down.

Yet in one way, Secretary Cardona has it right. His critics say far more about what they are against than what they are for. It is not enough merely to criticize; an alternative solution is necessary. One such solution, created by the nonprofit Civics Alliance, is American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K–12 Social Studies Standards. Modeled after the successful Massachusetts state standards embraced by then-governor Mitt Romney, American Birthright is nonpartisan and free to any teacher, school, school district, or state department of education that wants it. (Full disclosure: I was one of many scholars who donated time advising the effort.)

American Birthright is neither Democratic nor Republican. It grounds American history in world history. This global perspective shows that while most countries have a history of oppression, only America produced the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, led the reconstruction of Europe and Japan after World War II, and played an indispensable role in defeating the twin evils of fascism and Marxism. If our democracy is to endure, it is these unique contributions that should define America for today’s schoolchildren and tomorrow’s citizens.

The view that public schools should teach our unique history is, or at least should be, wholly bipartisan. As the Founders argued in proposing public education: To keep our republic, we must first teach it.