Public schools finally feeling pinch from poor teaching

OPINION:

Public school enrollment is down, and not just by a little. Between 2019 and 2023, an estimated 1.2 million students opted against returning to the government-run K-12 system. The National Center for Education Statistics expects enrollment to fall more by 2031, from the 50.8 million in 2019 to the 49.5 million in 2023 and then below 47 million by 2031.

Leftists blame COVID, crackdowns on illegals, family relocations and even dwindling birth rates. But at root, it’s all due to poor teaching.

If children were being educated as they ought to be educated, parents wouldn’t be seeking alternative schooling to such a degree. COVID opened parents’ eyes to the horrible propaganda being fed their children’s minds by those they trusted to simply teach — the despicable sexual grooming books in school libraries that were oft-required reading; the forced acceptance of boys traipsing into girls’ restrooms and locker rooms, all under the guise of transgenderism and tolerance; the injuries that befell female athletes who were told the boys they competed against were actually, really, truly, genuinely girls. Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic? Try climate change, DEI training and social justice.

Yes, COVID had an effect.

The closures of schools had an effect.

“‘Sharp, Steep Declines’: U.S. Students Are Falling Behind in Math and Science,” EducationWeek wrote in December of 2024.

“Math scores plummet, progress ‘erased,’ National Center for Education Statistics reports,” K-12 Dive wrote in December of 2024.

That was after this, from NPR in June of 2023: “U.S. reading and math scores drop to lowest level in decades.”

So yes — COVID, and in particular, COVID closures have contributed to the exodus from public schools.

But if parents thought the schools were worthwhile, they’d have sent their kids back to them once they had reopened, once COVID wasn’t a factor. They didn’t. They haven’t. And that’s because COVID wasn’t the problem. The closures weren’t the problem. COVID and the closures simply pointed the way for parents to see the real problem — and that is the public school system, as it’s modeled, simply favors the teachers and administrators more than the children.

The public school system has become a tool of propaganda for far leftists who’ve infiltrated the ranks of teaching and administrating, and for the Democrat politicians who profit off the leftists in education who send their donation and lobby dollars for reelection campaigns, and for the teachers’ unions who’ve fought against any type of educational choice for decades.

Parents have been told too long by socialist school board members to sit down, shut up and stay out of the way.

Parental authorities have been seized too many times by Democrats who’ve abused their positions of public service to investigate parents as terrorists.

“AG Paxton Sues Biden Administration for Silencing Parents, Labeling Them ’Terrorists,’” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s website reported in March of 2022.

“Rep. Jordan: Whistleblowers saying FBI targeted parents via terrorism tools ‘scary stuff,’” the House Judiciary Committee posted in May of 2022, quoting Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican.

How much more should it be expected for parents and their children to suffer?

Teachers, administrators, bureaucrats, politicians — these are all examples of taxpayer-funded public servants; you know, the kind who work for taxpaying parents; the kind who are actually employees of the taxpayers. They’ve been acting like bosses. They’ve been acting as if parents work for them — and it’s the job of the parents to do as their told; to allow the bureaucrats to control what their children read, what their children eat, what their children say, what their children even think.

The system, in a free America, was always unsustainable.

And now parents are pulling back their power.

“I think everybody knows that homeschooling went up during the pandemic,” said Angela Watson, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy’s Homeschool Research Lab, in The Hill. “But people really thought that when. Schooling went back to normal, as the pandemic kind of waned, that everybody would go back to their normal way of educating. And so, every year, we keep thinking that the numbers are going to drop and the numbers are going to drop, and we keep not seeing that happening to the degree that we thought that it would in education circles.”

Quite right.

It’s called righting a wrong.

The public schools in America have been failing children for a very long time. Now parents are saying no more. And thankfully, the political climate, under President Trump, is finally siding with the parents and children over the bureaucrats.

“Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, State and Communities,” the White House posted in March of 2025.

Education is always best when it’s bottom-up, not top-down — when it’s parents who control the process, followed by localities, then states, and the feds are rarely if ever involved. America’s public schools should be about training the next generation in the way of critical thinking, not obedience to government. 

The unions may hate that method. So, too, the control freaks and the Marxists. But it’s the only way to guarantee children are the priority. And after all, isn’t it the Democrats who always say, it’s for the children? It’s time those in the public school system, dominated as it is by Democrats, practice what they preach. Their alternative is extinction. 

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.