The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | 'Nation's Report Card' Shows Lowest Scores Ever Recorded. This Is How We Got Here

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

The test results are in, and America’s children are failing history and civics. According to the “Nation's Report Card,” just 13% of eighth graders are proficient in U.S. history, and only 22% are proficient in civics. Every four years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress captures how well America's students are performing in major subjects. The latest scores, released this week, are “the lowest numbers ever recorded for the NAEP scores in civics and in history over the past 25 years,” says Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow in higher education reform at The Heritage Foundation. Kissel says there is no doubt that school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in the learning loss. As for the drop in proficiency in history and civics, he says, "I would guess that after the Black Lives Matter movement got popular in 2020, a lot of teachers changed their curriculum around and taught less of the basics and more activism-type topics, and that might have been a factor as well.” In response to the troublingly low test scores, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona issued a written statement. “We need to provide every student with rich opportunities to learn about America’s history and understand the U.S. Constitution and how our system of government works,” Cardona said. He added: “Banning history books and censoring educators from teaching these important subjects does our students a disservice and will move America in the wrong direction.” “He's wrong on both of those points,” Kissel says of President Joe Biden's education secretary. “His solution is really the opposite of what schools need to do.” Kissel joins this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain why America’s kids are floundering in history and civics classes, and to offer practical solutions to repair America’s failing education system. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, May 4th. I'm Friedan Allen. The test results are in, and America's children are failing history and civics. Every four years, the National Assessment of Educational Progress completes a survey of American students to see how they are performing in some pretty major subjects. This is commonly referred to as America's report card or the nation's report card. And we're going to get to the results in just a moment. to discuss a little bit more how staggeringly low they truly are.

Adam Kissel is a visiting fellow in higher education reform in the Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Policy. And Adam joins me on the show today to explain the results and why America's kids are floundering in the areas of history and civics. Stay tuned for our conversation after this. I'm Mark Geinney from the Heritage Foundation, and we are very pleased to bring you the next chapter in the Heritage Explains podcast. Over the years, this show has been so loved by so many people, and we want to keep bringing you the insights into policy and current events that you've come to expect here, while updating the show with a new sound, a new format, and some new voices. Most notably, we're excited to upgrade this show from a one-off format where we bring you different topics each week to a serialized. format where we craft deep dives into hot-button issues in the form of seasons, series of shows that focus the intellectual weight of the Heritage Foundation on one topic. First up, a six-episode

series on the biggest existential threat to our nation right now, the Chinese Communist Party. Check out the new Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. And we are joined today by Adam Kissel. He is a visiting fellow in education here at the Heritage Foundation. Adam, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So Adam, every four years, the nation's report card is released assessing students' proficiency in various subjects. And we just got the results now on history and civics. Last year, towards the end of last year, we got the results on math and reading that were quite discouraging. But let us know what have we learned now this week about how students are performing in the areas of civics and history?

The numbers are really bad this time. around. I think we have a proficiency level in history around 13% and a proficiency level in civics of around 20%. These are the lowest numbers ever recorded for the NIP scores in civics and in history over the past 25 years. Now, the last time that this assessment was taken was in 2018. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic. How at fault are lockdowns and school closings? in what we see in this decline. Can we blame the pandemic for this? I think the evidence has been very clear

that there has been a large amount of learning loss during the pandemic. And of course, what you lose in one year, you don't get back in a future year very well. So when we see scores go down across the board in NAEP scores and in other standardized tests for K-12, such as reading and writing science, So all of these fields are traveling together downward.

It's bad news for the basics. And, you know, I think in the areas of history and in civics, I would guess that after the Black Lives Matter movement got popular in 2020, a lot of teachers changed their curriculum around and taught less of the basics and more activism-type topics. And that might have been a factor as well. Well, a lot of people are asking that question right now. why? Why are kids underperforming so much? And we saw that the U.S. Secretary of Education,

Miguel Cardona, he responded to the news in a statement saying, we need to provide every student with rich opportunities to learn about America's history and understand the U.S. Constitution and how our system of government works. All can agree on that. And then he adds, banning history books and censoring educators from teaching these important subjects, does our students a disservice, and will move America in the wrong direction. Adam, are history books being banned from classrooms? He's wrong on both of those points. His solution is really the opposite of what schools need to do.

Just take Florida as an example. Florida has high standards for civics and history, and its standards most recently said that textbooks need to be good and teach core history and not teach. false information kind of in the line of critical race theory or diversity equity and inclusion textbooks. So any book that meets the high standards gets in, any book that doesn't be the high standards doesn't get in. And the same thing with curriculum. So if you have a state like Florida that holds a high standard and says only the good textbooks get in, that's not banning the bad textbooks. That's just saying the bad textbooks don't qualify. So then why do you think that

Cardona is blaming, in part, quote unquote, book bannings for this decline in students' proficiency in history and civics? Well, I think he is afraid to blame the teachers and the public schools, which are most of where students are getting their education. And instead, he's playing politics and taking the issue of the day and saying, well, if we don't teach what he wants to teach, then that's going to be a problem for history and civics. whereas the reality, again, is the opposite. So if we teach core knowledge, if we teach people to think that America is for them and that they should like our constitutional republic, they'll be more interested to learn something in it and be part of the government that the founders created hundreds of years ago,

and that's still the best on the planet. Instead, he really hopes it sounds like that the CRT, the critical race theory of the world, which divides us will be what is taught in classrooms and in textbooks. And that's not the way to get people excited about America and to learn about America. So we can all agree, yes, the pandemic has played a role, as you have explained. No, you argue book banning has not played a role in this decline. But what are some of the other factors that we need to be talking about and thinking about

when we're talking about this decline in civics, in history, and then we know from last year, also in math and reading, what are some of the core issues that are being played out that are really harming students, and is there room to course correct? There's always room to course correct. I think the classical education movement, which has gone back to core knowledge in important ways, is a big part of the solution. education freedom and school choice. Parental choice is a big part of the solution, especially since we have good data showing that parents do care deeply about the civic education of their children. So there are some very good things that we can do. But one important thing to know about is that adults aren't

very good at civics either. It's not just the students. Even students who do well in high school and college, they don't use it and then they lose it. So every year there's an Annenberg Public Policy Center survey of adults, can you name the three branches of government? And large proportions can't do it. Only 47% of U.S. adults could name all three branches of government last year, and that was down from 56% the year before. So that nine-point drop, I think has to do in part with how much attention people are paying to politics on the national scale.

So what was happening from 2016 to 2020, but a lot of people talking about, constitutional crisis. There must be something going on. Well, that got people talking about the Constitution, whether there was really a crisis or not. And so knowing that civics and history are part of today's story and part of what matters to people today, and it's not just something you read in a book, I think is also part of the solution, knowing that you are part of the American story that you get to vote. And you should be excited that we don't have a king anymore because the people ultimately rule in our country. I think things like that are important to teach people. Sure. Well, it sounds like what you're saying, this isn't necessarily a new problem. Maybe it's been put on warp speed and the problems

are being a little bit more highlighted right now. We're seeing a more drastic decline. But if we have adults who can't name all three branches of government, it sounds like this has been an issue for a long time that people are leaving the education system without really having been given a strong foundation. It's sad news for our country. Some of the founders said that you needed to have a population that was virtuous and knowledgeable in order to sustain the republic. And for quite a long time, we haven't. But people have been complaining about this even 100, 150 years ago. I don't have the citations in front of me, but people are always complaining about people these days don't know their government. So I have a bunch of things that I think we can do even for

adults. And probably the most important one is to keep coming back to the core topics. So not just fourth grade, eighth grade, and 11th grade, or whenever your state teaches, but college as well. And then later in life adulthood, people should be saying, you know what? I really need to know this stuff. If not for me, then at least for my kids and other people in the country. And keep coming back to the core principles and understanding why they're important. So let's talk about that a little bit more because, you know, of course, we have so many resources at our disposal and now so many education resources that can almost feel overwhelming when people think about, okay, if I want to get a refresher on America's founding,

how do I do that? And especially for people that are not excited about maybe picking up or don't have time to pick up a giant history textbook. what are the resources you would recommend and how do we go about actually getting the American people excited about rediscovering our history? Wonderful question. Look, I still believe in the power of words. People still do like to read.

They might not want to read a textbook, but there's a very readable. It's not a textbook. It's just a book about our history. It's called Land of Hope by Professor Bill McClay. It's very engaging. It's like a story, like a narrative. so people would enjoy reading it. But if you want something more bite-sized, I would suggest there's something called 50 core American documents.

It's put out by the Ashburg Center in Ohio. And if you read those 50 documents, you learn the American story from firsthand sources, from the people who are in the history and writing about it and talking about it. So you read those 50 items and you are back up to speed. you know about the troubles we had in the constitutional era, you know about the troubles we had in the Civil War era, and it's brought up to almost today, and everybody can read that and can say, now I know. Love it. Practical and straightforward. Now, if you were given the opportunity to, let's say, sit down with President Biden and with Miguel Cardona and talk about solutions for education, system so that in four years, we don't find out even worse news so that in four years those numbers haven't declined even more. What would be your prescription for the steps that need to be taken

in classrooms across the country so that we can start to bring these education standards back up? I would have them look at Florida as a model in their civic education for teachers. What Florida has said is we will give you a salary bump as a teacher if you do some professional development and being able to teach civics better. And that's been wildly successful, even though it's a pretty new program. So if the Bill of Rights Institute, the Jack Miller Center, and the Asperk Center, all get together and help teachers in more states, we'll have, with that teacher development, we will have teachers who are really prepared in a much stronger way to teach history in civics and they'll be excited about it. They'll have better understanding of core concepts and core documents, and that will then

get to the students. If you had to give the Biden administration a grade themselves for their performance on education policy, which grade do you think you would assign to them? Well, my view and I think the view of many of my colleagues is that the U.S. Department of Education should not exist. Federal role for education should not exist. It's a state and local matter. So I would say do as much as you can to get out of the way and live.

let the states and the teachers do what they know how to do. And how can we follow your work and keep up with your writing and your research on the issue of education? I think the best way is to continue to follow the Daily Signal and other outlets that are affiliated with the Heritage Foundation where I'm a visiting fellow. And you can always Google my name and see what's the latest news. Awesome. Great. Well, Adam, we really appreciate your time today and your expertise on this. I wish it was a cheerier subject that we were able to discuss, but look forward to and hope that some of those scores we will start to see improving and that we will watch as our education system does improve in the coming months and years.

But Adam Kissel of the Heritage Foundation, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Again, if you want to tackle more of this issue on education, and if you want to follow Adam's work on the issue, you can check out the Heritage Foundation website at heritage.org. But in the meantime, if you haven't had a chance,

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