The Increasing Education Gap Exacerbates U.S. Affordability Problem

"If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be." - Thomas Jefferson in an 1816 letter to Charles Yancey 

"I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction.  The world will have a generation of idiots." - Albert Einstein

***

The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area is the latest school district in the country to suffer the ignominy of having many schools within its district that did not have a single student who could do grade-level mathematics.  In the Twin Cities case there were eleven such schools in the 24-25 academic year with five of the eleven being on the list @ least two years in a row.  The Twin Cities join Baltimore, Chicago, & NYC with this infamous distinction of having a large number of such schools.  Alabama had 28 elementary schools where not a single student achieved math proficiency.

Now these schools are the worst of the worst - but there are many others across the country that are harmful.  For instance overall math proficiency across the St. Louis City district averages around 13% to 16%.  You will find similar results in math & reading for any large city.  Let me know if you know of an exception. 

Reading & math skills for fourth & eighth graders are important because after the fourth grade students must be proficient in reading to learn other subjects & math proficiency in eighth grade is one of the most significant predictors of success in high school.  I often wonder how someone got to the eighth grade reading @ a fourth grade level.

In 2022, the percentage of 8th grade public school students performing at or above the National Assessment of Educational Progress Proficient (NAEP) level in reading was 29 percent nationally, with 10 states (including DC) having a lower percentage of proficient 8th grade readers than the national level: AK & KS - both @ 26%; DE @ 24%; TX @ 23%; MS, AL, WV, & DC - all @ 22%; OK @ 21%; & NM @ 18%. 

If our youth is unable to read, how are they going to function in the world after leaving high school?  And the answer is poorly.  Over fifty percent of adults read @ an elementary school level.  These adults were the students decades ago who couldn't read proficiently @ the 4th & 8th grade levels.

And this math & reading problem carries over into civics as well.  I think Jefferson was just as concerned with the citizenry not understanding how their government works as he was with them not being able to add two & two & get anywhere near four.

I have posted videos of people like Jay Leno & Mark Dice interviewing college students who laughingly made blooming idiots out of themselves answering "Man on the Street" interview questions like who is our vice president.  Twenty years ago I made suggestions to some schools to offer no credit remedial civics courses - just so the school would not be so embarrassed by their student interviewees' responses.

Although there are no colleges that offer a remedial course in civics, there are some that offer traditional remedial courses (developmental classes for students lacking basic prerequisite skills) that are generally limited to reading, writing, & mathematics at the college level.  But this again begs the question how did the student get this far if they are so lacking in basic preparedness.

UC, San Diego is an excellent example, offering a no credit freshman remedial math course targeting middle & elementary school levels - e.g., adding fractions & rounding numbers.  The kicker is that 94% of the freshmen placed in that remedial math course had passed a high school advanced math class being awarded on average an "A-" grade.  Source - Allysia Finley

  

However, even better than a remedial civics course is the growing number of state universities - University of Texas @ Austin (School of Civic Leadership), University of Tennessee @ Knoxville (Institute of American Civics), University of Florida, & the University of NC @ Chapel Hill - that feature dedicated centers or core requirements focused on foundational U.S. history & constitutional order.  These programs mandate general civic literacy or American history courses for all undergraduate students, functioning as foundational requirements rather than traditional remedial tracks.   

And state legislation in Ohio requires all students earning a bachelor's degree from an Ohio public school to take an American Civic Literacy course, backed by specialized campus civic centers focusing on foundational historical texts, free-market principles, & constitutional governance.  Under Ohio requirements, these American civic literacy courses include the study of specific primary source documents:

The entire U.S. Constitution & Declaration of Independence
At least five complete essays from the Federalist Papers
The entire Emancipation Proclamation & Gettysburg Address
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail
Writings of Adam Smith, including principles from The Wealth of Nations.

When the American Council of Trustees & Alumni (ACTA) recently did a survey of more than 3,000 college students entitled "How Well Do College Students Know America," the results were similarly bad to ones reported for years - but still alarming.  For instance only thirty-nine percent of students know that senators serve for six years and representatives serve for two years in the U.S. Congress & almost one in five checked "unsure" of any answer. See the entire survey questions & student responses here.

If improving these sad results is important to you do your country, your child, grandchild, or a young person you know a favor - ask them to try this ACTA mini civics quiz to see how young people you know measure up against today's poorly taught, or in many cases untaught or mis-educated college students.  If it is not much better than the current college kid's results you have work to do.

But in deciding how important the state of education in America is to you please consider the results of the Program for International Student Assessment's (PISA) 2025 report dated September 8, 2026.  PISA assesses the knowledge, skills, & attitudes of 15-year-old students every several years.  More than 760 000 students took the PISA science, mathematics and reading test in 2025 across 91 countries and economies, representing around 33 million 15-year-olds across the world.  The highest performers in math & science in the 2025 assessment were the Chinese jurisdictions of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang - no surprise since I have been writing about the same type of results for over 20 years.

The graphic below shows how the education of American & Chinese 15 year olds compare.  The scores represent the mean score for all the students taking the test in their country.  By this metric China is first in the world in math & science & second to Singapore in reading, although the U.S. had a 13% to 10% advantage over China in top tier readers.  This advantage disappeared when comparing the mean scores of the U.S. (490) & China (527) because the low tier readers in the U.S. were twice the number of the top tier readers thereby dragging down the mean score of the U.S in reading as shown on the graphic.

click on graphic to enlarge

In summary, China had 54% of their students score in the top tier high performing category (levels 5 & 6 in the report) in math compared to 8% for the U.S. & an average of 8% for the 38 countries that make up the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development).  For the top tier high performing category in science it was China 36%, U.S. 13%, & OECD average 7%, & for reading it was China 10%, U.S. 13%, & OECD average 6%.  The worst statistic for the U.S. is that China's math score improved 21 points from the last PISA test while the U.S. math score dropped 15 points to the OECD average as shown on the middle graphic above.  These figures do not bode well for the U.S. regarding the AI race with China & offer a sign of what Einstein thought could come in his quote above.

It is an understatement to say the U.S. is not a leader in the world regarding education prowess.  America's test score results are very average, trailing China, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, & Korea in every category & Germany in math & Estonia in both Science & Computational Problem Solving.  The results for all of the 91 countries and economies that participated in the PISA 2025 test are on the URL provided above.

Now the education & political problems that are debasing America will not be solved before the upcoming midterm elections or even by the results of the midterms no matter who wins.  A mindset change is needed that will require large efforts from all of us who are dedicated to stopping the Death of Democracy of the American republic.  We must all join together to expand the electoral choices to more than the one big government party with a Democrat wing & a Republican wing where we go back & forth choosing the lesser of two evils every election.  Voters known as "double haters" are increasingly viewing both Democrats & Republicans negatively - this gives us a chance for the needed mindset change.

Who could think that falling behind in education will turn out well for America?

Except for four countries near China, & China, that I called The Educated Corner Of The World as far back as 2011, the results of the PISA test deteriorated in 2025 thereby resulting in even a larger education gap between these five countries & those in the rest of the world.  Past PISA test scores along with the current one coupled with the NAEP scores that show over 50% of adults in America read @ an elementary school level, & are equally as woeful in math & science, puts America on the opposite end of the education gap with China.  The poorly educated American workforce is the principal reason for the income gap (known dysphemistically as income inequality by statists) & the resulting affordability problem that so many politicians feign concern about.  And affordability is only going to get worse based on these PISA scores for people who can find jobs as real inflation adjusted wages continue to shrink & more & more employers prefer robots over poorly educated untrainable people.

Earlier in this post I offered a way to start participating in the needed mindset change: namely, by determining & monitoring the quality of the education a young person you care about is getting.   After all, they will be the ones living in the unaffordable world with the tremendous education gap described above by both the test results & Jefferson's warning that an uneducated public leaves a society vulnerable to tyranny and manipulation.