What In The World Is Going On In Our Public Schools?

The quality of the education that our children are receiving in America’s public schools just continues to go down. At one time, the concern was that not enough students were taking advanced courses. But now we have reached a point where a very large portion of our high school graduates cannot read effectively, cannot write effectively and cannot do basic math effectively. If you think that I am exaggerating, please keep reading. We have never faced an education crisis of this magnitude in the entire history of our nation, and that has enormous implications for our future.

Dr. Kent Ingle is the president of Southeastern University, and he recently authored an excellent piece in which he warned that reading levels among incoming college students are so bad that many are struggling “to understand basic text on a page”…

A stunning report revealed that many university professors now find themselves teaching students who struggle to read, not just to interpret literature or write essays, but to understand basic text on a page. According to Fortune, a growing number of Gen Z students enter college unable to “read effectively,” forcing professors to break down even simple passages line by line.

That trend should alarm every parent, employer and policymaker in this country. It is not just an academic concern. It is a cultural crisis.

This is not some random guy that is making these claims.

This is the president of a major university.

I don’t understand how it is possible for millions upon millions of students to enter college without even being able to read on a basic level, but it is happening.

Sadly, the same thing is true for math skills.

Large numbers of students that are entering our colleges must take remedial math courses that teach concepts that should have been taught in elementary and middle school…

Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900—and most of those students don’t fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60 percent of students who took the previous version of the course couldn’t divide a fraction by two.) One of the course’s tutors noted that students faced more issues with “logical thinking” than with math facts per se. They didn’t know how to begin solving word problems.

The university’s problems are extreme, but they are not unique. Over the past five years, all of the other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, have seen the number of first-years who are unprepared for precalculus double or triple. George Mason University, in Virginia, revamped its remedial-math summer program in 2023 after students began arriving at their calculus course unable to do algebra, the math-department chair, Maria Emelianenko, told me.

If students in our public schools are not being taught basic reading skills and basic math skills, what are they being taught?

That is a very good question.

In many states, there always seems to be plenty of classroom time to discuss gender, the latest politically-correct pronouns and social justice issues.

But that isn’t why we send our kids to school.

We send them to school so that they will learn the basic skills that will enable them to successfully function as adults.

And in so many cases, that just isn’t happening.

We have millions upon millions of high school kids that are unable to read a contract or multiply three digit numbers without a calculator, but virtually all of them know about the “6-7” meme…

“6-7,” pronounced “six-seveeeeen,” is haunting school halls across the country (including South Park Elementary), making it the Gen Alpha nonsense phrase of the moment. Kids are shouting it in classrooms when a teacher turns to page 67, when lunchtime is 6 to 7 minutes away or for no reason at all. It’s become so ubiquitous that Dictionary.com named it the word of the year.

“It’s like a plague — a virus that has taken over these kids’ minds,” said Gabe Dannenbring, a seventh-grade science teacher in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “You can’t say any iteration of the numbers 6 or 7 without having at least 15 kids yell, ‘6-7!’”

It’s a joke without a punchline (or a setup, for that matter). 6-7 means nothing, but using it can make a student feel like a member of a bigger, cooler group of their peers.

We have failed our young people.

It takes an extraordinary amount of self-discipline to be successful in our society today, but millions upon millions of them are being allowed to slide through grade level after grade level without being forced to put in the hard work that will enable them to develop that self-discipline.

When I was growing up, I had a number of teachers that made sure that I worked hard.

But these days, many school officials are far more interested in preying on their students.

In Indiana, a high school secretary has just been charged with having sex with two different students…

An Indiana high school secretary has been accused of having sex with two students after her husband caught her with one of them and allegedly ‘battered’ her.

Alicia Hughes was arrested Saturday after an investigation unveiled her alleged sexual relationship with two teenagers.

The 31-year-old was caught by her husband while she was with an 18-year-old Randolph Eastern School Corporation student on Friday night, Union City police said.

And in Florida, a band teacher has been arrested for having sex with “multiple students”…

A North Miami Beach band teacher has been arrested after he was accused of inappropriate relationships with multiple students.

Jose Francisco Montes-Guedez, 40, was arrested Friday on two counts of offenses against students by authority figures, two counts of battery – touch or strike, and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child, Miami-Dade jail records showed.

According to an arrest report, Montes is a band teacher at Alonzo and Tracy Mourning Senior High Biscayne Bay School in North Miami Beach.

There are stories like this in the news every single day.

But because none of the teachers is named “Epstein”, those stories don’t get much notice.

Our system of public education needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

If we don’t prepare our young people for the real world, they will fail.

At this stage, many of our young people are so unprepared for the real world that they actually need their parents to go to job interviews with them…

Over 50% of college-age job seekers had their parents sit with them at an in-person interview, a January survey by Resume Templates found. What’s more, over 35% of surveyed individuals reported parents either writing a cover letter or performing a test assignment for them.

Julia Toothacre, a career coach and chief career strategist at the survey group, said she had never seen parents this involved in their child’s job searches in the past.

“When I was doing career development at the college level, we would see parents come in to talk about majors and sometimes career choices, but they weren’t sitting in on interviews or communicating with managers,” Toothacre told The College Fix in a recent interview via email.

A couple of decades ago, it would have been unthinkable for a parent to accompany a college graduate to a job interview.

Now it happens all the time.

But at least our young people are happy, right?

Well, actually that is not the case at all.

In fact, suicide rates among Gen Z adults have been absolutely soaring…

Suicide rates among Gen Z adults have unnaturally increased in the U.S. over the past ten years according to new figures.

Axios Notes that there has been a 16.4 percent increase in suicides among the demographic between 2014-2024.

The locations where the rise is most prominent, the report notes are in the South and the Midwest, with black and Hispanic men, accounting for a huge 85 percent of the increase.

A Stateline analysis of data also shows that Georgia experienced the largest increase in suicide rates over the past decade, among 18 to 27-year-olds, with the state’s suicide rate in the age group increasing by a massive 64.9 percent.

Reading those statistics should break your heart.

The system has failed an entire generation of Americans.

If we don’t get it fixed, things will only get worse.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.