The Patriot Post® · The Nation's Basic-Skill Malaise

The 2006 movie “Idiocracy,” starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, was intended as a science fiction comedy, not a prediction of future America. However, a recent survey of our nation’s least-educated workers has found that proficiency in basic life skills is diminishing.

Among America’s least educated workers aged 16 to 65, basic skills such as reading a thermometer, planning a trip, or finding information on a website cannot be taken for granted. “According to a global test of adult know-how, which measures job readiness and problem-solving among workers in industrialized countries,” The Wall Street Journal reports, “the least-educated American workers between the ages of 16 and 65 are less able to make inferences from a section of text, manipulate fractions, or apply spatial reasoning — even as the most-educated are getting smarter.”

Furthermore, America is falling behind the rest of the developed world in basic skills and knowledge. This problem was exacerbated by the response to the COVID pandemic.

Literacy and math are where the skill levels have dropped. In 2017, 19% of American adults scored at the lowest literacy level; that total has now risen to 28%. Similarly, 29% of adults scored at the lowest math skill level; that percentage is now 34%.

Peggy Carr, commissioner of a statistical agency at the Education Department, observed, “There’s a dwindling middle in the United States in terms of skills. Over time we’ve seen more adults clustered at the bottom.”

Of the 31 industrialized nations that participated in the survey, the U.S. ranked 14th in literacy, 15th in problem-solving, and 24th in numeracy. Over the past few years, the U.S. has steadily slid behind the rest of the industrialized world.

As noted earlier, the COVID pandemic significantly negatively impacted these scores, but the problem of falling skills knowledge preceded the pandemic. The bigger culprit for America’s sinking skills knowledge is the nation’s failing public school system.

Too many Americans are simply not being educated well in our public education system.

While there is no quick fix or easy solution to this problem, what would help are actions that would be designed to make schools better. Adopting school choice would likely be the biggest and even quickest avenue to working toward effective change.

It also raises questions over the value or liability of the Department of Education. Since its creation during the Carter administration back in 1979, has American education gotten better or worse? Given these test results, at least over the past couple of decades, the answer is a resounding no.

This is why Donald Trump has floated the idea of eliminating the department. Not only does it appear to be a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars, given the educational results, but it also seemingly only exists to push political agendas and support for teachers unions rather than empowering parents and students.

While this news is discouraging, it could motivate America to change how it has handled public education for the past few decades. It also offers an excellent incentive for more innovation in education, including the burgeoning homeschooling movement. It’s an exciting time for an opportunity for real change.