For Americans who care about their public schools and have watched them poked at over the years like an abused dog in a cage, Idrees Kahloon’s piece in The Atlantic, “America is Sliding Toward Illiteracy,” is one more painful read among many.
This chatter is nothing new. It’s a worn-out rerun, demeaning to teachers, parents, and children, and meant to destroy America’s free public schools. This isn’t about lifting public education but ending it.
We’ve been here before. The difference is that we now have an administration that is callously dismantling the U.S. ED, sending money to the states that will likely be used for vouchers, and surreptitiously ending child protections.
Historian Diane Ravitch states:
…I have read the same story hundreds of times. In the 19th century, these warnings that children were not learning anything in school were commonplace. The cry of “crisis in the schools” appeared frequently in every decade of the 20th century. We are only 25 years into this century, and similar views appear in the popular press regularly.
Instead of complaining about our schools and lambasting them nonstop, the critics should be complaining about poverty and inequality. These are the root causes of poor student outcomes.
Kahloon chatters about the impact of iPhones on kids, citing Jonathan Haidt’s research, which many agree with and others describe as “complicated.”
His subtitle is the same old chatter:
Declining standards and low expectations are destroying American education.
And later:
In short, schools have demanded less and less from students—who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less.
Have schools demanded less and less?
Ask kindergartners now expected to do first-grade work, including reading, whose parents still must fight for recess. Where’s the developmental “science” surrounding that? Or ask high schoolers pressured to choose a career and ranked according to the number of college advanced placement classes they take.
For thirty years, schools have been controlled by this same chattering with promises to fix them. If those promises had been sincere and effective, we’d be celebrating public schools. Instead, we watch Education Secretary Linda McMahon, head of a wrestling organization, a person with no education degrees or experience, put the final touches on their destruction, ending student protections, for even the most vulnerable students (Stetler, 2025).
Low expectations and high standards chatter became President George W. Bush’s hallmark school reform under No Child Left Behind and never, despite Kahloon’s claim to the contrary, has it left. Researchers at the time questioned whether the standards were attainable (Hoff, 2006). Yet, Kahloon positively highlights NCLB chatter that includes: the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
American writer, progressive activist, and educator, Jonathan Kozol stated in The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America:
It is one of those deadly lies, which, by sheer repetition, is at length accepted by large numbers of Americans as, perhaps, a rough approximation of the truth. But it is not the truth, and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the poor and, if it is not forcefully resisted and denounced, it is going to lead our nation even further in a perilous direction (p.284).
Did students struggle to read in 1992?
Even when there has been good news about schools, it’s suppressed. Kahloon states:
Test scores from NAEP, short for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released this year show that 33 percent of eighth graders are reading at a level that is “below basic”—meaning that they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage or to even summarize its main idea. That is the highest share of students unable to meaningfully read since 1992.
Gerald Bracey, the late Stanford Ph.D. psychologist who researched public schools, wrote in What You Should Know About The War Against America’s Public Schools,
…in July 1992, an international study of reading skills appeared. It showed American students among the best in the world. The Department of Education called no press conference. No media reported the study. Over two months elapsed before Education Week found out about it—by accident. A friend of then-Education Week reporter Robert Rothman sent him a copy from Germany (p.60).
Bracey explained how this news got pushed under the rug, and if one listens to Kahloon it’s still collecting dust there.
What about standardized tests?
Years of high-stakes testing, moving children like regimental soldiers through each grade level, and including students with disabilities, changes how children perform on tests. It ignores how they learn individually and how additional time, good teaching and support can help them succeed.
Kahloon notes that it was punitive. But he never mentions huge class sizes. Nor does he discuss the critical importance of well-prepared teachers or what they think as they vacate classrooms across the country.
What are school districts spending money on?
Kahloon brings in Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank, and they chatter about the huge amount of school spending, always a Republican talking point. They negatively allude to the use of COVID funding for better HVAC systems, like clean air isn’t important in schools.
But neither discuss here billions spent on Chromebooks and online learning over the years. Who’s evaluating the K-12 education technology spending that reached $30 billion in 2024 alone, and which is projected to nearly double by 2033 (Prothero, 2025)? Who is considering how online reading programs affect student reading ability?
How much more will be poured in AI without concern for the risks to children?.
Why doesn’t anyone consider Common Core affecting instruction since 2010?
Nor is there a peep about corporate driven Common Core State Standards begun in 2010 often described as age and grade inappropriate. Common Core still dominates the curriculum and online instruction to this day. Kahloon ignores the bad effects of third grade retention on states whose reading scores he brags about.
One of the worst omissions is that he fails to mention the loss of school libraries and librarians in many schools. If there’s anything that causes a student to slide into illiteracy, it’s not having access to books!
The disparaging of public schools will continue until they are no more.
Sadly, policymakers, may listen to Kahloon, unless they wake up. Americans look to raise standards higher!
In Virginia they’re revising their goals upward. One only hopes with a new pro-public school governor things might improve. In Oklahoma, sadly, they’re upping the ante. In Florida they’re bringing in New York’s controversial Success Academy charter school.
Instead of helping students and supporting teachers and lifting them from poverty, this chatter that teachers don’t hold students to high standards, tests must be high stakes, every child on the same page at the same time, or public schools fail is a scheme. It was a scheme with A Nation at Risk and NCLB and it is still a scheme.
References
Kahloon, I. (2025, October 14). America is Sliding Toward Illiteracy, Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/education-decline-low-expectations/684526/.
Stetler, P. (2025, November 1). The Slow Death of Special Education. The Atlantic, Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/11/special-education-shutdown/684777/.
Hoff, D.J. (2006, November 22), Researchers Ask Whether NCLB’s Goals for Proficiency Are Realistic. Education Week, Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/researchers-ask-whether-nclbs-goals-for-proficiency-are-realistic/2006/11.
Kozol, J. (2005). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Crown Publishers.
Bracey, G.W. (2003). What You Should Know About The War Against America’s Public Schools. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Prothero, A. (2025, October, 10). Schools Spend $30 Billion on Tech. How Can They Invest In It More Wisely? Education Week. Retrieved at https://www.edweek.org/leadership/schools-spend-30-billion-on-tech-how-can-they-invest-in-it-more-wisely/2025/10.
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