Marie Bradley: Children deserve education that prepares them for workforce, adulthood

To The Daily Sun,

One of the latest attacks against President Donald Trump is his executive order to close the Department of Education. He wants to return educational standards back to parents and each state.

Daily we hear how poorly students are doing even though the United States spends more per student than any other nation ($268 billion annually). Two recent stories concern students who graduated from high school with honors (3.4 GPA) without having the ability to read or write and were suing their schools. How can that be readers ask? Instead of making sure those students could read and write, the students were directed to use special computer programs that did the work for them.

Test results in reading and math nationally for our 4th and 8th graders have declined year after year. According to a U.S. News report, the 2023 test results for Laconia students show:

• 32% of elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading and 30% tested at or above proficient level for math
• 34% of middle school students tested at or above proficient level for reading and 21% tested at or above level for math
• 41% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading and 16% tested at or above for math

That means in Laconia on average nearly 70% of students are below proficiency.

Federally mandated education requirements have been failing our children. According to Martin West, vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, student skills have eroded due to lack of school accountability and the era of “screen-based childhood”.

Learning math, reading, English, history should be a top priority and not the latest social justice or gender topic.

Our children deserve an education that prepares them for the workforce and adulthood.

Marie Bradley

Laconia