Why US Education Has Gotten So Much Worse—and What Parents Can Actually Do About It
The first time I saw a ninth grader cry over a five-paragraph essay, I thought she was having a bad day. By the fourth time, I started to see a pattern. She wasn’t afraid of writing. She was afraid of being wrong. She kept asking, “Is this what you want?” and every time I said, “There isn’t one right answer,” she just looked at her desk like I’d changed the rules mid-game.
I’ve been teaching for fifteen years, mostly middle school English. I’m not here to say “kids these days” aren’t trying. Most of them are trying harder than we think. But something has shifted, and it’s not just the test scores. It’s the atmosphere around school itself.
Let me start with a normal Wednesday morning. A student comes in, hood up, phone in her lap under the desk. I ask about a reading assignment. She says, “I did it, but I left it at home.” We both know she didn’t do it. But she’s also not lying in the way adults think she is. She did look at the title. She did think about reading it. She just couldn’t start. Something about opening a blank Google Doc felt like standing at the bottom of a hill in the dark.
Parents are feeling it too. I get emails that used to be rare, now they’re weekly: “Can you just tell me what he missed? We have so much going on.” That’s not neglect. That’s survival. Everyone is stretched thin, and school becomes one more thing to manage instead of a place to grow.
So why has American education gotten so much worse? I don’t think it’s one big reason. It’s a pile of small ones.
First, the classroom used to have softer edges. There was time for curiosity. Now the curriculum is so packed with standards and end-of-year expectations that teachers are forced to move on even when no one understood the lesson. I recently had to skip a unit on personal budgeting because the state test prep required more practice on analyzing historical speeches. That felt wrong. But I have to choose between what’s useful and what’s measured.
And that’s the heart of it. We’ve turned school into a measuring machine. Kids feel it. They use words like “point” and “grade” more than “learn” or “wonder.” When I ask a student why they liked a book, they often answer with what score they got on the quiz. That’s not their fault. That’s what they’ve been trained to think school is for.
I remember teaching a group project ten years ago. Students had paper maps, colored pencils, and they argued about where to put a river. It was messy and loud and one kid fell asleep. Now, if I plan forty-five minutes of group work, half the class may be pulled out for counseling, or one student is missing because of an anxiety episode, or another is catching up on a missed test from the week before. I’m not saying these kids are broken. I’m saying the system keeps adding roles for teachers—counselor, nurse, food provider, tech support—without taking anything off the table.
Schools are being asked to carry what families, clinics, and communities used to share. And when that’s the reality, teaching fractions becomes a daily negotiation. It’s hard to teach a lesson on ratios when a kid hasn’t slept because their house is near train tracks, or they’re worried about rent. That’s not an excuse for declining scores. It’s an explanation. Kids aren’t falling behind only because they don’t study. They’re falling behind because their heads are full.
Parents often ask me, “How can I help with homework?” And I give them the same answer every time. Don’t help with homework. I mean, don’t sit and quiz them, don’t re-explain every problem, don’t hover. Instead, change the setting. Leave a physical book on the kitchen table, not a tablet. Set a timer for fifteen minutes, and during that time you also sit and read something, not on your phone. No one talks. Then it’s over. That sounds small, but it does more than a thousand flashcard sessions. It tells a kid that learning is something you do with your body in a real place, not a fire drill you have to survive alone.
Another thing that works: stop interrogating kids about their day. “How was school?” is the worst question on earth because it’s too broad. Try “What was something confusing today?” That’s a different door. If they say “nothing,” ask “What was the last thing you didn’t finish?” That question is concrete, low-stakes, and surprisingly honest. It helps a child see that not knowing isn’t shameful. It’s just the first step.
I’ve also changed how I grade. I stopped putting a letter score on every assignment. Some assignments are “practice” and they only get a check mark and a comment. The first time I did this, a student raised his hand and asked, “Why isn’t this worth points?” I said, “Because I want to see what you think, not whether you guessed the right answer.” He looked almost scared. Then, a week later, he handed in a paragraph that wasn’t perfect. But he added a weird, strange sentence that was actually his. And that was a bigger win than any A.
There’s more nuance too. It’s not all worse. Schools today are better at noticing learning differences. There’s more awareness around dyslexia and ADHD. More kids get support without being labeled “lazy.” That part has improved. We can’t pretend the whole system has collapsed when some kids are finally being seen for who they are.
Still, the overall feeling is that school has become more anxious. Teachers are more hesitant to try big projects because they worry about parent complaints about grading. Schools are cutting recess and art and shop class—the exact places where kids learn to tolerate frustration and work with their hands. And screens have changed everything. Not because they’re evil, but because they make delay uncomfortable. A student who needs eight seconds to think before answering is now already scrolling. A child who used to doodle during a lecture is now playing a game with a friend across the room. The brain is still developing, but the environment around it has become faster and louder.
So what do we do? I don’t have a grand solution. I have small ones. Turn off notifications during homework time. Keep a pile of magazines in the bathroom. Ask teachers what your child is curious about, not just what they missed. And if a kid says they hate school, don’t immediately fix it. Ask them what they’d change if they were principal for a day. Sometimes their answers are surprisingly thoughtful. Sometimes they just want lunch to be longer. But at least they’re thinking about school as something they can shape rather than something that happens to them.
Right now, I’m still trying to get Maya to turn in a paragraph without apologizing for not having it. I’m not sure if the problem is her phone, her workload, the test prep, or something I’ll never know about. But I show up, I lower the pressure, and I try to give her one reason to believe that learning isn’t a trap.
That might be all any of us can do for now. The classroom doesn’t look like it did fifteen years ago. It’s quieter in some ways, louder in others. But it’s still full of kids who are doing their best with the tools they’ve been given. The least we can do is help them see that they’re more than a grade.
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