Why Has US Education Gotten So Much Worse? A Teacher Explains What She Sees Every Day
The first time I noticed something had shifted was during a reading group last fall. I had pulled three fourth-graders around a small table, and we were reading a short story about a boy who builds a raft. The whole thing was maybe two pages. One kid made it through half a page and then put his head down. Another started drawing in the margin. A third kept looking at the clock, even though we had only been there for six minutes.
I asked them what they thought the boy would do next. Nobody answered. Not because they were being difficult. They just looked tired in a way that didn’t have anything to do with sleep.
People ask me all the time why American education has gotten so much worse. It’s usually a parent whose child is struggling, or a grandparent who remembers school being different. They want a simple answer. I understand that. But after fifteen years in the classroom, I think the real problem isn’t that kids are less smart or teachers less committed. It’s that the conditions around learning have quietly collapsed, and we’ve asked schools to hold everything together with duct tape.
Let me give you a picture of an ordinary morning. My district requires ninety minutes of reading instruction. In theory, that’s great. In practice, about twenty of those minutes go to transition time, collecting homework, waiting for kids who forgot their pencils, and doing a quick review for the state test. Another twenty go to a worksheet that’s supposed to “prepare students for the format” of the test. By the time we actually sit down to read and talk about a real book, thirty minutes have passed. That’s not enough time to build the kind of deep focus that strong readers need. It’s enough time to skim.
And it’s not just the schedule. It’s the culture outside the classroom. Kids come in already wearing headphones or staring at a phone in the hall. They spend hours each evening watching short videos that are designed to hold their attention for fifteen seconds. Then they’re asked to sit still and follow a story for fifteen minutes. That’s not a motivation problem. That’s a stamina problem. Their brains are being shaped by one environment, and then we expect them to suddenly operate in another.
I remember a parent-teacher conference a couple of years ago. A mom was frustrated because her son, a fifth-grader, had just been placed in the lowest reading group. She said, “He used to love reading. Now he says it’s boring.” That broke my heart a little, because he wasn’t lying. The reading we do in school is often so chopped up—comprehension questions, vocabulary drills, graphic organizers—that the story becomes secondary. We’ve turned reading into a skill to be measured rather than an experience to be had. And kids are smart enough to notice.
That’s one of the biggest reasons education feels worse: we’ve squeezed the life out of it. In order to push up test scores, many schools cut science experiments, social studies, art, and free play. But those are the very things that give kids context for learning. A child who has never heard about the Great Depression struggles to understand “Of Mice and Men.” A child who never built a ramp will struggle to understand fractions. When we strip school down to testable skills, we make it harder for kids to think, not easier.
I’m not saying every school is terrible. Some schools are doing remarkable work with the same challenges. I’ve seen teachers give up their lunch breaks to tutor, buy books with their own money, and build calm classrooms where kids feel safe. But individual effort can’t fix systemic problems. Class sizes have crept up. Special education funding is often stretched thin. And behavioral supports are getting weaker because there aren’t enough counselors to go around.
There’s also something that doesn’t get talked about enough: poverty. For a lot of kids, school is the only place with heat, meals, and structure. If they don’t have quiet space at home, if they’re managing adults’ stress, if they slept in a car or in a crowded apartment, then reading comprehension is not the actual issue. The issue is survival. Schools have become the last line of defense, and when that defense is weak, all the curriculum in the world doesn’t matter.
That doesn’t mean parents are powerless. I know that sounds like a contradiction after everything I just said, but hear me out. There are small, realistic things that help a lot more than most people think.
First: read something on paper with your child for fifteen minutes a night. No quiz, no questions, no “what was the main idea.” Just read. Even if they’re in middle school. Let them see you reading too. That’s not a magic fix, but it builds a habit. The act of sitting still with a physical book—without a screen nearby—trains attention in a way that a tablet just can’t.
Second: put phones in another room during homework. Not even because you expect your child to work the whole time. But the mere presence of a phone reduces working memory. A buzz, a glow, a thought about a message—it all pulls attention away. You don’t need to ban the phone forever. Just move it out of sight for forty minutes.
Third: talk about stories in ordinary life. At dinner, ask “What did you think of that character’s choice?” or “Would you have done the same thing?” That kind of conversation is practice for reading comprehension, because it gets kids thinking about motives and consequences. You don’t have to be a teacher to do it. You just have to be curious.
I’m not pretending this fixes the system. It won’t lower class sizes or give schools enough counselors. It won’t bring back science class or free time. But it gives kids a small anchor at home, something they can hold onto when the school day is chaotic. And honestly, that anchor can make the difference between a child who gives up on reading and one who finds a way through.
I still don’t have a tidy answer for why American education has gotten worse. Maybe because the word “worse” hides too many different problems. But I know what I see in my classroom. Kids who are tired. Teachers who are stretched. Schools that are expected to be hospitals, counseling centers, and testing factories all at once. And yet, every once in a while, a kid looks up from a page and says something unexpected, like “Why did that character lie?” And I remember that learning is still alive in there. It’s just buried deeper than it used to be, and it needs a little more help getting out.
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