The House is on Fire. Whom do you call?

 The House is on fire.  Whom do you call?

The reading scores of US high school seniors are the lowest they have been in three decades according to the results of new federal testing.  Math scores aren’t that much better; they are the lowest they have been since 2005.  These are the results of the National Assessment of Education Progress or the NAEP.  These assessments are generally considered to be harder than the various state assessments and are the gold standard for reliability.

Based on the results, about one-third of the kids tested did not have basic reading skills. Basic reading is considered 5th grade.  These are HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS!  It was no better in math.  Nearly HALF of the kids scored below the basic level so that means they have not mastered skills like using percentages.

These results are a stark decline from recent years.  So, who or what is to blame?  As in most questions, depends on whom you ask.   Experts say that the year(s) of online teaching during COVID is at fault.  Yet the percentage of kids in the 90^th percentile (meaning they scored better than 90% of the kids taking the test) has not changed.  So why weren’t they impacted by online instruction? 

One explanation is that over the last decade, kids and adults just aren’t reading because faces are in screens.   Yet companies like Barnes & Noble are doing well and expanding.  For 2025, the sale of print books has gone down .9%, so less than 1%.  Other reasons offered are that red states are putting money into private school vouchers and public schools are losing out.  Blue states are focused on social supports like nutrition and counseling and not on academic improvement.  Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, says the scores are terrible and are the result of the Dept. of Education spending money that should be going to the states.  But, the Department of Education is sending its money to the states.

The achievement declines cut across all demographic divides of race, class and gender.  Our kids aren’t achieving at basic levels in math or reading.  What does that promise for the country’s workforce and the ability of citizen to make informed decisions?

Margaret Spelling, who served as education secretary under President George W. Bush and now leads the Bipartisan Policy Center, said declining achievement is “an economic emergency that threatens our work force and national competitiveness”.  She believes they are a reflection of Trump’s priorities.  “This is not the right moment to talks about closing the Department of Education.  When your house is on fire, you don’t talk about making renovations.”

 

Who is writing that INDIVIDUAL IEP

Who is Writing That Individual IEP?

Children receiving special education services are entitled to an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP).  These plans are individual to the student are supposedly written by the student’s teacher.  However, that “ain’t necessarily so”.  In 2024-25, 57% of special education teachers acknowledged they used AI to write IEP’s.

It is not clear if the use of AI to write an IEP is legal under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).  The statute requires that IEP’s be unique and individual to the child.   Additionally, there are issues with the Family Educational  Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), particularly if freely available tools like ChatGPT are used.  The Center for Democracy & Technology raises concerns about accuracy, bias and other issues with information generated through AI.

Advocates acknowledge the tools save time which is always crucial for teachers.  But on the negative side, the use easily leads to the denial of individual needs of the student.  Most experts believe the use of AI in writing IEP’s is much greater than teachers are admitting to in surveys.

There are two values at the very center of IDEA.  The first is requirement that every child with a disability receives a free and appropriate education. The second fundamental value is that the education be individual to that child’s special needs. That appropriate education is defined by the IEP and is a contract for service to the child.  If the “I” in IEP is lost to technology, where does that leave the fundamental value of an individualized program.   The anniversary of the first Ford Motor Company assembly line recently occurred.  Is AI taking us to assembly line “individualized” instruction?  Who is writing that IEP, a teacher who knows the child or a machine that knows the programmer?