A report released by the nonprofit organization Independent Women argues that excessive government oversight is a major factor behind declining student performance and growing dysfunction in America’s schools.
The report, first obtained by The Daily Caller, urges lawmakers to scale back federal involvement in education policy following disastrous test scores from 2024. The call for reform comes after the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that one-third of eighth graders and 40 percent of fourth graders failed to meet reading benchmarks.
“[W]ith red tape and bureaucracy, teaching has become far more difficult than needed,” the report stated. “If we genuinely want to improve education for American children, teachers must have the training, support, authority, and materials necessary to accomplish the monumental task.”
Among the most urgent issues cited in the report is low teacher retention, which it claims is partly due to unclear disciplinary guidelines. As definitions of discrimination have shifted in recent years, schools have reportedly implemented more lenient discipline policies to avoid accusations of racial bias.
“Prior to 2014, the Department of Education applied a ‘disparate treatment’ standard when it came to allegations of discrimination: it defined discrimination as difference in treatment and would investigate individual allegations of discrimination that were reported to the Department,” the report explained.
The report criticized a 2023 letter from the Biden administration that it claimed “promoted non-exclusionary discipline and focused on racial issues almost exclusively,” and that “it continued to recommend failed restorative justice policies.” In April, the Trump administration issued updated guidance, calling the Biden-era approach an effort to “weaponize Title VI to promote an approach to school discipline based on discriminatory equity ideology.”
The report warns that with federal guidance swinging “wildly back and forth between presidential administrations,” schools have been left “in the dark about what they are and aren’t allowed to do to discipline students.”
“If teachers and individual schools have the ability to discipline their students based on their knowledge of those students, schools are more likely to be safe spaces where teachers are able to teach and students are able to learn,” it stated.
Additionally, the report calls for an end to social-emotional learning (SEL) programs, which it claims burden teachers with responsibilities more suited to mental health professionals.
“Teachers are not therapists,” the report argued. “Expecting teachers both to teach and to perform unlicensed group therapy by way of SEL gets in the way of both the learning and the emotional well-being of the children assigned to them.”
