According to the Nebraska Department of Education website, the percentage of 11th graders proficient in language arts (reading and writing) in the 2024-2025 school year was less than 35%, and their proficiency in mathematics was less than 33%.
That means that about two out of every three Nebraska high school juniors lack the education necessary to effectively compete, or even get by, in an increasingly complex world.
Why is this happening? Although he was speaking more broadly than just education, I believe Secretary of State Marco Rubio captured the root of the problem in the speech he recently gave in Greece. He said:
“Too often these days, we build downwards. We design our standards to ensure no one will lose; we preoccupy ourselves more with the comfort of the worst than the potential of the best.”
That is basically what is happening in our schools. The education of 90% of the students is being sacrificed to cater to the 10% who are disruptive, or are unwilling to learn, or lack the ability to learn the material.
This, by and large, is not the fault of the teachers. They are not allowed to send the 10% to various other classrooms that are designed to deal with the various issues of the 10%. So the 90% are sacrificed to cater to the 10%.
In my opinion, giving teachers the authority to do this would, in just a few years, substantially increase the percentage of Nebraska students who are proficient in language arts and mathematics.
There are other things that would help as well. For example, do not allow cell phones or internet connected devices in the classroom. And do not give everyone A’s, if they have not earned them. If a child is doing C, D, or F work, put it on the report card so that the parents will know that the child needs help.
And let’s put to rest the idea that “rote” learning is bad.
Rote learning, as the term is used in education, is memorizing facts. For example, important historical events and when that happened, multiplication tables, the three branches of the federal government and what they do, and the historic success of the free enterprise system and the historic failures of communism and socialism.
But what we cannot do is to continue doing what we’re doing, because the test scores clearly show that it is not working.
And before someone says that I do not know what I am talking about because I am not a teacher or a school administrator, allow me to lay out my educational experience.
I was the valedictorian of my high school class at Tekamah High School, a Phi Beta Kappa (the nation’s premier academic honorary) physics graduate at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, an honors graduate of Harvard Law School and an MBA graduate of Harvard Business School.
In sum, I know what a good education looks like and it is clear from the test scores that well over half of Nebraska’s K-12 students are not getting it. Nebraska parents and taxpayers need to demand changes like those recommended here so that our children get the education that they deserve and the taxpayers get the results that they expect.
— Former Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School and the author of a Christian novel, Eavesdropping on Lucifer, available on Amazon.com.