In 1975, Congress passed a law that mandated mainstreaming students with disabilities. The majority of funding for such programs was never enacted, leaving schools crippled with lower student achievement, increased teacher turnover, and wider educational equity gaps, particularly impacting low-income and minority students. These well-intentioned programs have led to overcrowded classrooms, reduced access to specialized services (such as special education), and fewer extracurricular opportunities, hindering long-term student success and limiting workforce readiness.
The inevitable subsequent shortcomings of education opened the door to other assaults. In the lack of adequate funding, schools frequently cut arts, music, advanced placement courses, and crucial special education, behavioral intervention, and occupational therapy services, most of which offset the likelihood of substance abuse and are key for some students’ success in life. Opportunities are increasingly lost for the social bonding which occurs for participants in school extracurriculars like band or debate to form important relationships that can extend throughout lifetimes. [1]
When Congress passed a broad law on educating children with disabilities in 1975, it agreed to kick in federal dollars to help cover the excess costs of meeting students’ individual education needs. In the time since, federal funding for what’s now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has consistently fallen short of the target included in the law, leaving state and local officials on the hook. Education groups, who call that shortfall an unfulfilled promise, have long campaigned for “fully funding” IDEA, which underpins services for nearly 7 million students with disabilities. More federal funding for IDEA, which gets $13.6 billion in the current budget, would help special education programs, they say, but it would also more broadly affect all students as schools would no longer have to pull as much from their general education budgets to meet the law’s mandates.
The failure of Congress in 1975 has meant fifty subsequent years of underfunded public education in the United States. Despite some improvements and recoveries, experts note that student achievements have not consistently regained the levels reached in the mid-1960s, while international rankings for math and science have dropped in more recent decades.[2] This educational decline has served as a convenient back door which religionists began using as a justification (along with civil rights legislation forcing school integration and other factors) to put children in private schools.
Currently, according to the Congressional Research Service, funding is at less than 12 percent, and the IDEA shortfall in the 2024-2025 school year nationwide was $38.66 billion. A bipartisan bill currently in Congress, the IDEA Full Funding Act, would fully fund the IDEA programs. By forcing the federal government to meet its obligation of funding 40% of special education costs, local districts could free up their general budgets—currently used to fill the special education funding gap—to support regular education initiatives.
As a result of this deficiency and along with the obsessive intentions of the new Puritans, even greater burden now falls upon public schools as private and religious school vouchers allow those schools to deny admission to special education students. Only about 58.7% of all private schools in the U.S. enroll at least one student with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or a formally identified disability. While overall enrollment is lower in Catholic schools, they have higher inclusion rates, with 72.7% to 83.8% serving students with disabilities. This means that only about 1.4% of total students in private schools have formally identified disabilities, although studies suggest a higher 6-9% of students may actually have needs.
This funding gap causes inadequate disability services in public schools. Ironically, as more funding is diverted from public schools via vouchers, schools have even fewer resources to serve students with disabilities, accelerating the demand for school choice and further diminishing public education resources.
Exacerbating this problem is a continuing increase in the number of handicapped students. The number of students with disabilities served under federal programs has roughly doubled since the mid-1970s, growing from approximately 3.6 million in 1976-77 to over 7.5 million by 2022-23. Students with disabilities now account for 15% of total public school enrollment, up from 8.3% in 1976, dramatically increasing the financial burden on public schools. This rise is driven by increased diagnoses of ADHD, autism, and severe anxiety (especially post-pandemic), coupled with reduced stigma, better screening, and greater awareness of legal rights for accommodations.
In classrooms where students with disabilities lack a dedicated personal attendant, responsibility for bathroom and feeding needs falls on school-provided staff, typically special education teachers, para-educators (TAs), or classroom aides. These services are legally mandated under a student’s IEP (Individualized Education Program) or 504 Plan to ensure participation in the least restrictive environment, but are often not provided but to inadequate funding.
As a result, classroom teachers have been forced to step away from teaching the rest of the class to personally attend key tasks including toileting support, feeding, dressing, hygiene (such as nose wiping, menstrual care), and mobility assistance like transfers or repositioning. This care often includes behavior management, medication supervision, and facilitating meal times. Ideally, such duties would fall to paraprofessionals trained and hired to provide such care, but lack of school funds often leaves these duties up to classroom teachers who are not only not trained for such efforts, but also not able to accommodate the needs of the rest of their students.
No wonder teachers are leaving the profession. Data indicates that 51% of classroom teachers feel ill-equipped to implement required IEP services, and high turnover exists due to excessive workloads in special education. One elementary teacher stated that by the time she had tended one student’s temper tantrums and assaults on other students plus feeding and bathroom duties in her first grade class, she had almost no time left to actually teach the other 23 students in her classroom.[3]
That unfunded mandate continues to echo through much of the failure cited today in justification for school vouchers. No one can claim that promoters of IDEA foresaw the lack of funding perpetuated by Congress or the long term role that failure would have in the promotion of school vouchers, but in hindsight the facts are clear: the compromise of public education quality due to the underfunded mandate of IDEA contributed significantly to a rising call for school vouchers.
Adding Insult to Injury
Eliminating the federal department overseeing education is just one of several recent attacks on U.S. public education. As recently as 20 years ago, the United States was ranked No.1 in high school and college education. Sadly, by 2025, in the World Top 20 Project’s Final Rankings of 201 nations’ education systems, the list of best twenty educated countries for 2025 does not include the United States. The U.S. education system generally ranks in the middle to lower tier of developed nations for K-12, particularly struggling in mathematics while performing better in science and reading. According to 2022 PISA data, the U.S. ranked 34th in math, 16th in science, and 9th in reading among 81 education systems, though it remains a global leader in higher education.[4]
Although funding is a critical criterion for the system, American students are also falling behind due to a combination of pandemic-era learning disruptions, increased technology distractions, a deepening teacher shortage, and systemic inequality. Scores in reading and math dropped to historic lows following 2020, with declines continuing due to, in part, reduced student focus, weak accountability, and declining mental health. While remote learning during COVID-19 accelerated losses, student performance in math and reading was already declining since roughly 2013. Heavy use of smartphones and social media is linked to reduced attention spans and lower academic engagement. A 30% drop in teacher enrollment (2010–2019) and low salary growth have made it harder to fill positions.
The U.S. system leaves behind low-performing students more than other developed nations, with significant achievement gaps linked to school funding and location. Schools are facing lower standards and fewer consequences for poor performance compared to previous decades. In 2022–2023, schools reported that roughly half of their students were behind grade level. Many students arrive at college underprepared, leading to high drop-out rates and debt, as schools struggle to align with modern workforce demands. Experts suggest focusing on tutoring, intensive learning recovery, and addressing student mental health.
But that’s hardly enough. American schools face severe faculty shortages, largely due to high turnover rates and a shrinking pipeline of new teachers. Key causes include stagnant, low salaries relative to the cost of living, heavy workloads, declining professional prestige, and intense political scrutiny. These factors drive roughly 40% of new teachers to leave the profession within five years. To gain and maintain sufficient faculty, U.S. schools need competitive compensation, improved retention through mentorship, and broadened hiring criteria—such as valuing professional experience alongside terminal degrees.
Lack of respect for educators is most obvious in the approach to curriculum and teaching methods. Teachers in U.S. public schools often lack a voice in curriculum due to top-down mandates from state and district leaders, high-stakes testing pressures, and increasing political interference. Curricula and textbooks are frequently chosen by politicians and administrators to meet standardized goals or as sold by companies, forcing teachers to follow rigid plans rather than exercising their professional expertise to meet the needs of their students.
Evidence suggests U.S. education rankings and student achievement would likely improve if teachers had greater control over curriculum, textbooks, and school operations. Schools with high teacher leadership in school policy and curriculum development can see student proficiency scores in math and reading increase by at least 10 percentile points.
Teachers are the only persons in the entire educational system certified to have the necessary tools to actually educate. Specialized coursework educates prospective teachers in educational psychology, child development, curriculum planning, assessment methods, classroom management, and technology integration, alongside supervised student teaching. Their college educations for secondary education provide knowledge of history, mathematics, science (biology, chemistry, or physics), social studies, and English and language arts, and depending on their major field of study, experience with arts, music, foreign language, or physical education. Students preparing to teach at the elementary level focus on reading development, foundational math, science, and social studies.
Policymakers, politicians, and district leaders often prioritize compliance over teacher expertise, leaving educators restricted in what they can teach. Many educators self-censor their curriculum choices due to fear of backlash over political or social issues, knowing they lack support from administration if complaints arise. School leadership and state governments often impose curricula rather than collaborating with classroom experts, reducing teachers to implementers rather than creators. Also, the obsession with high-stakes testing encourages, or requires, teachers to follow a rigid script that ensures covering tested materials. In an Alice-in-Wonderland twist, potential backlash is itself a symptom of failed education among the voting public.
A love of learning significantly helps people later in life by protecting against cognitive decline, fostering adaptability, and increasing fulfillment in retirement. It boosts mental health by creating new neural pathways, reduces risks of dementia, and provides a sense of purpose. Lifelong learners maintain better social connections and professional relevance. A love of learning fosters critical thinking and curiosity, and empowers citizens to analyze complex issues rather than blindly following narratives, directly strengthening democracy. Educated individuals are more likely to participate in political processes, stay informed, and tolerate diverse viewpoints, reducing polarization.
Individuals with a love of learning often have higher education levels, which strongly correlates with increased voter turnout, political discussion, and civic engagement. Education teaches citizens to gather empirical evidence and analyze political issues rather than merely accepting rhetoric. A committed, curious citizenry is essential for identifying misinformation, especially as AI makes fabricated media harder to detect which, in turn, leads to the kind of political chaos currently occurring in the United States.
Teachers can and do foster a love of learning by cultivating curiosity, building safe environments, and modeling passion for their subjects. Teachers inspire this through student-centered learning, rather than just lecturing, which transforms students into active participants. Yet in a 2003 survey, only 24% of teachers identified “inspiring a love of learning” as the most important part of good teaching. While almost all teachers value curiosity, studies indicate that only a minority consistently implement high-level curiosity-promoting behaviors, with one study finding that only about 60% provide general opportunities to think or participate.
A group of University of California, Berkeley researchers found that when young children were shown exactly how to do something, they subsequently engaged in less exploration on their own than those who had received no explicit direction. Likewise, enthusiasm about reading—a key predictor of proficiency—tends to be lower when children are subjected to systematic phonics-based instruction rather than a literature-based approach, as Dominic Wyse and Charlotte Hacking explain in their new book The Balancing Act. Math teacher and research mathematician Paul Lockhart, meanwhile, wryly described the conventional curriculum in his field as “a proven cure for curiosity”—also an apt epithet for worksheets.[5]
Research also shows a sharp decline in curiosity as students get older, often due to school practices.[6]
This isn’t a failure of teachers, who often struggle to encourage student curiosity in the quagmire of rigid, test-driven school structures, packed curricula, and a focus on compliance over exploration. Structural constraints like inflexible schedules and standardized testing force teachers to prioritize efficiency over organic, student-led inquiry, which requires time to explore. Further, many teacher training programs prioritize classroom management and content delivery over teaching storytelling, curiosity hooks, or how to spark wonder.
Decreasing educational outcomes in the U.S. diminish long-term economic growth by reducing workforce productivity, lowering lifetime earnings, and increasing public expenditures on social services. A less skilled workforce slows innovation and global competitiveness, with gaps in achievement potentially causing trillions in lost GDP. These declines fuel social inequality, as students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are disproportionately affected, hindering social mobility. Long-term consequences include increased income inequality, higher crime rates, and strained public resources.
Perhaps more importantly, these shortcomings significantly alter the political landscape by driving educational realignment, widening the partisan divide, and potentially lowering overall voter turnout. Voters without college degrees increasingly favor the Republican Party, while college graduates lean Democratic, shifting party platforms and strengthening political polarization.
This political alignment resulting from diminished educational success is without question a driving principle behind Trump’s aggressive attack on the nation’s flagship universities.[7]
The Trump administration has gutted scientific research funding in the United States to punish ‘liberal’ universities and threatened research institutions with sanctions. …Universities are now afraid to collaborate with any other country. Private industry has not stepped up to fund basic research. Science and technology are collapsing in America and we are steadily falling behind the rest of the world. China, Japan, the European Union, and the United Kingdom have all maintained robust scientific research programs. Trump’s failure to understand the value of scientific knowledge is creating a Sputnik-like technology deficit in the U.S. that will be extremely difficult to overcome.
As reported in October 2025, the Trump administration sent schools a 10-point memo titled “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education.” Largely rejected, the compact would limit international student enrollment, force universities to share student information with the federal government, enforce the adoption of a specific definition of gender and threaten affinity spaces, and take action against actors that “punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
Enter the Heritage Foundation
Project 2025, a policy blueprint authored primarily by The Heritage Foundation, envisions a nation without a department of education. Currently more than 50 high-level officials and approximately 70 percent of the Cabinet have documented ties to the Heritage Foundation and the groups allied behind the Project 2025 agenda. The goal is to install a “4-pillar” plan to restructure the executive branch, focusing on conservative, and often right-wing, ideals. The project explicitly targets for removal or avoidance several ideologies and policies it deems anti-conservative, “woke,” or contrary to its vision of American society. A review of this “blueprint” reveals an absolute denial of science that puts human existence at risk.
The main ideas, policies, and ideologies to be avoided or eliminated by Project 2025 include: [8]
- The project treats “gender ideology” and “transgender ideology” as “social contagions” to be removed from public life, education, and government. It calls for outlawing transgender rights, ending protections for trans people in the military, and equating “transgender ideology” with pornography. Yet science has confirmed that gender identity exists on a spectrum, an unavoidable physical condition set in the womb including being born appearing female but have a 5-alpha reductase deficiency and grow a penis at age 12.
Such conditions of gender dysphoria often remain hidden until adolescence when hormones rise to manifest their genetic directives. What a tragedy for young people with one of these conditions who may be forced to suffer a condition becoming increasingly obvious as they move through adolescence. Medical treatments can mitigate the advancing crisis, but those represented by the Heritage Foundation (and others ignorant of science) would deny the existence of their conditions, creating not only a physical crisis but also emotional and psychological trauma. Needless to say, such a crisis severely undercuts a young person’s ability to gain an effective education.
Another hidden tragedy in this ignorance of science is that it embeds hypocrisy into religious thinking. Modern science has discovered not only the cause of such genetic factors, but also hormonal means of helping these people gain greater equilibrium in their conditions. In a rational consideration, to deny both the medical diagnosis as well as an effective treatment for gender dysphoria would also deny diagnosis and treatment for a myriad of other medical conditions: cancer, for example, or tuberculosis, epilepsy, or diabetes, all of which were considered total mysteries, frequently believed caused by divine punishment or demonic possession. What other conditions and treatments would the new Puritans discard from our society?
- Whether or not a person identifies as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (or Questioning) (LGBTQ) also falls into the science denialism of Christian Nationalists. As typical of religious extremists, other people’s private activities, in particular their sexual relationships, form a primary target for authoritarian control. Yet despite wishes to the contrary, sexual identity is not a matter of choice or ‘perversion.’
Genetics play a role in a person’s sexual identity, but it is highly complex. Hundreds of genetic variants can predispose a person to same-sex behavior, meaning DNA alone cannot predict a person’s sexuality. Scientists believe that conditions in the womb significantly influence sexual orientation. Factors such as fetal exposure to varying levels of sex hormones (like androgens) during critical periods of brain development and maternal immune responses during pregnancy help wire attraction before birth.
Separately, the environment can influence how genes work without changing the DNA sequence itself, a process called “epigenetics.” Some theories suggest epigenetic “switches” are passed down across generations and act to protect parents from hormonal extremes in the womb, which can subsequently influence brain development and attraction in their offspring.
The reality of science should serve to deny religionists the ability to blame matters of gender and identity as a sinful choice. It should eliminate any idea of forcing such persons into conversion therapy, either private practice or facilities operating under the scientifically debunked premise that LGBTQ+ identities are a mental illness, defect, or choice and using harmful practices such as faith-based boot camps or church-operated programs that use prayer, isolation, and guilt to “cure” same-sex attraction along with extreme measures including physical labor, emotional abuse, and deprivation.
- Another Puritan initiative seeks to purge DEI programs, race-conscious admissions, and “wokeism” from federal agencies, the military, and educational institutions, labeling them “managerialist left-wing race and gender ideology.” These include Critical Race Theory, calling for the removal of critical race theory from public schools and federal funding for programs that teach it. CRT is an academic and legal framework, developed in the 1970s and 80s that examines how racism is systemic and embedded in legal systems and societal institutions, rather than just a product of individual prejudice. Denialism by religionists does not erase the reality of prejudice in cultural traditions driving racism and other harmful discriminations.
- Project 2025 also calls for eliminating all references to climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The policy seeks to stop the “war on oil and natural gas,” leaving young people without the knowledge of how to address the warming of our climate.
- Project 2025 advocates for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education, returning control of education to states, and promoting school choice over public schools. It aims to remove “pornography” and “woke propaganda” from school libraries, often targeting books with LGBTQ+ content, and seeks to move the nation away from what it considers “leftist” and “woke” ideologies, focusing instead on a “biblically-based,” traditional, and nationalistic approach to American governance and society.
Despite the new Puritan efforts, every thinking person knows that public education must embrace the truths revealed by modern science, bestowing upon our coming generations the insights and understanding necessary to motivate participation in our democracy. Above all, secular education must ensure the survival of our Constitution in its original intent, that religion remains utterly separate from the operations of our government.
[1] Blad, Evie. “Why the Fed Still Falls Short on Special Education Funding,” Education Week, Jan 10, 2020. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/ why-the-feds-still-fall-short-on-special-education-funding/2020/01
[2] For a more detailed overview, see Shimabukuro, Jim. “The Decline of U.S. Public Education Began in 1967,” Educational Technology & Change, Feb 13, 2026. https://etcjournal.com/2026/02/13/the-decline-of-u-s-public-education-began-in-1967/
[3] Author’s personal correspondence with the teacher
[4] New Jersey Minority Educational Development (NJMED) organization. Each country’s ranking is based on five educational levels: early-childhood enrollment rates, Elementary Math, Science and Reading scores, Middle-School Math, Science and Reading scores, High School Graduation rates, and College Graduation rates. https://worldtop20.org/worldbesteducationsystem/
[5] Kohn, Alfie. “All Learning, No Questioning: How Schools Smother Curiosity,” Education Week, Sept. 23, 2024. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-all-learning-no-questioning-how-schools-smother-curiosity/2024/09
[6] Regarding student curiosity as part of classroom outcomes, see Jirout JJ, Zumbrunn S, Evans NS, Vitiello VE. Development and Testing of the Curiosity in Classrooms Framework and Coding Protocol. Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 7;13:875161. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875161. PMID: 35465531; PMCID: PMC9022842.
[7] Soeder, Daniel J. “Science, Technology, and Society Discussion Corner,” Facebook, Dec 1, 2025. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ScienceTechnologyAndSocietyDiscussionCorner/posts/10173237402565008/
[8] See, for example, Boucher FJO, Chinnah TI. Gender Dysphoria: A Review Investigating the Relationship Between Genetic Influences and Brain Development. Adolesc Health Med Ther. 2020 Aug 5;11:89-99. doi: 10.2147/AHMT.S259168. PMID: 32801984; PMCID: PMC7415463. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7415463/
This post is from Chapter 3, New Puritans and the U.S. Peerage: The Willful Destruction of Public Education
denelecampbell 