Billions Spent, Scores Falling: Why Our Teaching Methods Are Failing Students

NAEP Scores Drop Again

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores were released last week, and everyone was dismayed by the results. According to Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Commissioner, “Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance. Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performance students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.”¹ 

I was disappointed but not surprised. As a high school chemistry teacher, I see the cracks in the education system every day. For example, last week I was teaching my 10th grade students how to balance chemical equations. This requires students to count the atoms, adjust the coefficients, and make sure that there is an even number of atoms on both sides of the chemical equation. It is considered a middle school concept. However, because many of my students do not have the basic math skills, they easily trip up on simple addition and multiplication. If I ask them to add up the number of atoms on each side or multiply the coefficients, most hesitate. 

And it is not just the numbers that disorient students. When I instruct students to read a passage, I watch their eyes scan the page and quickly disassociate. The root of this problem often traces back to their reading abilities. Many of my 10th grade students are grade levels behind in reading. Because reading is difficult, students avoid it. This is concerning taking into consideration that most learning in middle school and high school comes from reading.

The NAEP scores did not tell me anything new. They just made public what I have been watching unfold in my classroom for years. Students are coming in with gaps that make it nearly impossible to tackle high school level concepts without backtracking to cover the basics. 

But how can this be? The U.S. invested nearly 190 billion dollars to make up for the learning loss during COVID. And yet, we are still not seeing results. Scores continue to drop. Many still blame the pandemic but scores were dropping even before school lockdowns. According to NCES Associate Commissioner Daniel McGrath, “NAEP has reported decline in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19.”²

Billions of Dollars Later—Why Aren’t We Seeing Results?

It is obvious that the problem is not lack of funding. One of the main problems is what that money is being spent on. Currently, education funds are being spent on pedagogical practices that are ineffective and not significantly backed by research. One example is the continued popularity of inquiry-based instruction, where students are expected to explore and discover content on their own rather than receive explicit instruction.

“Around 2000, in the education field, particularly in science ed, there was a push for inquiry-based teaching, a lot of grants, projects and centers were created for that. But when we looked at the data they presented, many of the studies are what we call program-based studies and they can hardly be used to support inquiry-based science teaching approaches,” states Dr. Lin Zhang on The Bell Ringer. In other words, program-based studies don’t meet rigorous research standards. To properly assess inquiry-based instruction, we need controlled studies. And the data from controlled studies suggest “students learn better in explicit instruction conditions.”³

As a side note, I believe there is a time and place for inquiry-based instruction. Ideally, it should be done at the end of a unit. Because by then, students would have built enough foundational knowledge through explicit instruction to conduct high-order thinking. However, from what I have observed, foundations are often skipped. Instead, inquiry is used to introduce main concepts. And it is this type of inquiry-based instruction that is now promoted and funded in science, reading, and mathematics.

Misguided Investments

For example, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has funneled a lot of federal funding into STEM education, helping to support programs like the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). At first, this investment seems promising. We want children to be science literate. However, programs such as NGSS rely heavily on inquiry-based learning models which again is not backed by solid research. Despite this, the new federal budget significantly increased funding for STEM-related provisions under ESSA that supports NGSS. For example, Title I, Part A received $15.8 billion, Title IV, Part A saw a jump from $400,000 to $1.1 billion, and Title IV, Part B was allocated over $1.2 billion. According to the NGSS website, these funds created programs promoting STEM skills and “nontraditional STEM teaching methods.”

The same trend can be seen in reading. Many school districts invested heavily in the Units of Study curriculum developed by Lucy Calkins, aiming to enhance literacy education. However, this program has faced significant criticism for its approach, which emphasizes “cueing” strategies over systematic phonics instruction. According to The New York Times, “In total, [New York City Public Schools] paid $31 million between 2016 and 2022 for services from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.” In December 2024, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Calkins and her publisher, alleging that they falsely marketed their literacy products as research-backed and data-based, while failing to provide adequate phonics instruction.

In mathematics, Common Core Standards were introduced with the goal of promoting critical thinking and problem-solving skills. While this sounds beneficial in theory, the implementation often leans heavily on inquiry-based approaches. This has resulted in classrooms where students are encouraged to “discover” math principles through exploration rather than being explicitly taught foundational skills. While some high-achieving students may thrive in this environment, many others struggle to make sense of new concepts without a solid foundation in basic math. Thus, increasing the learning gap between high achieving and low achieving students. This trend was actually observed in the newly released NAEP scores:

“The highest-achieving test takers continued to pull away, or at least hold steady, while lower-performing children lost yet more ground. In fourth-grade reading, only participants testing at the 90th percentile staved off a drop in scores; those at the 50th percentile fell by two points, and those at the 10th percentile experienced a four-point slip. In eighth-grade math, scores at the 90th percentile jumped by three points since 2022, while those at the 10th percentile fell by five points.”⁴

16 billion dollars has been invested in Common Core. 

A Glimmer of Hope: What Louisiana Got Right

I know what many of you are thinking at this point: “Education is so complex. You can’t blame it on pedagogy alone.” And part of it is true. There are so many factors to take into consideration when it comes to education. But let me draw your attention to Louisiana. While other states saw a drop in scores, Louisiana saw the opposite⁵: 

• Louisiana 4th graders led the nation in reading growth for the second consecutive cycle of The Nation’s Report Card. (2022 and 2024)
• Louisiana 4th graders were top five in the nation for math growth.
• Louisiana is one of only two states where 4th graders exceeded 2019 scores in reading and math.
• Louisiana is one of 14 states to post gains in 8th grade math.
• Louisiana students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students outperformed the national average in both achievement and growth.

“I’m especially encouraged to see students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students outpacing their national peers for growth and achievement,” said Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Vice President Stacey Melerine.⁶ 

So how were they able to achieve this? According to the Louisiana Department of Education:

• Louisiana’s academic progress reflects the state’s emphasis on foundational skills and its investment in educators.
• Literacy instruction aligned to the Science of Reading: Louisiana implemented a comprehensive literacy plan rooted in phonics, transforming how reading is taught statewide and equipping educators with the training to help students thrive.
• Foundational math instruction: The state’s math plan emphasized mastery of basic math skills, providing students with the time and tools necessary for long-term success in advanced math.

In other words, Louisiana implemented explicit instruction in their schools. This shift toward explicit instruction aligns with decades of cognitive science research on how students learn best. Research consistently demonstrates that explicit instruction reduces cognitive load and ensures students acquire essential knowledge before engaging in problem-solving and high-order thinking.⁷

The Urgent Need to Align Funding with Research

The NAEP scores just confirmed what many teachers like me have known all along: our students are significantly behind. But these scores are more than just numbers on a national report. They’re the daily reality in my classroom. Every time a student hesitates to balance a chemical equation because they can’t manage the basic math, or struggles to follow a lab procedure because they can’t decode the instructions, I’m reminded that the real crisis isn’t in the test scores. It’s in the foundations we’re failing to build.

The real issue isn’t just the amount of money being spent. It’s that the money is being poured into methods that don’t work for the majority of students. This disconnect between funding and evidence-based practices shows how even well intentioned educational spending can miss the mark when it isn’t guided by solid research. Until we focus on instructional approaches grounded in solid research, like explicit instruction, we will continue to see the same disappointing results year after year.

Notes

1. Quote obtained from NAEP’s Official X Profile ↩︎
2. Quote obtained from Special Education Action Website ↩︎
3. Quote obtained from The Bell Ringer ↩︎
4. Quote obtained from The Arkansas Advocate ↩︎
5. Data obtained from the Louisiana Department of Education ↩︎
6. Quote obtained from the Louisiana Department of Education ↩︎
7. Sweller, J. (2021). Why inquiry-based approaches harm students’ learning (Analysis Paper 24). Center for Independent Studies.
   https://www.cis.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/ap24.pdf  ↩︎