White House Pers Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed to bad skills statistics in schools to justify President Trump's plan to dismantle the educational department.
Leavitt made the comments about the North Lawn of the White House in the midst of a government-wide staff flush, with a Thursday deadline for 2 million employees to decide whether they will take a buy-out that she will leave in September.
She avoided a question of whether Trump was planning to disassemble the department, which was founded in 1979 completely and that Trump called a refuge for 'radicals, zealers and Marxists'. An order prepared for Trump would start the process.
“In fact, I have a statistics for me: 70 percent of the eighth classes are at a lower level in mathematics and reading – 70 percent!” She told Fox News in an interview.
“And that is despite the fact that they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in education every year.”
Experts in the field of educational policy have a long eyes with regard to drops in American student skills, including after pandemic 'loss of learning'.
The Leavitt test was the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), funded by annual credits by the congress.
For years, it has periodically tested American 4th and 8th classes to produce statistics to help policymakers and school districts throughout the country.
For the previous year, 70 percent of the eighth classes did not meet Naep's skill standards when reading.
In mathematics it was 73 percent, on the same footing with the quoted number of Leavitt.
The test was in the field in 2022 and 2024 and revealed both a relevant decrease in competence and a continuing performance gap between high -performance and well -performing students.
Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt of the White House called a statistics that 70% of the 8th classes are at a lower level in mathematics and reading, while defending Donald Trump's call to dismantle the education department. The assessment test was funded by the Education Department
That is something that the Education Department tries to tackle through Title I grants schools with a low income, one of the areas that it finances, together with study loans, trade fairs for higher education and programs for students with disabilities.
Last year the BIDEN administration asked $ 185 million for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which measures the problem solving and knowledge of students, to make comparisons from year to year.
It is “the greatest constant and national representative assessment of what the students of our nation know and can do in selected topics,” said the NAEP report.
The budget of Trump 2020 included a requested increase in expenditure for the test, while the funds for the National Institutes for Health Care and calls for cutbacks for the National Science Foundation.
Dailymail.com has contacted the White House for more comments.
Trump himself also quoted the American performance of students this week, comparing the performance with global colleagues.
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He said: 'We are ranked 40 out of 40' in the world, although reviews for teenagers show that the US places around the world about average – still not the level that officials would prefer.
In her Fox interview, Leavitt said: 'The current system in Washington, DC does not work. And the president strives to ensure that states and parents have a larger word in the education system of our children. '
She said that Trump is very dedicated to publish cuts, and of course, making the government more efficient – that is part of where doge is already on the ground to do.
“When it comes to the Ministry of Education, the president and his policy team continued to look at options and how they can reduce the size of the Ministry of Education, if not completely abolished.”
She added: 'You hear the President Half joke, but also seriously, he wants Linda McMahon, who will lead that agency, put himself out of work. Because he wants to return the education system to the United States. '
