1,274 words
In 2020–2021, the United States spent approximately $927 billion on education. This figure exceeds the GDP of many developed nations and represents one of the largest public expenditures in American history. Yet despite this extraordinary investment, the outcomes have been deeply disappointing. Nearly half of American high school seniors perform below the basic level in mathematics and reading according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.After decades of reform, rising budgets, and countless policy initiatives,the reality is unmistakable: the American education system is not underfunded. It is misdesigned.
The central problem lies not in the amount of money spent but in the assumptions guiding education policy. For more than half a century, policymakers have operated under the belief that greater spending can eliminate inequality and raise the performance of all students to a uniform standard. However, the evidence consistently shows that spending on education is not the main determinant of student performance. What matters more are factors such as innate ability, teacher quality, and institutional structure. The failure to recognize these realities has resulted in a system that treats all students as identical and ignores the fundamental differences that shape learning potential.
The data reveal the limits of the “money equals success” model. Since 1980, inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending in public schools has more than doubled, yet national test scores have remained virtually stagnant. States like New York, which spend over $25,000 per student, do not significantly outperform Utah , which spends less than half that amount. Similarly, countries such as Poland and Singapore, which allocate less funding as a percentage of GDP, regularly outperform the United States on international assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The pattern is consistent and clear: greater spending does not automatically translate into better learning outcomes.
This discrepancy arises because education is ultimately constrained by the characteristics of students and teachers. Decades of research in behavioral genetics and psychology show that intelligence is highly heritable, with heritability estimates ranging between 50 and 80 percent. This means that individual differences in academic performance are largely shaped by innate cognitive ability rather than environmental factors alone. Good teaching and strong schools can enhance learning within limits, but they cannot erase these differences.
Furthermore, research has shown that school quality explains only a small portion of variance in academic outcomes once genetic and family factors are considered. Even when children attend schools of similar quality, differences in cognitive ability lead to distinct results. These findings underscore an uncomfortable truth: schooling can refine ability, but it cannot fundamentally transform it.
The work of economic historian Gregory Clark provides additional evidence for the persistence of inherited traits in shaping social outcomes. In his studies of social mobility in England, including The Son Also Rises (2014) and subsequent analyses of social status from 1600 to 2022, Clark found that educational reforms, compulsory schooling, and welfare programs did not significantly alter long-term patterns of social status. Across centuries, the descendants of the educated and skilled remained overrepresented among the elite, while those from lower social strata continued to lag behind. This continuity demonstrates that ability and human capital are primarily transmitted through families, not government institutions.
If the cognitive composition of the student population places natural limits on performance, then the next logical step is to focus on optimizing instruction. Teacher quality is therefore one of the most crucial variables in determining educational outcomes. Unfortunately, in the United States, teaching has long been treated as a low-status occupation. Many teachers are drawn from the lower academic tiers of college graduates, and a large proportion major in education rather than in the specific subjects they teach. The result is a workforce that is often underqualified in content knowledge and poorly rewarded for excellence.
In contrast, countries such as Singapore and Japan have made teaching an elite profession. In Singapore, teachers are selected from the top third of university graduates. They undergo rigorous training, continuous professional development, and frequent performance evaluations. Teaching is a respected and competitive career path, not a fallback option. Moreover, Singapore’s education system recognizes student diversity by creating multiple tracks based on aptitude. Students are placed into academic courses based on their cognitive strengths, allowing each to develop along a path suited to their abilities.
Japan follows a similar model. Teachers are highly respected, carefully chosen, and thoroughly trained. Education there is viewed as a serious national enterprise rather than a bureaucratic function. In both countries, the results are evident: high literacy rates, strong math and science performance, and low dropout rates. Their success is rooted in the understanding that high-quality teachers and differentiated education produce superior outcomes.
America, by contrast, has built a rigid and bureaucratic system that discourages excellence. Certification requirements emphasize pedagogy over subject mastery. Teachers’ unions often protect mediocrity by making it difficult to remove underperforming staff. Compensation is tied to seniority rather than effectiveness. This structure rewards endurance, not ability. If the United States hopes to improve its schools, it must elevate teaching to a merit-based profession by recruiting and rewarding talent rather than tenure.
A second major flaw of the American education system is its insistence on uniformity. The United States has embraced a one-size-fits-all model in which all students are expected to follow the same curriculum, at the same pace, and toward the same goals. This approach denies the reality of cognitive diversity and wastes potential on both ends of the spectrum. High-achieving students are held back by an unchallenging curriculum, while lower-ability students are overwhelmed and disengaged.
Other nations have avoided this trap. In Germany, for instance, education is explicitly differentiated after the early grades. Students are placed into one of several secondary tracks according to their aptitude: the Gymnasium for academic and university-bound students, the Realschule for intermediate learners, and the Hauptschule for vocational training. Those suited for intellectual study pursue a rigorous classical education, while others receive technical preparation that leads to stable, well-paying careers. The result is a highly skilled workforce and low levels of youth unemployment.
In the United States, vocational education has long been stigmatized as a second-rate option, while academic education is treated as the only path to success. This cultural bias has produced millions of disengaged students and graduates who lack employable skills. A modern education system should differentiate learning paths according to aptitude rather than ideology. Recognizing that not every student is destined for college does not mean lowering expectations; it means aligning education with reality.
To rebuild its education system, the United States must embrace a new philosophy rooted in evidence, merit, and specialization. First, it must make teaching a high-status, merit-based career that attracts intelligent and capable individuals. Second, it must create specialized tracks to accommodate the full range of student abilities and interests. Finally, it must acknowledge that intelligence is heritable and that equality of opportunity cannot produce equality of outcomes.
The pursuit of uniformity has led to mediocrity. America spends more on education than any other country in history, yet half of its students cannot read or calculate proficiently. The lesson is unmistakable: the problem is not funding, but design. If the United States continues to ignore human variation and the importance of teacher quality, it will continue to spend vast sums while producing disappointing results.
Real reform begins by accepting that students differ in ability and that education should cultivate these differences rather than suppress them. A system that rewards talent, channels aptitude, and respects intellectual diversity would not only raise performance but also restore the dignity and purpose of American education. Only by grounding policy in the realities of human nature can America transform its schools from costly social experiments into true engines of learning and progress
11 comments
If the United States continues to ignore human variation…
And that is why the education system in the United States will never change, that would be going against decades of; “We are all the same propaganda.” 🙃
In the past few years many Americans have come to the conclusion that you are better off obtaining a technical trade. The data backs it up. Skilled tradesmen make more than your average college graduate.
The United States must….” “The United States must….” “The United States must….” Of course it must. But it won’t.
The American empire has done the maths. It no longer needs to promote excellence or have amazing education. It has no communist ideas when it comes to education but it does have upper tier communist ideas of how to run the dictatorship. All you need is to churn out a few million excellent minds to keep the wheels turning, the planes flying and the water flowing to keep the place running. These minds are mostly apolitical and are in no danger of ever revolting.
A young mind does not need 40 hours a week of classroom and ten hours of homework to learn any life skills. School is nothing more than day care for the offspring of labour slaves. These offspring are indoctrinated with state obedience and then released into the wild to repeat a pointless life of debt slavery and cheap labour that make the rulers richer. Sure the usual suspects won’t make good labour slaves but they will commit crime which is itself a racket for the entire “judicary”. There’s no incentive to eliminate crime as it’s a lucrative industry.
I think your insights into “modern serfdom” are brilliant. If I understand you right, a high school diploma is nothing more than proof of “basic serfdom skills” attained. Technical, and vocational school degrees specify specialized serfdom fields. College degrees specify higher levels of “serfdom” attained. So when should we be aware that we are dealing with a (((colonial administrator))), will they have Harvard, Yale, Princeton degrees, et al? 🙃
U.S. education is bad because of the high numbers of Black and Hispanic students. The only reform needed is mandatory segregation.
Men, actual men, not male feminists or leftist lady lovers, would need to become teachers again, in addition to all the various things other people have said here. The current crop of women activists educating our children are at best hopeless. But I don’t see anything like that happening anytime soon or, in fact, ever. The hour is too late for reform on this front.
“The work of economic historian Gregory Clark provides additional evidence for the persistence of inherited traits in shaping social outcomes.” Just like the notion that the persistence of inherited physical traits shape physical performance outcomes. That is, for instance, no amount of environmental manipulation will alter the fact that an adult male who is 5’4″ will never be able to play center in the NBA.
Also relevant: Caplan, B. (2018). The Case against Education: Why the education system is a waste of time and money. ISBN 9780691174655.
“But muggsy bogues was 5’3, you racist heightist!”
With AI creeping into the education system this article might be of some interest. https://news.gab.ai/researchers-expose-systemic-anti-white-anti-christian-bias-in-top-ai-models/
For more than half a century, policymakers have operated under the belief that greater spending can eliminate inequality and raise the performance of all students to a uniform standard…
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That’s your theory, Lip Man. It was a little more than half a century ago that your <cough!> “policymakers” decided that forcing your Tribe’s students to integrate with Whites’ children, enforced by JOG, would resolve inequality between Blacks and Whites.
How has that big social experiment worked out? David Sims wrote a series of wonderfully researched articles ten years ago about how forced racial integration of schools in Atlanta has worked out: “Black-run Atlanta: “Educators” Falsified Test Scores for Nearly a Decade” at nationalvanguard.org
and “The Atlanta Cheaters” at nationalvanguard.org by David Sims
DID YOU notice that all of the persons arrested for CRCT test score fraud in Atlanta are Black? That isn’t racism. That’s just how things were…
How do you explain that, Lip Man? Could “greater spending” have changed TNB?
“Policymakers,” controlled media, churchmen, and politicians have screwed the American educational system up enough for too long. One White educator, Dr. William Pierce, proposed a simple plan that will work for those of the White race, here: “Building a New White World” in “What is the National Alliance?” at natall.com:
A New Educational System
A proper educational system serves three purposes: it passes a people’s cultural, intellectual, and spiritual heritage from generation to generation; it teaches skills and techniques; and it guides the character development of individuals from childhood to adulthood. The first purpose is served by teaching facts and ideas: language, history, science, ethics, and so on.
The second purpose is served by teaching the child or young adult how to do things that will be useful to himself and/or society: how to play a musical instrument, how to weld, how to manage a business, how to type, how to repair a motor vehicle, how to fight with and without weapons, how to draw, how to swim, how to raise children, how to grow food, how to build a house.
The third purpose is served by challenging, testing, conditioning: by forcing the child to exercise his will, to discipline himself, to endure discomfort, to make plans and carry them out, to overcome fears, to accept responsibility, to be truthful, and generally to develop and strengthen those traits of character valued by a healthy Aryan society.
The present educational system in America completely neglects the third purpose and does poorly with the first two, even in those fortunate areas not yet encumbered with an appreciable “multicultural” contingent. The most important reason for its poor performance is that it has lost any clear understanding of purpose. In order to pass on a people’s cultural, intellectual, and spiritual heritage, it must first know the answer to the question: Which people’s heritage? Today such a question is Politically Incorrect and therefore not admissible.
Even many decades ago, before it became Politically Incorrect to understand that the heritage to be passed on is European, there was no depth of purpose. The reason for passing on the European heritage is not just to help young people qualify for higher-paid employment or become better dinner-table conversationalists. It is to instill in them a consciousness of what it means to be European—a race consciousness—and thereby to make racial patriots of them. Facts and ideas have a spiritual component, and this component must be emphasized in the educational process.
There certainly will be sexual and occupational specialization in the second area of educational activity, and sexual specialization in the third. Even in the first area, children undoubtedly will be separated according to ability: not every child needs to learn Greek and Latin and the infinitesimal calculus to acquire a feeling for his race and its ways. Nevertheless, a proper educational system should provide a common body of knowledge and understanding shared by everyone, so that every member of the society has a fully developed sense of peoplehood. The boy who aims at becoming a machinist should read Homer, at least in translation, and the boy who plans to teach literature should understand what it means to be a good welder, at least to the extent of trying his hand at it.
It is by pursuing the third purpose, however, that a new educational system will make the most radical contribution to Aryan society. Education that concerns itself with the development of the whole person and focuses as strongly on forming character as on imparting knowledge or teaching skills dates back to ancient Greece, and it enjoyed an all-too-brief revival in the mid-20th century in National Socialist Germany, before being outlawed by the advocates of permissiveness. Today permissiveness rules throughout the Aryan world. “Education” is something that takes place only in designated buildings for a few hours on prescribed days, under conditions approaching chaos. Inside or outside these buildings, discipline is minimal. Children grow up in a world without standards of performance, without clear guidelines for behavior, without any strong source of authority. We see the products of this system all around us: too many weak, indecisive men and too many unfeminine women; a general lack of significant goals and self-confidence; a self-indulgent population without self-discipline or inner strength, restlessly seeking “happiness.”
By ensuring that each child born to our race grows into the strongest, most capable, most responsible, and most conscious future citizen that his genes make possible, we will gain an enormous advantage over any race without such an educational system.
Of course, it goes without saying that this plan requires separation of Whites who have the will to implement the new system from other races and from whites [lower case] who are unwilling, who prefer multiracial society.
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