Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results show American students continuing to post some of their lowest reading and math scores in decades. In an interview with The Daily Wire’s Morning Wire podcast, Nicole Nealy, president of Parents Defending Education, argued that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including ethnic studies programs and teacher trainings, are diverting time and resources from core academics.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation’s Report Card, has reported sizable declines in student achievement in recent years. National reading scores for fourth and eighth graders fell a further two points between 2022 and 2024, deepening a three‑point decline from 2019, and the share of eighth‑graders reading below NAEP’s basic level is now the largest in the assessment’s history, according to federal data and recent coverage of the 2024 results.
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, has noted that the lowest‑performing readers in 2024 scored lower than similarly low‑performing students did three decades ago. NAEP officials also report that achievement gaps between the highest‑ and lowest‑performing students have widened in several grades and subjects, and that much of the downward trend in performance began before the COVID‑19 pandemic and then worsened afterward.
Against this backdrop, Nicole Nealy, the president of the watchdog group Parents Defending Education, told The Daily Wire’s Morning Wire podcast that, in her view, school systems are devoting too much attention and funding to ethnic studies and related diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives instead of basic skills. “These scores are really showing and highlighting that our children are not performing well,” she said in the interview. “They’re not thriving; they don’t have the skills to succeed in a global economy.”
Nealy argued that a growing push for ethnic studies curricula in K‑12 public schools is part of the problem. According to her interview with The Daily Wire, districts are obtaining course materials from universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, and the City University of New York (CUNY). She said these materials frequently promote concepts like white supremacy culture and settler colonialism through what she described as an “oppressor‑oppressed matrix,” and that they are designed to encourage student activism. As examples, she pointed to CUNY courses with themes such as “No justice, No peace” and to offerings referencing “drag pedagogy.”
Nealy further told The Daily Wire that, based on research by Parents Defending Education, much of the funding for these kinds of courses comes from long‑established private philanthropies including the Mellon Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation, which she said have provided hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for universities to develop and disseminate this material. Independent verification of the precise amounts tied to specific K‑12 ethnic studies curricula is limited, but both foundations publicly describe grantmaking related to higher education and social‑justice‑oriented projects.
According to Nealy’s account, the current wave of ethnic studies requirements began in California and is moving east. She said Minnesota, under Governor Tim Walz, has incorporated similar mandates into state standards, and claimed that an early draft of an ethnic studies curriculum there omitted the Holocaust in a section on European history. Public reporting on Minnesota’s evolving social studies standards has documented intense debates over how to address topics such as colonialism, race and genocide, though specific draft language has changed over time.
Nealy added that even in politically conservative states, such as Texas, and in liberal states like Vermont, districts have adopted programs emphasizing “Latinx” and “Chicanx” studies. She characterized many of these efforts as encouraging what she called a “victim‑villain mindset,” asserting that they risk turning students into activists at the expense of literacy and numeracy. “You have children who are marching to oppose settler colonialism and can’t spell the word colonial,” she said in the Daily Wire interview.
Beyond curriculum content, Nealy criticized the focus of teacher professional development. She told The Daily Wire that, in materials obtained by Parents Defending Education through public‑records requests and teacher tips, professional‑development sessions often highlight critical race theory and gender theory rather than classroom instruction. As one example, she cited training documents from the Eau Claire Area School District in Wisconsin, which she said referenced policies limiting parental involvement in decisions about a student’s gender identity. Those materials, which drew public attention when they surfaced several years ago, urged staff to recognize students’ gender identities and suggested that some information should be shared with parents only when trust had been established.
Nealy also argued that national teachers’ unions devote their annual convention agendas to broader social and political issues rather than to student achievement, pointing to resolutions on topics such as abortion rights, health‑care policy and foreign conflicts. Union documents show that both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have, at various annual meetings, debated and adopted positions on a wide range of domestic and international issues in addition to resolutions on pay, class sizes and academic priorities.
Looking at the system overall, Nealy told The Daily Wire that the United States has spent roughly $3 trillion on public education since the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1980, drawing on state and local tax dollars as well as federal funds, yet inflation‑adjusted per‑pupil spending has risen while, she argues, average achievement has stagnated or declined. Federal budget data and independent analyses show that combined federal, state and local K‑12 spending has totaled several trillion dollars over the past four and a half decades, while NAEP scores in key subjects have, at best, remained flat and in some cases fallen in recent years.
In the interview, Nealy endorsed efforts by President Donald Trump to dismantle the Department of Education and shift more control to states and local districts. Trump, who has long criticized the department as bureaucratic and ineffective, signed an executive order in March 2025 aimed at dismantling the agency and transferring many responsibilities elsewhere. He has framed the move as a step toward ultimately abolishing the department, a goal that would still require congressional approval. Nealy described this push as a way to increase local accountability and give families more influence over schooling.
While critics of DEI and ethnic studies contend that such initiatives are crowding out academics, many educators and civil‑rights groups argue that these programs address longstanding inequities and can coexist with a strong focus on core subjects. NAEP officials and outside researchers note that test‑score declines have been driven by a complex mix of factors, including the pandemic’s disruption of schooling, and caution against attributing national performance trends to any single policy agenda.
