White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pointed out poor skills statistics in schools to motivate President Trump’s plan to disassemble the education department.

Leavitt came up with the comments on North Lawn of the White House in the middle of a government -wide staff purification, with a Thursday deadline for 2 million employees to decide whether to make a purchase that will make them leave in September.

She avoids a matter of Trump planned to completely disassemble the department, which was created in 1979 by Congress and which Trump has called a sanctuary “radicals, zealots and Marxists.” An order prepared for Trump would start the process.

“I actually have a statistics ahead of me: 70 percent of eighth classes are at a below level in mathematics and reading – 70 percent!” She told Fox News in an interview.

“And that is even though they spent hundreds of billions of dollars on education every year.”

Education policy experts have long seen drops in US student knowledge, including after pandemic “learning loss.”

Test Leavitt referred to is the national assessment of educational progress (NAEP), funded through annual grants from Congress.

It has spent years regularly tested us 4th and eighth classes to produce measurement values ​​to help decision makers and school districts around the country.

The previous year did not meet 70 percent of eighth class NAEP’s competence standards in reading.

The spokeswoman in the White House Karoline Leavitt quoted a statistics that 70% of eighth classes are at a below level in mathematics and reading while defending Donald Trump’s call to disassemble the education department. The assessment test was funded by the Education Department

In mathematics, it was 73 percent, in line with the number that Leavitt quoted.

The test was in the field 2022 and 2024 and revealed both an attacking competence and one Persistent performance gap between high -performing and low -performing students.

This is something that the education department tries to deal with through title I grants to low-income schools, one of the areas it finances together with student loans, higher education grants and programs for students with disabilities.

Last year, the Biden administration requested $ 185 million for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which measures student problems and knowledge, to enable comparisons on an annual basis.

It is “the largest continued and nationally representative assessment of what our country’s students know and can do in selected subjects”, according to the NAEP report.

Trump’s budget in 2020 included a requested expenditure increase for the test, while they struck funding for the National Institute of Health and demanded cuts for the National Science Foundation.

Dailymail.com has reached the White House for further comments.

Trump himself this week also quoted US student performance and compared performance with global comrades.

Helpers prepare an executive order for President Donald Trump to disassemble the education department, although his team seems to have concluded that congress measures are needed to eliminate it

The agency is one of several agencies that have placed staff on leave and support cuts

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He said that “we are ranked 40 out of 40” in the world, although assessments for teenagers show that the United States is investing approximately the average around the world – still not the level officials prefer.

In its Fox interview, Leavitt ‘said the current system located in Washington, DC does not work. And the president has undertaken to ensure that states and parents have a greater to say in our children’s education systems. ‘

She said that Trump is “wholeheartedly committed to spending cuts, and of course making the government more effective – that’s part of what Dogge already hits the ground to do.

“With regard to the Ministry of Education, the president and his political team continued to look at alternatives and how to reduce the size of the Ministry of Education unless abolished it completely.”

She added: ‘You hear the president say half joking but also seriously, he wants to wrap McMahon, who will lead that agency, to sit out of work. Because he wants to turn the education system into the states. ‘