Dan J. Harkey

Master Educator | Business & Finance Consultant | Mentor

Systemic Barriers to Learning Critical Thinking in U.S. Public Schools: What to Do About Them

When was the last time we heard of one or more classes designed to help children function in society, such as business mathematics? How about classes that contain education on obtaining a job, budgeting, awareness of the business, and profit-motivated industries, as opposed to public financing, and where public funding comes from, taxation, hidden taxation, inflation, and the reduction of the purchasing power of their hard-earned dollars from their wages?

by Dan J. Harkey

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Summary

American schools profess to uphold critical thinking, yet the prevailing incentives, structures, and daily realities often lead students and teachers in the opposite direction. This article identifies the significant systemic barriers—from high-stakes testing and politicization to digital distraction and staffing constraints—and then outlines concrete, research-grounded steps that families, educators, districts, and states can take now to address these challenges. The urgency of these solutions, anchored in evidence rather than ideology, should spur immediate action.

Article:

What “critical thinking” should mean

At minimum: the capacity to analyze claims, weigh evidence, recognize bias, reason from first principles, and communicate defensible conclusions.  International assessments are increasingly attempting to measure these higher-order capacities (e.g., PISA’s new creative thinking domain), underscoring that countries are beginning to treat them as measurable outcomes rather than slogans.

Barrier 1: High-stakes accountability narrows what gets taught

Over the past two decades, the dominance of test-based accountability has elevated reading and math proficiency to the pinnacle.  However, as anticipated by Campbell’s Law, this singular focus on a metric distorts the very processes it was meant to enhance. The result is a curriculum that is skewed towards ‘teaching to the test’, often at the expense of discussion-rich subjects, such as History. This imbalance underscores the need for a more balanced approach, highlighting the importance of fairness in education.

Evidence of narrowing has been observed since the implementation of NCLB, as instructional time has shifted toward tested areas, with social studies and science often losing ground—subjects where inquiry and argumentation typically flourish.

Meanwhile, national indicators show broad learning declines post-pandemic, especially in civics and History—areas that are natural homes for sustained analysis and debate.  In 2022, only 22% of 8th graders were proficient in civics and 13% in U.S. History; both scores fell from 2018.

Reading and math also dropped sharply in 2022—the Nation’s Report Card confirmed historic declines—further tightening the vise on classroom time for higher-order tasks as schools triage basics.

Bottom line: When survival depends on a handful of multiple-choice metrics, the system will tend to gravitate toward short-cycle test preparation at the expense of extended reasoning.

Barrier 2: Assessments seldom reward higher-order thinking

Teachers teach what is measured.  Traditional standardized tests reward speed and item-level recall more than constructing arguments, critiquing sources, or solving ill-structured problems—skills central to independent judgment.  Researchers and practitioners have warned for years that such tests are “narrow” proxies for ability.

Internationally, the 2022 PISA results documented an unprecedented drop in math and a broad decline in reading across OECD countries; the U.S. picture tracked these trends. These results renewed calls to assess and cultivate problem-solving and creative thinking—not merely item mastery.

Bottom line: If assessments don’t value argument, creativity, and transfer, classrooms will undersupply them.

Barrier 3: Politicization and curricular restrictions chill inquiry

Across states, policy actions that limit discussion of race‑ and gender-related topics have created a climate where many teachers report changing texts and avoiding issues; those in restricted states report a more potent effect. In 2023, roughly one-quarter of teachers reported that such limits affected their curriculum; ten times as many described adverse effects on learning as positive outcomes. This chilling effect on inquiry underscores the severity of the problem.

In parallel, book removals have accelerated.  PEN America documented 10,046 instances of schoolbook bans in 2023–24, with disproportionate targeting of titles addressing race and LGBTQ+ themes.  Whatever one’s view, the practical effect is fewer opportunities for students to wrestle with complex texts and conflicting viewpoints, such as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ or ‘The Catcher in the Rye’—core to critical thinking.

Bottom line: When teachers feel they are “walking on eggshells,” they tend to default to safer, less complex materials rather than rich, thought-provoking content.

Barrier 4: Teacher workload, burnout, and shortages compress the craft.

The kind of instruction that fosters reasoning—such as Socratic seminars, research projects, and performance tasks—requires time to plan and assess. Yet, U.S. teachers report an average of ~53 hours of work per week, with burnout and stress roughly double that of comparable working adults. Nearly half of schools reported understaffing as they entered the 2023–24 school year.

Bottom line: Exhausted, understaffed schools have less runway to design and sustain higher-order, discussion-based learning.

Barrier 5: Digital distraction outpaces media‑literacy instruction

In the attention economy, phones compete (and often win) against deep work.  Research syntheses have found that classroom smartphone bans can improve academic achievement, particularly for struggling learners, and that media multitasking is correlated with lower working memory and test performance.  States and districts are responding. California has enacted the Phone-Free School Act (AB 3216), which requires schools to implement policies that limit or prohibit smartphone use during the school day, effective 1 July 2026.

Compounding the issue, many students struggle to judge credibility online.  The Stanford History Education Group’s seminal work showed that even “digital natives” are easily duped by sponsored content and mis-sourced claims—precisely the skills schools should be cultivating.

States are beginning to act.   California’s AB 873 (2023) directs the state to integrate media literacy across ELA, math, science, and history‑social science frameworks in future revisions. Nationally, at least 19 legislatures have taken steps toward implementing media literacy policies, but coverage remains patchy.

Bottom line: Without explicit instruction in civic online reasoning—and fewer digital distractions during school hours—students won’t develop the skepticism and source-checking habits that underpin critical thinking.

Barrier 6: Unequal access to rich learning experiences

Inquiry-rich courses (such as labs, debate, journalism, and AP Seminar/Research) require specific resources. Funding disparities—often tied to local property wealth—mean students in many non‑white districts get less, not more, of what builds reasoning.  EdBuild’s analysis found that districts serving the majority of students of color receive $23 billion less annually than predominantly white districts, despite serving the same number of students.

Bottom line: Critical-thinking opportunities require resources, such as mini-seminar courses, labs, and mentorships, which come at a cost.  Inequitable funding constrains access.

Barrier 7: Misaligned accountability discourages performance tasks

When accountability systems prioritize standardized scores, leaders have little incentive to adopt more comprehensive, performance-based assessments that better measure critical thinking and reasoning.  Yet, there are working models.  New Hampshire’s PACE blends fewer state tests with calibrated local performance tasks tied to competencies, and New York’s Performance Standards Consortium shows how inquiry and capstones can scale while maintaining rigor.

Bottom line: States can build systems that require and validate higher-order work—if they choose to do so.

What to do: A practical agenda for families, educators, districts, and states

·       Rebalance accountability to value reasoning, not just recall.

Adopt or pilot performance assessments (capstones, argumentation tasks, research defenses) within accountability systems—following models like PACE and the NY Consortium—so schools are rewarded for cultivating analysis and original work.

·       Protect classroom time for deep work.

Schedule discussion blocks, seminars, and project time where speed isn’t the goal.  Evidence from project-based learning meta-analyses shows significant gains in academic outcomes and thinking skills compared to traditional models when implemented effectively.

·       Pair phone‑management policies with explicit media‑literacy instruction.

Limiting school‑day smartphone use (as California now requires by 2026) reduces distraction, pairing that with media literacy across subjects (AB 873) trains verifiable skepticism and source evaluation.  Use civic online reasoning lessons (e.g., “lateral reading”) with demonstrated need.  

·       Make arguments by writing a throughline across the curriculum.

Adopt shared claim–evidence–reasoning (CER) rubrics in ELA, science, and social studies; studies find CER improves students’ ability to marshal evidence and justify claims—core to critical thinking.

·       Safeguard viewpoint diversity and teacher clarity.

Use transparent, curriculum-anchored guidelines—built with teacher input—to navigate sensitive topics.  RAND suggests that engaging families upfront and connecting “controversial” content to explicit learning goals reduces friction and avoids chilling effects on inquiry.

·       Invest in teacher time and tools.

Provide teachers with release time and high-quality materials for seminars, debates, and performance tasks. Address workload/burnout (e.g., streamlined compliance, shared assessment banks) to free up hours for planning complex instruction; RAND’s 2024 survey shows that workload and stress remain outsized.

·       Fund opportunity, not just adequacy.

Target funds to expand debate, journalism, lab sciences, and AP Seminar/Research in under-resourced schools—correcting the resource gap that depresses access to reasoning-rich experiences.

·       Measure what matters.

Track rates of student-led discussion, quality of writing in Writing, source evaluation accuracy, and capstone completion alongside test scores.  Districts using performance assessment systems publish calibration studies to protect rigor and comparability.

· Use History and civics as the “home base” for reasoning.

Given NAEP declines, double down on document-based inquiry and civic simulations (e.g., deliberations, moot court).  This is where weighing claims against evidence is most authentic.

·       Communicate with the public in plain language.

Publish short, parent-facing explanations of how assignments build critical thinking (e.g., “This project trains students to compare sources, detect bias, and defend conclusions”).  Transparency raises support and lowers suspicion, even in polarized times.

A final word: urgency with direction

The sky isn’t falling—but the warning lights are blinking. NAEP results in civics and History, PISA’s post-pandemic picture, teacher burnout data, the surge in book removals, and the ubiquity of digital distraction all point to a common conclusion: the system’s current incentives do not reliably produce independent thinkers.  The good news is that the solutions are known, piloted, and within reach—if we realign what we value, measure, and fund.

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