Unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy in education may be what is standing in the way of student success, a report released Thursday said.
In light of the disastrous National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results from 2024, which revealed one-third of eighth graders and 40% of fourth graders failed to meet reading benchmarks, an Independent Women’s report, first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, proposes a slash to unnecessary oversight in education.
“[W]ith red tape and bureaucracy, teaching has become far more difficult than needed,” the report reads. “If we genuinely want to improve education for American children, teachers must have the training, support, authority, and materials necessary to accomplish the monumental task.”
One of the major issues driving low teacher retention rates and impacting learning outcomes is unclear guidance on how teachers are allowed to respond to misbehaving students who disrupt the classroom, the report claimed. Changing definitions of discrimination between presidential administrations, for example, has led teachers and schools to discipline students less harshly out of fear of fueling perceived racial disparities. Furthermore, the report states that federal and state policies created in response have exacerbated the issue.
“Prior to 2014, the Department of Education applied a ‘disparate treatment’ standard when it came to allegations of discrimination: it defined discrimination as difference in treatment and would investigate individual allegations of discrimination that were reported to the Department,” the report explains. During the Obama administration, however, the department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleagues letter which outlined a new “disparate impact” standard that would see “any racial disparities in discipline numbers,” and would automatically “assume those disparities arose from discrimination,” the report states. In 2018, President Donald Trump’s first administration rescinded the Obama-era guidance after several reports found that the 2014 policy may have contributed to unsafe school environments by discouraging disciplinary actions.
The Biden administration later issued its own letter in 2023 that the report says “promoted non-exclusionary discipline and focused on racial issues almost exclusively,” adding that “it continued to recommend failed restorative justice policies.”
After returning to office, the Trump administration once again issued updated guidance in April 2025, claiming that the Biden-era letter “effectively reinstated the practice of weaponizing Title VI to promote an approach to school discipline based on discriminatory equity ideology.”
The Independent Women’s report states that as a result of the guidance swinging “wildly back and forth between presidential administrations” schools have been left “in the dark about what they are and aren’t allowed to do to discipline students.” It further recommends lawmakers refrain from legislating how schools and teachers can discipline students, and instead leave it to those closest to the issues to deal with on a case-by-case basis.
“If teachers and individual schools have the ability to discipline their students based on their knowledge of those students, schools are more likely to be safe spaces where teachers are able to teach and students are able to learn,” the report reads.
“It seems like every year, the headlines about America’s schools get worse and worse,” Neeraja Deshpande, the report’s author and policy analyst and engagement coordinator for Independent Women, told the DCNF. “Students not being able to read, or do math, or even just behave themselves, while ideology encroaches more and more on actual learning.”
The report also claims that the Bush-era “No Child Left Behind Act” had disastrous impacts on education, as it and similar policies resulted in inflated grades and lower standards for students to graduate.
More recently, the push for “equitable grading,” a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) method that aims to remove an alleged bias from grading by removing standards such as turning in homework or leading classroom discussions, has made it difficult for teachers to actually measure student success, the report states. The method also leaves parents in the dark about how their child is performing.
The report calls to end social emotional learning (SEL) initiatives, which force teachers to dedicate time to teach therapeutic methods to students and “emphasizes feelings and progressive ideology over learning,” according to the report.
“Teachers are not therapists,” the report states. “Expecting teachers both to teach and to perform unlicensed group therapy by way of SEL gets in the way of both the learning and the emotional well-being of the children assigned to them.”
Reforming the process of licensing teachers may also prove beneficial, the report states. For instance, requiring subject matter tests rather than advanced degrees could lead to better outcomes for students.
“Far too often, this abysmal state of affairs is blamed on teachers: it’s teachers who aren’t teaching reading or math, it’s teachers who aren’t controlling their classrooms, it’s teachers who are shoving ideology into students’ heads. But the truth is, while there are some bad apples out there, the majority of teachers are in it for the kids,” Deshpande, who is also a former middle and high school teacher, said. “In far too many cases, teachers are as victimized by the bureaucracy and government red tape as their students are, and have little control over their classrooms. It’s time to change that.”
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