Delaware’s Education Warning Signs Have Been Building for Years

September 30, 2026

Delaware Senate Republicans

For decades, Delaware has devoted significant attention and resources to public education. Governors have launched initiatives. The General Assembly has passed new programs and requirements. Taxpayers have continued to fund the system.

Yet the most important question is much simpler: Are Delaware students getting the education they deserve?

The latest numbers give us plenty of reason for concern.

According to the Delaware Department of Education’s most recent statewide report card, only 42.06% of Delaware students were proficient in English language arts during the 2024-2025 school year. In mathematics, just 31.63% were proficient.

Put another way, nearly six in ten Delaware students tested below proficiency in English language arts, while more than two-thirds tested below proficiency in math.

Those numbers did not appear overnight.

A Long-Term Problem

Comparing education rankings across several decades can be tough and requires some caution. There is no single national ranking that has measured every state using an unchanged methodology from the 1990s through today. Different organizations measure different things, and even individual rankings have changed methodologies over time.

But across several measures, the trajectory provides reason for concern.

In 2015, Education Week’s widely cited Quality Counts report ranked Delaware 15th overall among the 50 states and Washington, D.C. That overall ranking included several measures, and Delaware’s strong school-finance score helped lift its position. On the report’s K-12 Achievement Index specifically, Delaware ranked only 30th. (Education Week)

The following year, Delaware ranked 16th overall, but its K-12 Achievement ranking had fallen to 35th. Its combined proficiency rate based on NAEP reading and math scores was 33.6%, below the national rate of 34.8%. (Education Week)

Another long-running measure, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Book, shows a troubling trajectory of its own.

Delaware ranked 29th in education in 2016, 23rd in 2017, 27th in 2018, 26th in 2019, 30th in 2020, 25th in 2021 and 27th in 2022.

Then came a sharp drop:

Delaware fell to 41st in 2023 and 45th in 2024 before improving to 37th in 2025. (KIDS COUNT Data Center)

The rebound from 45th to 37th is welcome, but 37th is still nowhere near where Delaware should aspire to be, and it remains well below the state’s position in this same ranking before the pandemic.

Researchers with KIDS COUNT in Delaware made a similar point in 2024, noting that while the pandemic exacerbated problems such as absenteeism and poverty, concerns about Delaware’s educational performance existed before 2020. PubMed Central

More Than Three Decades Under Democrat Governors

There is also a political reality that cannot be ignored when examining the state’s long-term education policy.

Delaware has not had an elected Republican governor since Mike Castle left office in January 1993. Since then, Delaware’s governors have been Democrats: Tom Carper, Ruth Ann Minner, Jack Markell, John Carney, briefly Bethany Hall-Long, and now Matt Meyer.

Additionally, since 2009, Democrats have held the governorship and both chambers of the General Assembly.

State government sets education policy, approves education budgets, establishes many of the rules under which schools operate and has the responsibility to respond when outcomes are not good enough.

For much of the period in which Delaware’s public educational standing has deteriorated, Democrats have controlled the levers of state government.

Graduation Is High. Proficiency Is Not.

One of the most striking contrasts in Delaware’s current education data involves graduation.

The Class of 2025 posted a 91.39% four-year graduation rate, according to DDOE. The state also reports that 78.44% of students finished 12th grade college and/or career ready. Those are positive numbers, but they exist alongside statewide proficiency rates of only 42.06% in ELA and 31.63% in mathematics.

Those measurements are not designed to measure exactly the same thing, so they should not be treated as contradictory statistics. Still, taken together, they raise an important question for policymakers:

What does a Delaware high school diploma tell students, parents, colleges and employers about whether a graduate has mastered the fundamentals?

Maybe Dover Doesn’t Always Know Best

There is another part of this conversation that often gets overlooked: the people actually standing in Delaware classrooms.

Senator Eric Buckson spent nearly 30 years as a public school educator at Polytech before being elected to the State Senate.

Shortly after taking office, he summarized one of his central education concerns in three words:

“Deregulate the classroom.”

Explaining what he meant, Senator Buckson explained that after nearly 30 years as a public school educator, he had witnessed firsthand what he described as the negative impacts of well-intentioned legislation and regulations.

The point is not that Delaware should abandon standards or accountability. Accountability matters, especially when outcomes are this concerning.

The question is whether decades of additional mandates, programs, reporting requirements and top-down policies have actually helped teachers do their most important job: teach.

Teachers should have the flexibility to respond to the students sitting in front of them. Principals should be empowered to lead their schools. Parents should have a meaningful voice in their children’s education. And state policymakers should be willing to examine whether requirements coming from Dover are improving classroom instruction or simply adding another layer of bureaucracy.

Sometimes a well-intentioned policy can still produce an unintended consequence.

Giving Families More Choices

Empowering teachers is one part of the equation. Empowering parents is another.

Beginning in 2027, a new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit will allow eligible taxpayers to receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for qualifying contributions to Scholarship Granting Organizations, or SGOs. Those nonprofit organizations can then provide

scholarships to eligible students for qualified elementary and secondary education expenses. For families in a state to benefit from the program, however, their state must elect to participate and identify qualifying SGOs.

And importantly, these scholarships are not limited to students attending private schools.

Eligible students enrolled in public schools can also benefit, with scholarship funds available for qualifying expenses such as academic tutoring, curriculum and instructional materials, certain educational therapies, standardized testing and other educational services. Organizations such as ACE Scholarships have already indicated that they are prepared to serve eligible public school students through the new program if the necessary state participation and SGO approvals are in place.

As of the IRS’s latest published list, 30 states have already made an advance election to participate in 2027. Delaware is not one of them.

Our caucus believes Delaware should participate.

No single policy is going to solve every challenge facing our education system, and educational choice does not replace the need to improve our public schools. But when statewide proficiency remains this low, families should have access to as many educational opportunities as possible.

Participating in the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit would give Delaware taxpayers another way to support educational opportunities in their communities while expanding the options available to families. A student struggling in math may benefit from additional tutoring. A student with a disability may need specialized educational services. Another child may thrive in a different school environment altogether. The goal should be giving families more tools to find what works for their child.

Because the tax benefit is federal, Delaware’s participation would not require the creation of an additional state tax credit.

Parents know their children better than government does. Whether a child thrives in a traditional public school, charter school, private school or another educational setting, families should have the opportunity to pursue the path that best meets that child’s needs.

Delaware should not leave an available federal program on the table while families in 30 other states are preparing to benefit from it.

The Latest Numbers Should Be a Wake-Up Call

Delaware currently has more than 141,000 students enrolled in its traditional public, charter and vocational-technical schools.

They deserve better than accepting 42% proficiency in English language arts and 32% proficiency in math as the new normal.

There are encouraging signs. Math scores have improved, chronic absenteeism has declined substantially from its pandemic peak, and Delaware has districts and individual schools producing strong results.

But acknowledging improvement does not require pretending the overall picture is acceptable.

For years, Delaware has tried new programs, new mandates, new initiatives and additional spending. Meanwhile, national measures have documented a deterioration in our educational standing, and today’s statewide assessment results show that a majority of students are still not proficient in reading or math.

The answer cannot simply be more of the same.

Delaware needs an honest conversation about what is happening in our schools, what policies have failed to produce results, what successful schools are doing differently, how much authority should rest with educators and parents rather than Democrats in Dover, and how we get back to the fundamentals of education.

Our students only get one chance at an education and we cannot afford another generation of decline.