President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to modernize the American workforce and prepare Americans for high-paying skilled trade jobs. He directed the Secretaries of Labor, Education, and Commerce to review and overhaul federal workforce programs to better prepare Americans for the jobs our economy needs.

This executive action couldn’t come soon enough. The United States urgently needs to rebuild its workforce to ensure our country remains globally competitive. By modernizing training efforts, expanding apprenticeships, and aligning education with the needs of high-growth industries, hundreds of thousands of Americans each year will be better prepared for high-paying, skilled careers. 

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After decades of failed equity experiments, it’s time for a full-scale cultural shift back toward merit, achievement, and academic rigor at every level of education. Re-centering the focus in schools, and including encouraging personal agency in the process, will help U.S. companies compete, keep jobs here at home, and provide a pathway to success for talented low-income Americans.  

It’s clear that our higher educational system is broken. But this collapse has spread to K-12 schools, where gifted and talented programs that once nurtured future engineers, doctors, and technical experts are being dismantled. All too often today, ambition and excellence are treated as offenses. In the name of “equity,” America’s future innovators are being derailed before they even have the chance to succeed.

Families have fought against this race to the bottom for years. And in response, Rep. Burgess Owens launched the Congressional Merit Caucus last summer. He was surrounded by activists from minority and immigrant communities who have been indignant about efforts to strip hard-earned opportunities away from their children. 

In Fairfax County, Virginia, for example, officials eliminated the admissions test for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the nation’s top-ranked high school, after complaints that its student body included too many Asian students and too few black and Latino students. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio got rid of testing for elementary school gifted programs, dismissing selective education as “outdated.” And in Seattle, the NAACP chapter demanded the outright abolition of the district’s gifted program, calling it “inherently racist” and “fundamentally flawed.”  

Across the country, efforts meant to promote fairness are ending programs that helped hardworking students succeed. Ironically, those most harmed are often the very students these policies were intended to support, including many from families who depended on these opportunities to build a better future. 

The consequences of this retreat from excellence are as predictable as they are devastating. As schools lower standards, our country faces a growing shortage of the skilled professionals our economy and national security depend on. We don’t have enough nuclear engineers, data scientists, cyber warfare operators, doctors, or electricians – in fact, we don’t even have enough trained technicians to operate modern assembly lines.  

Many companies are now scrambling to explore onshoring their manufacturing in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s tariffs, and they are discovering that the United States lacks the domestic technical expertise to deliver quality goods to consumers. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries continue to develop advanced expertise in critical fields: consider China’s breakthroughs in quantum computing, Iran’s strides in biotechnology, or Russia’s development of autonomous weapons systems.

This year, China is set to graduate twice as many STEM PhDs as the United States. In turn, universities and K-12 schools must stop hollowing out rigorous STEM curricula and vocational training programs – and resist the temptation to water down standards or erase gifted education for political reasons. Excellence should be celebrated, not punished. Talent needs to be identified and nurtured, and students given the tools to build our future. 

America’s companies are desperate for engineers, technicians, scientists, and specialists. The talent is here; what’s missing is an education system willing to equip young Americans with the skills and seriousness their futures require.

AS NAVY PRIORITIZES MIDDLE EAST, CHINA ENCIRCLES TAIWAN

President Trump’s Executive Order is a vital first step.

Now, it falls to our schools, universities, and policymakers to restore a culture of excellence and equip the next generation to lead – because America’s future depends on it. 

Nicki Neily is the President and Founder of Defending Education.