Democrats Need an Education Reset

A government agency released data in September that should have lit Washington ablaze. It wasn’t new evidence that windmills cause cancer or that the proposed Cracker Barrel logo signaled the end of Western civilization. Rather, the Nation’s Report Card, which tracks education results across the country, revealed that student performance is falling in math and reading scores are below where they were in 1992. As best I can tell, neither the president nor the National Governors Association is treating this like the crisis it is. We should be as angry about the silence as we are about the scores.

Few things are more important than ensuring every American student can read by third grade and do basic math by eighth. Republicans would rather privatize than fix our public education system, and Democrats must realize that if money alone could solve the problem, every American student would be a National Merit Scholar. We’ve written too many blank checks—particularly following Covid—without ensuring results or accountability for the investment.

We’ve spent the past five years debating pronouns without noticing that too many students can’t tell you what a pronoun is. The U.S. has been more focused on whether a school is named for Abraham Lincoln than whether students can tell you why he is an American giant. We’ve become so obsessed with bathroom access that we’ve ignored classroom excellence. America has lost the plot. Democrats need to refocus on the fundamentals in the elementary years—when it comes to high school, we need to be pursuing fundamental reform.

For decades, when pollsters asked voters which party they trusted more on education, Democrats maintained, on average, a 14-point advantage. More recently that gap closed, then flipped to favor Republicans. That’s in part because we made the grave error of refusing to reopen schools during the...

Rahm is thinking about the presidency - given how lame the donkey bench is, that’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. Having done his best to help ruin Chicago, there’s no reason for him not to set his sights on doing the same to the whole country.

But if he’s concerned about education, somebody needs to ask him how we got to this point after spending over a trillion dollars on the Department of Education over its lifetime, particularly since we were first in the world in educational achievement before that department was instituted, and now we’re somewhere between 20th and 30th worldwide in that venue.

“Republicans would rather privatize than fix our public education system..”

Rahm will have to explain to me where control over education is listed as an authorized power delegated to the government in the Constitution.

The more money spent on education, the worse the scores get. And the reason why is not obscure. A poor one-room schoolhouse that can only afford a teacher and some basic textbooks will teach what is in those textbooks. A wealthy school that hires endles special-needs administrators and bureaucrats of all stripes and invests in pushing all sorts of leftist agendas won't have time to teach reading/writing/arithmetic amidst all the brainwashing and propaganda. So the scores go down.

This brings to mind the letter I send to Oregon papers and commentators every fall. Fortunately, my grandkids will attend a private Chrisian school through high school. My daughter in law heard from a Bend high school principal that public schools in Oregon should be avoided. So, don't look to this state to lead any effort at reform.

Oregon Eliminates Educational Standards

Annually Oregonians need to be reminded students are no longer required to demonstrate skills in reading, writing, and math. Until 2026, an Oregon high school diploma no longer points to academic achievement, but only participation in a system with undefined parameters. The legislators, school districts, and the governor supporting Senate Bill 744 saw that this “will benefit Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color”.

The state adopted the position held by many 19th century abolitionists. When I read Fredrick Douglass’ autobiographies, one passage always stays with me. After speaking to an abolitionist audience, Douglass considered the evening a great success, because he concluded his talk by believing these people were convinced, he was equally human with them.

He mentioned this as a significant event, because many supporters of black freedom questioned whether these people were fully human. If educators would treat minorities as individuals, programs would allow opportunities for achievement commensurate with those they see for white students.

I remember Dr. Martin Luther King saying, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…..little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

To me, these men’s understanding of brotherhood and individual value proves more meaningful than perceptions of racial or ethnic inferiority.

Oregon just dropped all graduation standards, failing all of its students in the name of ‘equity’

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4288044-oregon-just-dropped-all-graduation-standards-failing-all-of-its-students-in-the-name-of-equity/

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