I’ve been writing about this for years. And, sadly, it’s time to write about it again.
From Matt Barnum’s article for the Wall Street Journal:
American high-school seniors’ scores on major math and reading tests fell to their lowest levels on record, according to results released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department.
Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992. The share of 12th-graders who were proficient slid by 2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024—to 35% in reading and 22% in math.
There also were drops in the proportion of students who were able to reach at least a basic level of performance, a tier below proficiency.
Why? WHY???
If you ask the teachers’ unions – the randi weingartens of the world – the answers revolve around not enough money, racism, MAGA and other absolute BS. As long as they are able to get teachers paid for non-performance on the part of students they couldn’t be happier.
Then there is the issue of inner city schools. The one neither Matt Barnum nor almost anyone else will talk about.
What do you think will happen when students – more often in schools with large minority populations – are given a free pass on behavior in classrooms? When disruptions, sometimes violent disruptions, are excused/ignored on the grounds that it will create too much of an inequity by race – the result of which is that minority students who want to learn can’t? What do you think will happen when schoolchildren are passed along from grade to grade regardless of whether they have learned anything?
Let’s look at Chicago as an example.
In Chicago, the 2024 graduation rate was 84%. Very impressive. Except, among 11th graders, only 22.4% could read at grade level in 2024 and 18.6% performed math proficiently.
In other words, those students have not learned enough in basic skills to function effectively in the real post-school world. They have been given diplomas for nothing other than to get rid of them…and so that politicians and teachers’ unions can brag about that high graduation rate as if it meant a thing.
And do you have any doubt at all that the difference between Black and White performance in the schools makes things even worse?
Your answer: In third through eighth grade, 54% of Chicago’s White students are proficient in reading and 48% are proficient in math. As godawful as that is, how about the fact that, among Black students, 17% are proficient in reading and 8% are proficient in math.
Is it any surprise, therefore, that when charter schools become available they are immediately oversubscribed…by parents who want their children to actually learn something and be able to function in the real world after school…
…or why the teachers’ unions are so against them?
Then there are the politics.
Democrats are far more supportive of throwing more money at the failing education system and minimizing, even ending, charter schools than Republicans.
Why do you suppose?
Do they want Black students to be non-proficient in basics?
Do they want Black students to eventuate into Black adults who, because their lack of basic proficiency makes them less functional, are more dependent on government services/programs/handouts?
Do they want a permanent Black dependent class that will vote Democrat because Democrats give them things?
Is that how it is? And if it is, who are the real racists?
You be the judge.
More about this in future blogs.
