Year after year, Democrats style themselves as the protectors of education for our nation’s children. They routinely position themselves as the saviors of schools; without them, the public education system would be doomed. They allocate billions of dollars to fund public education, all the while failing to deliver any worthwhile results on academic performance.
But this conceit is finally wearing thin. When it comes to education, the only thing Democrats are good at is letting students down.
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A recent report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress highlights those failures, showing a significant decrease in student test scores in math and reading. The difference in math test scores between 2019 and 2022 was the worst in the history of the standardized testing program, which started in 1969. And Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two states with Democratic governors, performed worse than the national average.
This year’s test results showed an 8% decrease from 2019 among Pennsylvania’s eighth graders in math proficiency. Only 62% of the state’s students performed “at or above the NAEP’s ‘basic’ level,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. In New Jersey, there was a 9% decline, with only 67% of students performing above the basic level in math, the Inquirer reported.
Many attribute the results to the fact that schools had to close due to the pandemic. But there’s more to the story. Recent scores show a larger “stagnating performance” trend in our country’s schools.
For example, in Pennsylvania, NAEP test scores (in math) have steadily decreased since 2013. But Democrats were supposed to solve the state’s academic performance woes. Then-candidate Tom Wolf centered his campaign on it. Wolf, a Democrat, won the 2014 gubernatorial election mainly because his campaign claimed he was the best option for the state’s schools. The reality since then has not matched the hype.
Consider that the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article celebrating Wolf’s victory in November 2014 titled, “Wolf win seen as victory for Philly schools.” In 2018, he was endorsed by the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, which bragged that it “helped elect him in 2014.” But Wolf has not presided over even a single year of improvement in the state’s math test scores, according to data published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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It is a safe assumption that the pandemic harmed student performance on the NAEP exam. And both Democratic and Republican states (with the exception of Utah) saw a significant drop in their test scores since 2019. However, the decrease is indicative of a more significant trend that predated COVID-19. Democrats control most of the country’s largest cities, and most of the public schools in these cities are letting students down. They are leaving them unprepared for the real world, largely destined for no social mobility.
Democrats routinely throw billions of dollars at education, but the evidence suggests that their strategy is a complete failure. It would be wise to remember this the next time you hear them anoint themselves as the best option for the nation’s students. In reality, all they know how to do is talk and spend, neither of which has helped students perform any better in the classroom.
