{"id":2309,"date":"2023-01-08T09:51:39","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T14:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=2309"},"modified":"2023-01-22T08:35:42","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T13:35:42","slug":"education-red-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=2309","title":{"rendered":"Education: Red & Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash<\/p><\/div>\n

When Republican Glen Youngkin was campaigning for governor of Virginia, I was teaching U.S. History & Government in Loudon and Fairfax County Public Schools. So, like many teachers in Virginia \u2013 particularly folks like me teaching social studies \u2013 I not only watched with interest but also experienced in real time Youngkin\u2019s signature campaign issue: education.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that Virginia had poor primary, secondary, or higher education systems. Not really. When it comes to academics, Virginia\u2019s schools are quite good. More about that later. No, Youngkin\u2019s critique was more about ideology than academics. Among Youngkin\u2019s complaints were that some Virginia schools (a) required students to wear masks during COVID (b) affirmed transgender rights and (c) taught \u201cinherently divisive concepts\u201d including \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d or CRT.<\/p>\n

(Side note. I\u2019ve taught social studies in two different school systems. I’ve still not found anyone who teaches CRT!)<\/p>\n

Since then, conservative Republicans have gone \u201call in\u201d believing they have the high ground on a hot-button campaign issue that traditionally has favored Democrats. But their focus seems to be less about whether Johnny and Sally can read, write, and do math and more about schools\u2019 social and administrative policies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A good example: the methodology used by the conservative Heritage Foundation in its recently released an \u201cEducation Freedom Report Card<\/a>.\u201d Their grading rubric for evaluating a state\u2019s public education gives scant weight to academic performance. Rather, their grading focuses on things like whether the state provided school choice (aka charter schools) and whether a school system practiced \u201cindoctrination\u201d (whatever that is) and critical race theory. There is a section on spending and budgeting. It gets a bit wonky, but suffice it to say that a state got dinged if the Heritage Foundation didn\u2019t like the way they spent their money.<\/p>\n

Based on the Heritage Foundation\u2019s methodology the top performing state school systems were Florida, Arizona, and Idaho. The worst performing states were New Jersey, New York, and Maryland.<\/p>\n

Florida #1
\nArizona #2
\nIdaho #3
\nIndiana #4
\nSouth Dakota #5<\/p>\n

New York #50
\nNew Jersey #49
\nMaryland #48
\nMassachusetts #47
\nConnecticut #46<\/p>\n\"Heritage\n

I was stunned. I went back and reread those \u201ctop five\u201d and \u201cbottom five\u201d states\/ I even went to the Heritage Foundation\u2019s color coded \u201cbest\u201d and \u201cworst\u201d map.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I thought to myself, something\u2019s not right.<\/p>\n

Mind you I have nothing but profound and abiding love for the Deep South. I grew up there. I went to school there. But my home state of Louisiana in the \u201ctop ten\u201d best school systems in the country? Neighboring Mississippi ranked #6th<\/sup>? Really?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is the Heritage Foundations \u201cworst five.\u201d Massachusetts? Maryland? You gotta be kidding me! I know the K-12 systems of both states. They are widely recognized as being quite good.<\/p>\n

The more I thought about this, I couldn\u2019t help but notice a curious thing. States that were heavily Republican scored well in the Heritage Foundation\u2019s report card. States that are heavily Democratic scored poorly.<\/p>\n

Hmmmm. So, I asked myself: but what about academic performance? You know. Those \u201cABCs\u201d that schools are supposed to teach? I checked with the folks best known for assessing the quality of schools and academic performance: USNews.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As most folks know, US News is famous for its school rankings. While their methodology has its critics, in US News\u2019 assessment of K-12 system they focus on the following<\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n