Nobody Gets Off The Democratic School Plantation
What Pennsylvania Tells Us About Democratic and Teachers' Union Priorities Nationwide
The system of chattel slavery in the United States before the Civil War was replete with measures designed to keep slaves tied physically to the plantations on which they worked. Slaves could not be taught to read or write. Slaves could not travel without written documents from their owners. Slaves could not play drums, because those instruments were used amongst Africans for long-distance communication. And any slave that did escape was hunted down and dragged back by slave patrols.
The Democratic Party is no less committed to the concept that African-Americans must remain captive to a public education system that by every measure is failing them catastrophically.
What just happened in Pennsylvania is a graphic example of what happens when anyone even toys with the idea of freeing black students to seek out educational opportunities outside of the nightmare that is the public education system.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro ran for office claiming he supported school choice. The proposal he backed would have allowed poor inner-city students, overwhelmingly black, to go to private schools at public expense. It would have given the kids trapped in generational poverty the same opportunities available to more privileged children.
The legislation in question would have created Lifeline Scholarships that would have provided K-12 students in the commonwealth’s lowest-performing public schools with almost $7,000 each in flexible education spending to use to attend the school of their choice. Kids stuck in failing schools would have been able to escape and have a chance at getting the education necessary to succeed in today’s world.
Then the teacher’s union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) which largely owns the Democratic Party stepped in. It described the scholarship proposal as a “full attack on public education.” The Democratic Party establishment woke up. Shapiro walked away from his commitment to school choice. He ordered everyone back on the plantation.
In the 2022 election cycle, the PSEA’s political action committee donated $775,000 to Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign, more than $1 million to Democratic legislative candidates, and just over $300,000 to Republicans. The union also now has a political organization called the Fund for Student Success, a 527 organization under the federal tax code, which means it can spend unlimited funds supporting or opposing candidates for political office. If you are a candidate for public office you ignore the PSEA at your peril.
The implications of Shapiro’s cowardice for disadvantaged and under-served students are enormous, and while Pennsylvania is a good example of what is at stake, the facts are generally consistent nationwide. The worst schools are in the inner cities. The overwhelming majority of the kids trapped in those schools are black. The gap between their performance and that of other ethnic groups is not just significant, it is terrifying.
In 2022, 86% of white fourth graders tested at grade level in math. That figure was 55% for blacks. That overall score for black students was heavily impacted by the horrifying performance of black students in cities like Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. In these five cities, the average share of black students performing at grade level was 28%.
Those scores got worse the longer kids were in school. In the eighth grade, the percentage of black kids performing at grade level in the five cities in question fell to 20%.
The gap between black and white performance in school persists nationwide. Wisconsin has the most extreme disparities. White students in fourth grade test 37% higher than black kids in math. In reading in fourth grade the difference is 22%. By eighth grade, the difference in math and reading scores are 23% and 16% respectively.
Baltimore is perhaps ground zero for the failure of the public education system to actually educate black students. Baltimore schools are in many cases exclusively black. White residents have either fled the city or moved their kids to private schools.
In 2022, Baltimore reported the lowest math test scores in the state. Ninety-three percent of the city’s kids could not test at grade level. In 23 Baltimore public schools, not a single child tested at grade level. Every one of those kids, almost all black, failed. That includes ten high schools.
Exactly 2,000 students, in total, took the state math test at these schools. Not one could do math at grade level.
The standard response to these results and statistics is that the schools serving inner-city kids are underfunded and under-resourced. Nothing could be further from the truth. Again, Philadelphia provides a graphic example.
The city spends $26,089 per student. By way of comparison, the state’s median spending per student is $15,665. The city’s budget for its public schools is scheduled to take a significant bump in the coming year. That will allow for a ratio of one teacher for every 12 students.
With all of those resources, the Philadelphia School District produces an average of 23% of its students who test at grade level in math. Statewide the figure is 45%. Thirty-seven percent of Philadelphia kids test proficient in reading. Across the state, that figure is 62%.
The public school system is failing the children. Obsessed with ideology and focused on everything but teaching the fundamentals it is sending kids out into the world without any hope of competing for meaningful work or building futures for themselves. The teachers union does not care. The Democratic Party beholden to it does not care.
There is no plan for fixing the problem or giving the overwhelmingly black kids trapped in this system hope. There is only a commitment to keeping those kids locked down and locked in.
Nobody gets off the Democratic school plantation.
Regarding this subject, I highly recommend the (now decade old?) documentaries "Waiting for Superman" and "Runaway Slave." More recently, "Uncle Tom II" is also excellent.
I believe that there's another dynamic at play, too: the Progressives / Democrats / Marxists (but I repeat myself) need a permanent underclass, both as a basis of support, BUT ALSO TO USE TO FEED THE FALSE NARRATIVES OF "WHITE PRIVILEGE" AND "SYSTEMIC RACISM."
Without that permanent underclass, those narratives would crash. And the Cultural Marxists need those narratives in order to continue their subversive deconstruction of our Constitutional Republic.
The only thing they seem to be taught is the Democrats' platform that you are owed simply because you are black. I was raised with the constant reminder that I was to prepare to provide for myself, there there was no free ride. Times change. Welfare and handouts have destroyed more than it ever helped.