Are you tired of the 'party of stupid's' attack on public education?

The right has been described as anti-intellectual. This anti-intellectualism is personified by Rush Limbaugh who uses emotional rants with few facts in his diatribes. Limbaugh was enrolled in college for two term but failed every course including ballroom dancing according to his mother.

This is a party that seems to embrace ignorance for ignorance's sake, as if "facts and figures" are inconvenient annoyances better left to eggheads who read books. Stephen Colbert's parody of modern Republican leaders rings true for good reasons.

Nicholas Kristof noted that Obama's election, among other things, may mark the end of "the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life."

In August, Paul Krugman had a fairly devastating piece identifying the GOP as "the party of stupid." As the Nobel Laureate explained, "What I mean ... is that know-nothingism -- the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise -- has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: 'Real men don't think things through.'"

According to Steve Benen f the party is sincerely looking for a way out of its self-dug ditch, taking facts, reason, and evidence seriously again would be a good start.

GOP ideology

To make matters worse, the party that is the least equipped to deal with Americans educational problems has been tinkering with it. Because of the GOP ideology about privatization and deregulation, the GOP has experimented with corporate Edison Schools which are private schools funded by the state. It has also tried magnet schools which have a specialized curricula like art, music or accelerated classes.

Charter schools are similar to Edison Schools but they are locally organized and not affiliated with a corporation like Edison schools. Charter schools receive startup funds but after the initial year, they are funded identically like public schools by the state.

Funding is the key issue. Whether the school is public, Edison or a charter school, the funding is the same and the educational outcome is very similar for all of these schools.

The Florida Example

Because many Republicans leaders have spent their careers in corporations, they believed that schools could be more effective if they were evaluated. In Florida Governor Jeb Bush got funding for a new test called with The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test® (FCAT). There are many educational assessment tests that could have been taken off the shelf. Undoubtedly some happy conservative institution got the contract to reinvent the wheel with the FCAT.

The FCAT was too long and too hard for Florida students. After a couple of years the test was shortened and 'dumbed down.' Even worse teachers started to teach the test, particularly English and math teachers, because they were being evaluated based on their classes performance on the FCAT.

The governor also decided that the 'good teachers' needed to be paid more than the average teachers. Unfortunately when Florida tax revenues crashed after the real estate meltdown, many of the 'good teachers' lost their jobs because they were making too much money. This was the supreme irony in the grand GOP experiment with education in Florida.

To make matters worse, young people are moving from Florida to states with better pay and better schools. As a result of the declining school enrollment, Florida is closing public schools as well.

State senators had approved a $428 million four-year corporate income tax break after it had given out more than $1.5 billion in tax breaks since Jeb Bush's election in 1998 .

Charlie Crist, the current Florida governor, hasn't done much better. He fiddled with real estate taxes which produced an even worse deficit once the sub prime mortgage crises hit Florida. At one time Florida was advocating removing the school system from funding by local real estate taxes. Fortunately Florida voters defeated this bad idea.

Florida was ranked 29^th in the nation in 2006-2007 school year. It is likely its ratings will fall in the next Morgan Quinto rankings because of teacher lay offs and school closures. The real problem with Florida schools is funding. In the 2003-2004 school year Florida spent $8,084 and was ranked 36^th in the nation. The latest per pupil statistic indicated funding is now $6,056 and Florida's rank has dropped to 44^th in the nation.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that the there is a crises in Florida schools and that cannot be resolved with corporate style management or standardized tests. More spending is needed to fix the state school system. It is unlikely that the 'party of stupid' will fix the problem. This is why Florida needs to start electing progressive leadership that will fix the state's school system. Spending more on students is essential in Florida. 

resources:

http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_11/015591.php

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