Well, it has finally been verified...

[Lonestarblue]

34. I spent my career in education, and sitting through hearings for the State Board of Education

was just painful. The Board is elected and over the years has included about every kind of right-wing science denier and religious extremist who wanted the Bible taught in every class. Parent groups became involved (google Norma and Mel Gabler, fairly famous in educational obstruction circles) and demanded that textbook publishers include only the content they wanted their kids to know—basically, white people built the country, no white person ever did anything bad, and slavery was good because owners clothed and fed their slaves.

Creationism was always a big demand, and more recently even mentioning climate warming has been forbidden. Praise for how great the US free-market capitalist economy was expected, along with the notion of American exceptionalism. When politicians and right-wing parents got involved in education, quality declined.

And then there’s the enormous problem of state standards for each subject area. Some are decent but moat are poor. They began in the 1990s with standards for science education and spread to other areas. Here’s an excerpt from a document ( https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1058495.pdf that provides much more information for anyone interested):

“Although prescribed standards for science education are the basis for educational reform in virtually all states in the United States, these standards are often problematic. Indeed, an emphasis on prescribed standards often (1) frustrates and inhibits good teachers, (2) marginalizes many at-risk students, (3) produces curricula that ignore fundamental ideas in science (e.g., many states’ standards do not mention the word evolution), and (4) do not enhance teaching and learning. It is teachers, not prescribed standards, who are the most important ingredient of science education.”

Every state has different standards. An attempt was made a few years ago to introduce national standards, the Common Core, that was actually started by Republican governors. They were quickly politicized in red states as the federal government telling states what to teach, all to get votes from constituents who didn’t know any better. Those standards weren’t perfect either, but the fragmented nature of our education systems means, for example, that students in strong education states like Massachusetts are learning far more than students in weak education states like Mississippi. We need real reform, and we will not get it with today’s Republican Party trying to turn education over to for-profit companies that hire inexperienced teachers and the more recent groups like Moms for Liberty working to ban books and teach only the Republican version of our history.