by Dan Burns

Mar 7, 2023, 8:00 AM

Commenter refutes “misleading” claims about Minnesota’s schools

I used “misleading” in the title of this because I only use “lies,” “lying,” and/or “liar” when I’m sure the person knows that what he’s claiming to be true is in fact false. In my estimation most right-wingers who do a lot of mouthing off for the most part honestly believe every word of their drivel. They really are that far gone in full-time motivated reasoning and cognitive rigidity.

From commenter Mike, responding to this recent story:

And right on cue the conservatives come out with another propaganda piece attacking the education system.

The Center Of The American Experiment (a right wing think tank created in 1990 for the purposes of creating propaganda and junk science to support conservative talking points and attack Democrats, the same reason all other right wing think tanks exist) has produced a hit piece on education. The current president is John H Hinderaker (not to be confused with the Arizona judge John C Hinderaker) who came to fame in 2004 when his blog Powerline covered the Bush-Rather documents scandal. They have breathlessly reported that 19 Minnesota schools had 0% of their students achieve math proficiency in the most recent tests.

It turns out that 11 of the 19 schools are charter schools. The 0% does sound bad, but in the case of Sheridan Elementary that totaled 15 students and for Cherokee Heights it totaled 14 students. And several others are nearly as small.

The NAEP test results came out last October. Minnesota 4th grade math scores fell to 239, 4 points above the national average. And Minnesota 8th grade math scores fell to 280, 7 points above the national average. They ignore the “above the national average” part to base their attack on the decline, and they pooh pooh the obvious answer that the COVID shutdown played a huge part.

Interestingly, the SAT scores came out about the same time, and Minnesota was #1.

There is bad news in the area of education, but they cherry pick the worst to make some junk science headlines. In this case it is to try and take over control of the flow of education money and divert a portion of it into the pockets of the for-profit hucksters. The for-profit hospitals maximize profits by minimizing services which leads to suffering and death of patients, and rich executives. The for-profit schools will maximize profits by minimizing services leading to ignorant, easily conned citizens, (which is already the bulk of the Republican base), and rich executives.

Regarding that last part, I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it. As far as right-wingers are concerned U.S. public schools are doing too good a job. They are turning out big majorities that are actually able and willing to engage in knowledgeable reasoning from fact, rather than just automatically going with unthinking habit and whatever pushes the right buttons emotionally. Such people just plain know better than to be political right-wingers. And they especially know better than to be Trumpers.