cawacko
Well-known member
well there are actually a lot of facts that do back her up. Her claim that the US had the best public schools is hyperbole but she is right that right wing politicians, particularly those in the south have systematically undermined funding public schools. That's happened in large northern metro areas too where white flight has occured though the problem there is not of the scope and pervasiveness that it is in the south.
In the south there are vast swaths in which the economically dominant cultural class (business class whites) have systematically undermined public education by politicizing it. With breath taking short sightedness they do not want to invest in public education when they do not see it as directly benefiting themselves. As a result you have a pervasive culture in the south of large groups of minorities (mainly Blacks and Latinos) and working class whites who do not have strong cultural ties to educational achievement that results in a self perpetuating cycle of ignorance and poverty.
When these types of test are performed outside of the south east and south west regions the average and median scores for Americans are much higher and often place us in the top 5 of these categories. What that really shows is that the south remains largely what it has always been. An economic and cultural backwater that drags down the rest of the country and that is due mainly to the radicalized nature of southern conservative politics.
Yes Mott, I've read your rants about the South before. You presented zero facts about actual education funding and what equals fully funded and how that is compared to today.