The failure of government schools to provide poor kids with a basic education is a handicap that few are ever able overcome. Rather than a social leveler, government schools are the driving force for inequality in America.
In Baltimore there are 23 elementary schools in which not a single student is proficient in math. No one student in the entire school. In the entire city, only seven percent—one in fourteen students—is proficient in math.
In one Baltimore school, a GPA of 0.13 places a student in the top half of the class.
To call Baltimore schools a public school is a misnomer. They don’t serve the public. Instead, they serve the teachers unions, administrators with lifetime appointments, and the craven politicians who benefit from a captive voting block of government dependents.
Here’s a story from the Baltimore Fox affiliate on the failure of government schools in that city.
If the Fox Project Baltimore story doesn’t make you mad, check your pulse to make sure that your heart is still beating.
The same story plays out in government schools throughout the United States.
In Chicago, there are 33 schools where not a single student is proficient in math and a total of 53 schools where not a single student is proficient in math in the state of Illinois.
In Milwaukee, just 11 percent of fourth graders are proficient in math.
In California statewide, only 27 percent of eleventh graders met or exceeded statewide standards for math.
Just 30 percent of Boston public school students—less than one in three–are proficient in math.
The primary reason for inequality in America is not racism or the police. It is the government school system.
Consider what life is like for the students in these 23 Baltimore schools. They’ve been robbed of the opportunity to have an education, to develop their minds. And when you don’t have educational opportunity, you don’t have life opportunity either.
It’s not just that they’ve been victimized by the Baltimore school system today. They’ll continue to be victims for the rest of their lives.
So many important decisions in life require quantitative reasoning skills. Managing your finances requires quantitative reasoning skills. Weighing risk against reward requires quantitative reasoning skills. Running a business requires quantitative reasoning skills.
Those who can manage their finances, understand risk, and run a business get ahead in life. Those who can’t find themselves falling victim to scammers, loan sharks and flim-flam artists throughout their lifetime.
GOUSA stands for educational opportunity for all Americans. That includes school choice, school vouchers, charter schools and more parental involvement in the classroom. It also means teaching factual American history, US politics and civics in schools – and not political indoctrination.
Our rating system identifies those politicians that support greater educational opportunity versus those that stand with the entrenched interests that have made government schools the engine of inequality in American society.