Teacher protests a reaction to GOP war on education

Gov. Matt Bevin’s war on teachers is just the latest example of the Republican Party’s determination to destroy public education in America. The GOP has used different strategies to achieve this goal.

The most common tactic is to undercut the funding of the schools, often by embracing the trickle-down theory of economics. Reputable economists have rejected that approach as ethically equivalent to snake-oil salesmen.

Gov. Sam Brownback began such a program in Kansas. Brownback slashed the tax rates of businesses and lowered personal income-tax rates. The savings were supposed to generate jobs and rejuvenate the economy.

The results have been catastrophic for the state. With the reduced tax income, the state faced huge budget shortfalls that resulted in cutting basic services like road maintenance and, of course, public education.

Some apologists would suggest that the agricultural-based economy of the state is the cause, but Kansas lags far behind other states with similar economies on the most common metrics of job creation, unemployment, gross domestic product and taxes collected.

To make matters worse, Kansas allowed parents to obtain vouchers for students to attend private or charter schools. As a result, Kansas City had to close half of its public schools due to lost financial support.

As the financial drought continued, some school districts had to close schools several weeks early because they did not have the money for basic operating costs. Predictably, teachers fled the state by the hundreds to find better jobs.

The chickens came home to roost last year when the state legislature had to pass significant tax increases to pay for all the losses incurred from this insane economic experiment.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin tried the same thing. Now many schools only meet for four days a week. Textbooks are falling apart. The history books are so old they do not cover the presidencies of George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Teachers finally staged walkouts to force the state to improve funding for schools and teacher salaries.

Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina enacted economic policies that had similar effects on the public schools. As in other states, teachers abandoned the state by the thousands.

Republican governors are often abetted in their efforts to destroy schools by complicit Republican legislatures. Typically, lawmakers are paid by lobbyists to start charter schools as a miracle cure for the ills of public schools even though nearly all independent research has concluded that charter schools are less successful than public schools.

Again, by pushing charter schools, the governments do what all Republicans want to do to all public funds: force the money into the private sector. We have seen similar events play out in Arizona and Louisiana.

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos served as Republican Party chair and the darling of a pro-choice charter school think tank in Michigan. Most of the charter schools she extolled as exemplars of their effectiveness in fact had much lower standardized test scores than public schools.

In 2003, Michigan schools ranked 28th in fourth-grade reading scores; in 2015, it had dropped to 41st. Math scores dropped from 27th to 42nd. Diversion of funds to charter schools is generally given as the reason for the decline.

But Republican antipathy toward education is not confined to K-12 schools. In a 2017 Pew Research Poll, 58 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in the country.

Is it any wonder we have seen a resurgence of the Flat Earth Society and a rejection of the reality of evolution and climate change?

One need look no further than the current GOP standard bearer, Donald Trump, to understand this dynamic. In a speech to Nevada Republicans in 2016, Trump proclaimed: “We won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”

So basically, he is saying he is glad that the voters are stupid enough to elect him.

Luckily, for him, the Republicans have destroyed education so thoroughly that the people are so poorly educated that they do not realize he just called them stupid.

This story was originally published April 23, 2018 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Teacher protests a reaction to GOP war on education."