GOP: Don't Blame Us For What We Did To Education!

State Rep. Joel Kitchens gave this week's GOP propaganda, er, I mean, radio address, in which he laments about what the GOP has done to the state's education system:

I want to take a little bit of your time today to discuss the disappointing results released by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress test. This test is usually referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card.”

Fourth and Eighth graders are tested based on proficiency in math and reading. According to this study, only 31% of our fourth graders are proficient in reading. That’s down from both pre and post-pandemic test results. It’s not just reading scores that are troubling. Our fourth graders are only testing at a 42% proficiency in math.

Sadly, our eighth graders are not any better. It was reported that only 31% of eighth graders were proficient in reading and only 37% were proficient in math. Wisconsin has the largest gap in reading and math scores between Black and white students of any state in the United States. The scores are horrific for minority students. Our black students are ranked worst in the nation in 4th-grade reading and math. Only 8% can read and only 5% are proficient in math.

OMG! How did it get things get so badly when the GOP controlled the legislature for the past 15 years?   Where did we go so wrong?

The answer to those questions is just a matter of following the money. The Bradley Foundation, which is located right here in Milwaukee, is one of the biggest sources for dark money in the state and they have bought many politicians, almost all of them Republicans.  But the Bradley Foundation wasn't interested in just their tax cuts.

The Bradley Foundation has a long, long history of spending tens of millions and thousands of millions of dollars just in Wiscconsin just for the purpose of destroying education, especially public education and the teachers union. 

In an effort to do a reverse Robin Hood - robbing the poor and giving to the rich - the fascist oligarchs at the Bradley Foundation paid for a study called The Bell Curve, which came to the conclusion they wanted::

The Bell Curve's key educational policy recommendation dovetails with the Bradley Foundation's top education priority: support for school choice, including public funds for private and religious schools. This bolsters the case of those who argue that despite the rhetoric of choice, many voucher advocates have abandoned the vision of a quality education for all children. Says Robert Lowe, associate professor at National Louis University and an editor of the journal Rethinking Schools: The Bell Curve is a smoking gun. It maintains that the poor—including the majority of African Americans—are generally incapable of benefiting from education....

So, there you have it.

The Bradley Foundation pours money into the campaign coffers of the Republicans.  In returrn, the Republicans dutifuly and systematically destroy public education and push privatized education, from which members of the Bradley Foundation profit greatly.

And for those poor kids who get the cold shoulder from this privatized education system, well someone's gotta keep those privatized prisons full, amirite?

At the end of Kitchen's propaganda spiel, he begs the Superintendent of Public Instruction to just focus on fixing the damage the Republicans have done on the behalf of the Bradley Foundation and others like them, and to stop holding them accountable.

No wonder the GOP is so deadset against teaching history.  They always end up being held accountable.