I recently took the test required for US citizenship applicants. It consisted of 20 out of 100 possible questions. It was shockingly simple.
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Constitution were all answers to straightforward questions. Probably the most difficult question was the minimum voting age (18). I’m no scholar but there was no doubt about any answer.
Yet only one of three American adults can achieve the 60% pass rate. It’s another stark reminder of the sorry condition of our public education system.
You see it everywhere. Most third grade graduates can’t read. High schools award diplomas to students with eighth grade (or worse) academic skills. Colleges must give remedial instruction before freshpersons can tackle even the most basic courses.
Employers complain about uneducated, untrainable college graduates. Tech companies lobby for visas so foreign workers can fill jobs where they can’t find qualified applicants.
America still has an academic elite which produces world leading research and wins prizes, but we suffer at every other level from the lack of academic attainment. Achievement scores have been stagnant for over 50 years, since teachers’ unions assumed de facto control of our public school systems.
Nothing new here, but the public school monopoly has been remarkably successful in fending off desperately needed reforms, like universal school choice. Instead of taking accountability for failures, they simply change the standards.
Arizona has had several iterations of “high stakes“ achievement tests in the last few decades, all created in response to unacceptably high failure rates on previous tests. Yet the public school monopoly is widely supported in demanding yet more money while delivering an inferior product.
The SAT and ACT college entrance exams have also quietly inflated their scores but they still serve as a useful tool for colleges in the admissions process. They prevent gaming of the system by grade inflation and help colleges identify students likely to be successful. Meanwhile, worthy but overlooked students are provided a pathway for proving themselves..
But this month, the University of California system announced it will no longer consider the SAT or ACT in their admissions process on the basis that they employ “racist metrics“. Over half of American four year colleges and universities also have dismissed these tests as requirements for the incoming class in 2021.
The truth is these tests have been thoroughly scrubbed for bias. They’re not racist in any honest sense of the term except that they produce differing results for racial groups. Biased testing is not the explanation, which more likely lies in in unequal opportunity and effort among the groups.
For example, Asian-American students spend 13 hours per week on homework according to a UCSD study. White students spend 5.5 hours weekly, Hispanic and black students less. Asian-American parents are education-oriented and stress the value of hard work.
However, high-end charter schools have shown that children of all races can learn when given the encouragement and rigorous instruction necessary. The mainstream response to these successes has been not emulation but attempts to shut them down or at least limit their growth.
Far from focusing on pathways to success, many public school systems are now promoting the notion that achievement itself is racist. Math instruction is considered to be biased against minorities because of its insistence on one right answer. “Show me your work“ is white. No, really.
Oregon and California are among states developing courses for teaching “equitable math instruction“. Worse, many public schools are starting to teach outright racial hate. Critical Race Theory has likely come to a school near you, without bothering to notify parents.
This is the notion that racism and slavery were the founding principles of America. White people alone are inherently, incurably racist. They must own their racism rather than deny it or advocate racial equality, which only proves their guilt.
We are facing an uncertain future if we continue to produce an uneducated, polarized citizenry. The ray of hope may lie with parents made newly aware during the Covid epidemic.
Reports are growing of concerned parent groups rising up around the country to protest the academic failings and intolerant teaching prevalent in our public schools. May their tribe increase.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Members of the Public Policy Committee of Greater Phoenix Leadership recently endorsed an editorial entitled “Disenfranchising Voters is Not Election Reform”.
“As an organization of CEOs at the helm of hundreds of thousands of employees in Arizona“, they felt it their public duty to warn of efforts in the legislature not only “undermining our carefully crafted voting system“ but also “actually attempting to suppress the votes of Arizonans“.
They were especially incensed by the “stringent new identification requirements for those voting by mail“ and the “purge of voters from the Early Voting List”. They grouped these bills with other less important measures, then claimed that all of them had “one thing in common: making it more difficult for Arizonans to vote”.
Voter suppression is a serious accusation. It evokes our racist past and implies serious civil rights violations. It’s a cheap slander when charged carelessly without reasonable proof.
There was one critical element missing in the CEOs’ argument: even a single example of how any of these bills would make voting more difficult. Did they even read the bills? There is no such case to be made.
Let’s look at some facts. Voter ID is required for all in-person voters. Their ballots are handled securely throughout the process and their votes are made without any inappropriate influence.
Yet for bulk mail voting (I.e., voting with a ballot not specifically requested by the voter), all the rules go out the window. No ID is required either for receiving nor submitting a ballot.
It’s no surprise that several election experts and commissions have tagged bulk mail voting as a potential source of significant fraud, even though any fraud that does occur is largely undetectable. With mailed ballots, unlike in-person ballots, it’s impossible to know who filled them out and under what circumstances.
The “stringent new requirement“ for mail-in voters would simply require the mailed ballot to include either a voter registration or Arizona Drivers License number. The measure is far from a comprehensive solution but…voter suppression? Give me a break.
The purported “purge“ of the Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) is nothing more than routine maintenance of the files of bulk mail voters that inevitably become inaccurate with time. County recorders would be required to send a notice to voters who had not returned a mail ballot in four consecutive elections, most likely persons who have died, moved or simply lost interest.
If the addressee failed to respond within 30 days, they would be removed from the list. However they would still be registered to vote and could request reinstatement on the PEVL at any time.
No harm, no foul. Yet this is “Jim Crow 2.0“ according to Democrats desperate to maintain the fraud-vulnerable status quo. But even if passed, these reforms would still not be as restrictive as many laws already on the books in California, Connecticut, DC and other Democrat strongholds never accused of “voter suppression“.
The phenomenon of woke CEOs pressuring legislatures to push left-wing electoral nonsense is not unique to Arizona. Georgia legislators suffered withering criticism from their business community after passing bills similar to those being considered here.
As in Arizona, Georgia activists like the CEO of Coca-Cola were unable to offer any specific objections, other than generic “voter suppression”. With President Biden‘s encouragement, Georgia was nevertheless penalized with the loss of baseball’s All-Star game. Arizona too is facing the threatened loss of scheduled sports championships.
The GPL CEOs, like athletes and entertainers seeking influence, mostly just reiterate the talking points of the Democrat/media crowd. They claim the that voting issues are non-partisan when in fact even mild reforms are unanimously opposed by Democrats.
The CEOs write that voters are satisfied with the current system, so there is nothing to fix. Again, the reality is different. Non-partisan polls reveal a clear majority of voters harbor at least some distrust of our system and favor specific reforms like Arizona’s.
Election integrity isn’t racist, it’s essential to our right to vote. Your vote has been stolen if it is canceled by fraud or manipulation just as surely as if you were refused a ballot.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
The Arizona legislature failed this year to pass a bill that would have required third grade students to be held back if they failed to learn to read adequately. The unsuccessful bill uncovered some unhappy truths about the state of education.
Third grade is recognized as a critical progression point for reading proficiency. Students through third grade are taught to read, after which they are expected to read to learn. Those unable to do so suffer a lifelong handicap in today’s knowledge economy with enormous economic and social consequences.
In 2019, 60 percent of Arizona’s third graders failed to meet our own reading standards. Unfortunately, nothing really new here.
Yet this ongoing failure is largely ignored by educators. There is little sense of urgency. Almost all of the failing third graders are routinely promoted to fourth grade, as if nothing of consequence had happened.
Here’s the worst of it. These dismal scores were recorded in the year before Covid, during which teachers’ unions refused in-person instruction. There was never the least evidence that school children suffered from Covid nor spread it.
Nevertheless, teachers received full pay and benefits. Ignoring “the science”, the unions insisted their work was far too dangerous.
No matter how much their students and families suffered, they stubbornly persisted. We’ll be years assessing the educational damage caused by their intransigence. Third graders mostly losing a year of reading instruction will be especially hard hit.
Yet even under these circumstances, government educators fiercely resisted the notion of a do-over, as they had before. They claimed that holding students back would cause more to drop out and result in worse outcomes. (Harvard research suggests the opposite).
Admittedly, holding back all non-reading third graders would be logistically difficult, although the long-term benefits to students and heightened accountability for educators would be well worth it. But educators’ real objection is that thousands of students in remediation would shine a bright light on their failure to perform what is arguably their most important duty: teaching basic literary skills to students who need them the most.
American education, with achievement levels lagging behind most other industrialized nations, has badly needed an overhaul for some time. The irony is that we know how to teach children effectively.
The Success Academies in New York, KIPP schools nationwide, Arizona charter schools and others have shown that it is a lie to pretend that disadvantaged students are “ineducable.“
Thomas Sowell found that New York City charter schools achieved proficiency levels several times that of district schools housed in the same building. Tuition scholarship programs in Arizona, DC and elsewhere have provided life-changing opportunity for thousands of children who otherwise would not have been so fortunate.
But in spite of their successes, school choice programs have been met with implacable hostility from an educational status quo that sees only threats, not opportunities to better serve. Some teachers’ unions even demanded further charter school restrictions as a condition for returning from their Covid vacation.
The result has been that critical reforms have been stymied. Tuition scholarship programs and charter schools, though growing, still have waiting lists. The default option for too many students is still the failing school closest to their home.
But the Covid debacle could be the springboard to wide sweeping reforms. Parents noticed the callous disregard for their children’s welfare from those they trusted. Some parents were shocked by the pervasive ideological indoctrination in the zoom lessons they observed.
They became comfortable with homeschooling and other options that put them more in charge of their children’s education. Not coincidently, Education Savings Accounts, funds made available to parents for any educational expenses in lieu of public school attendance, have been introduced in over twenty legislatures this year.
The fallout from our failing schools is enormous. We have produced a generation too many of whom are uneducated, entitled and angry. They are enamored with socialism and disdainful of American culture, including free speech. Moreover, income inequality has been widened by the very education activists so vexed by it.
Covid is our best chance to finally open up and modernize the structure of American education. Viva la Revolución!
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
America has a border wall that is very efficient at keeping out intruders. It hasn’t been breached once in over three months.
Unfortunately, it protects only our political elites at the US Capitol, who are under minimal threat. Other Americans must make do with a wall that is highly porous, that leaks multitudes of illegal immigrants daily, including everything from petty criminals making life miserable for border residents to murderous cartel members.
Americans not living in a cave know we have a hot mess on our southern border. Fired up by Biden‘s not-so-subtle invitation to come in, hordes of migrants began forming caravans even before his inauguration.
175,000 immigrants in March alone overwhelmed border patrol agents, with unknown additional numbers sneaking across. Overcrowded facilities at the border are so deplorable that even reporters and congressmen are denied access.
Worse, 20,000 unaccompanied minors were in custody at last count. From the appearance of their accommodations, kids in cages are back big time.
Economic migration of would-be breadwinners has been replaced by families and children, because of an inane policy requiring all minors who present at the border to be automatically admitted. The Biden administration claims to be strictly enforcing immigration laws, but only 10 of 20 percent are refused admission.
The majority of illegal immigrants are released into the US population with status pending a court date far in the future. “Asylum-seekers“ rarely prevail in court. Understandably, few risk deportation by showing up.
Meanwhile, busloads of migrants empty out into hapless desert towns like Ajo and Gila Bend, which have absolutely no capability to provide the (free) food and accommodations expected. Some are sent to military bases where the US Armed Forces are deployed to care and provide for them. Migrants not admitted construct tent cities at the border and feel entitled to refuse to move until their “demands“ are met.
This is clearly a humanitarian crisis and a serious security threat. Even some leaders of the immigrants’ home countries object. Yet the response of the Biden administration has been a preternatural calmness.
They have made no effort to prevent the masses from coming. They spent great amounts of political capital on avoiding the word “crisis“ to describe the crisis. They have worked hard to keep us from knowing or seeing the ghastly details.
They have contended that it’s “Trump’s fault”, which is truly laughable. Border crossings were controlled during his tenure. All hell broke loose only when they foolishly reversed the previous administration’s policies.
To control the debacle, Biden appointed his VP. But Kamala Harris has so far not even attempted to appear interested, literally laughing at the suggestion that she might even visit the border.
But c’mon man. There is only one explanation that makes any sense: Democratic dreams of millions of new easily controlled voters. Where reasonable people see uneducated, low-skilled workers who broke our law, don’t speak our language and have no intention of sharing our history and values, Democrat leaders see future Democrats. No price is too great to pay in pursuit of an assured political future.
The suffering at the border is of no apparent concern. Known terrorists and cartel members slipping in? Children found abandoned in the desert? Unfair competition with American workers in a tight market for low-end labor? None of it matters.
The only point of the drill is to somehow get these future Dems physically into the country. Then nothing happens when they skip their court hearings, get “papers“ for jobs and government benefits and over-run welfare and justice systems.
Before long we’ll be hearing amnesty is the only possible course because, like the DACA recipients, they have been here for so long, they know no other home, there are too many to send back, blah, blah. An undemanding “pathway to citizenship“ will be the only humane solution. We’ll probably be promised enhanced border security (again) if we go along.
Up to 20 million illegal aliens already live in the US. Biden’s number is for 2 million more per year. America is a welcoming country that wants and needs a sound immigration system. We just don’t need this one.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
On his first day in office, President Biden unilaterally eliminated the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, which had written the 1776 Report as the only action of its brief tenure.
The Report (which is well worth reading) had been met by full throated hysteria from the Left, although in any other age it would have been regarded as informative and moderate. The report was written in response to the 1619 Project, now being introduced to school children nationwide, which holds that the introduction of slaves, not the Declaration, was the seminal event in American history.
The Report was not intended to plow new ground but to educate Americans about their unique and sometimes complicated history. The Report emphasizes how unique for the times was the founders’ commitment to political and personal liberty as well as the natural equality of all. It reviews the founding principle of natural rights endowed by our Creator, for which government is the safeguard.
The founders knew that previous attempts at republican government had floundered primarily due to class chaos and/or tyranny of the majority, so several safeguards were built in to prevent any group or branch of government from accumulating excessive power.
The written constitution gave substance to the founding principles, creating a unique combination of durability and liberty. Our precious freedoms of speech, religious liberty and the right to bear arms are specifically protected in amendments.
But the report doesn’t whitewash historical injustices either, such as the continuation of slavery. Yet the commitment to equality was heartfelt and today we know the result. Slavery was eliminated by a bloody Civil War 70 years later and the union was preserved.
It’s hard to defend the extension of slavery into the 19th century, but the historical probability is that if the founders had refused to compromise initially, the union would have fractured, creating a permanent slave nation. The suffering of those slaves bought immense blessings for their descendants.
The report also describes other threats to the constitutional order, such as fascism and communism, both of which were significant threats in their time. Progressivism, which argues we are better off surrendering our liberties to expansive, paternalistic government, is a current challenge.
Moreover, resurgent racism, the claim that race, gender and sexual preference define who we are rather than remain incidental to our shared humanity, is in direct contradiction to the Declaration and Constitution.
The report stresses that because slavery and voting restrictions were antithetical to our founding principles, it was actually the Constitution that provided the eventual basis for their elimination. Two of the great historical figures in the ending of slavery and achieving full constitutional rights for blacks, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, agreed.
Both argued for realizing and enforcing the founders’ vision. They recognized the Constitution as the great freedom document empowering black liberation.
Tragically, school children today are taught, and so growing numbers of Americans believe, that America’s history is primarily the saga of implacable bigotry and exploitation by the European descendants who founded the republic.
Critical Race Theory blames the purported debacle on the innate racism and claims of superiority supposedly held by all whites, an inborn characteristic not shared by other races. Students are taught to loathe their own country for its insidious but pervasive evils.
But as the late Walter Williams reminded us, American blacks post-slavery made greater gains, over severe obstacles, in a shorter time frame, than any racial group in history. Their unprecedented success, even though it has been hindered by the modern welfare state, speaks not only to the courage of a people but to the land of opportunity in which they lived.
The 1776 Report recounts that government of, by and for the people, the rule of law and equality before the law are part of our great national heritage. It reminds us that there is much about America to love, not because it is perfect, but because self-criticism and expected improvement are innate to our national character.
In 2021, the report was effectively spiked by the President of the United States. Generations of Americans who served and died for their country would have found that a crushing disappointment.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
