Biden's Education Failure

Today, the Bidens will visit a public school in Washington, D.C., to welcome students back for another year — or, at least, those kids who actually show up.

December 20, 2022, WJLA-TV (Washington, D.C.)

Nowhere is America’s current education crisis quite as acute as the District of Columbia. Now, in the aftermath of COVID and the subsequent Democrat-mandated lockdowns, the problem is getting so much worse:

• D.C. students have fallen behind by an average of five months in math and four months in reading — while minority students have fallen even farther behind.
  • 19 percent of all students were proficient in math last year — down from 31 percent in 2019.
  • 31 percent of all students were proficient in reading and writing last year — down from 37 percent in 2019.
  • The decline in test scores was most evident among Black and Hispanic/Latino students.
• Almost half of ALL students are “chronically absent,” or absent for more than 10 percent of the entire school year — up from 29 percent three years ago.
• More than one-third of all students reported feeling “sad or hopeless” last year.
• The estimate percentage of ninth graders who will earn a college degree within six years of high school graduating has plummeted to just eight percent.

Meanwhile, Republicans have a solution — expanding Washington, D.C.’s highly successful “opportunity scholarship” program. Over the past two decades, tens of thousands of District students — primarily from low-income neighborhoods — have received scholarships to attend private schools — and it works. Nearly 90 percent of scholarship recipients graduated high school.

As students continue to reel from the pandemic’s effects, it’s no secret how we got here.

Democrats did this and they’re hoping Americans forget. They won’t.