Weaponizing an Undereducated Populace to Undermine America

“For many of you it is a Happy Mother’s Day,” the ad reads, featuring photos of numerous black mothers. “[B]ut for us, it is not – because our children are being held in bondage.”

The ad continues:

It is the bondage in Minneapolis Public Schools that, for five consecutive years, rank at the bottom of the country in test scores and graduation rates for students of color. Black children from Mississippi rank higher than Minnesota.

We want a Mother’s Day gift of freedom – freedom of choice. Freedom as mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts to choose the right school for the children in our families. Help us start a new life for them by supporting school choice.

“With a large concentration of the black population in major cities across the country, the task of educating black youth has been under the stewardship of left-wing leaders for decades,” Qualls explains, elaborating:

One example is the Minneapolis Public School (MPS) system. MPS has ranked at or near the bottom of the country for black and Hispanic students in high school graduation rates for more than five years. However, students from the same neighborhoods who receive scholarships (ironically, from white conservative Christians) to faith-based schools perform above national averages on standardized exams and 90 percent of them graduate from high school. Frustrated by being stuck in poverty, this angry mob of black youth is convinced their plight is due to racism because of years of indoctrination by progressives in academia and entertainment.

“Once fully weaponized, the mob takes its orders from national and local bellicose leaders who call for them to ‘get confrontational’ as proclaimed and justified by Democrat Reps. Maxine Walters and Jim Clyburn earlier this year,” Qualls notes.

In July 2020, Center of the American Experiment published its policy fellow Catrin Wigfall’s report titled “Allergic to Accountability,” which featured the headline, “Minnesota’s public schools have little to show for decades of increased spending.”

“The consistently increased flow of dollars into Minnesota’s public schools has not translated into improved student achievement outcomes or more learning,” the report highlighted.

The document observed that, on both the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), “Minnesota students’ scores in reading and mathematics are stagnant or in decline, and an achievement gap between students of color and their white peers and students from low-income families and their wealthier peers persists.”

“States that spend less per pupil are better serving their students of color academically, proving that how money is spent matters far greater than how much money is spent,” Wigfall’s report added.

Hinderaker noted in his comments the major obstacle to school choice in the state:

Minnesota is largely run by its corrupt teachers’ union, Education Minnesota, and the state’s Democratic Party establishment has no compunction about throwing the state’s kids, especially minority kids, under the bus. So perhaps nothing will change. But then again, maybe people who keep telling us that black lives matter will finally start acting as though they mean it.

A similar situation exists in Baltimore, where a report last week at the Independent Sentinel noted 41 percent of Baltimore public high school students earned a grade point average (GPA) of only 1.0.

From the Sentinel:

WBFF’s Project Baltimore produced a report on Baltimore public schools. Their analysis found that during the first three quarters of 2020-2021, 41 percent earned a 1.0-grade point average (GPA) or below.

That means more than 8,400 students out of Baltimore City Schools’ 20,500 total population are getting grades below a “D” overall

The analysis found that 21 percent of city high school students obtained a 3.0 or better GPA—or a “B” average.

According to the report, Baltimore City Councilman John Bullock blamed the appalling statistics on the coronavirus pandemic.

“One of the realities that we dealt with this past year with the pandemic is a lot of young people struggle, a lot of families struggle,” Bullock reportedly told Fox45 News.

Project Baltimore, however, reported in March that hundreds of students have been failing for years, including in one high school in which a student who passed only three classes in four years ranked near the top half of his class with a 0.13 GPA.