Recently the uh, uh, national assessment of educational progress for the United States
came out. And once again, the State of Florida ranks dead last. And the amount of actual
information that students are learning in this state. Now, I'm gonna get to the results
in just a second, but before I do, let me make sure that everybody's very clear about
what's happening here in the state of Florida. For many years now, we have watched as our
Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has waged a war against public education here in the
state. Whether it's making them not teach c r t, which wasn't a thing they were teaching
to begin with, whether it's citing with the angry deranged parents who interrupt school
board meetings, whether it's punishing school districts by withholding funding because they
wanted the kids to wear masks so they didn't get sick and die during a pandemic.
Or whether it's transgender athletes just wanting to play sports, whatever it is, Ron
DeSantis has been attacking, attacking, attacking teachers, professors, school boards and administrators
in this state for years now, because it's gotten him a lot of culture war points. And
while he's been doing this, while he's been attacking education test scores for Florida
students have gone down, down, down, down and down, in fact, for the last 25 years,
which by the way, actually coincides with how long Republicans have been in complete
control of the state of Florida. Huh? Weird how that works out, right? But here's what's
happening in these, uh, national, uh, association, uh, or national assessment of educational
progress. And it's been happening, like I said, for two decades now. They're tracking
students as they progress through school and they're doing this all over the country. And
in the state of Florida around the time the kids hit about fourth grade.
What has been consistent in these n aeps is that the state of Florida starts dropping
off from the national average, right? Like the average is the kids should know all of
these things right here on a graph. But in Florida, in fourth grade, they know eh about
there. And then when they're in fifth grade, it goes down from the average sixth grade,
seventh grade, all the way to eighth grade, where it takes a significant drop off compared
to every other state. Florida's dead last. We see the biggest learning drop off is what
they call it between fourth and eighth grade. Here in this state where education is under
attack, where we have had 25 years of solid Republican rule, our kids, our
Students are getting dumber as a result of that. And that's not an attack on the students.
It's sure not an attack on the teachers. It's coming from the state level, from the Republicans
who control this state. You are making our kids dumber, which probably works out well
for you because if they weren't so stupid, they wouldn't be voting Republican, would
they? Sorry, folks had to say it. But here's the thing. Because of these test scores getting
worse and worse, again, Florida being at the bottom of all 50 states with this, with the
learning dropoff, what Rhon DeSantis did starting this school year as a way to kind of fix the
game, he changed the way we do those standardized testing here in the state of Florida. Instead
of doing the one big test at the end of the year to see what you learned, they now do
the exact same test, identical question for question test three times a year for students.
So that way after it comes back the first time, the teachers have to look at what the
kids don't know and teach them those specific items. So then they'll test them again, make
sure that, oh, okay, it went up. And then they do it again at the end of the year. So
three times per year, beginning, middle, and end.
But it's artificial cuz you're giving them the same test three times, you're going over
the only parts, they don't know about it. You're not actually teaching them things,
you're teaching them the answers to the questions so they can pass the test. So Florida doesn't
look so stupid in all of these little test scores. That's how Rhon DeSantis is rigging
the system so that nobody focuses on how bad he has destroyed the education system here
in the state
of Florida.