Republicans guilty of historic fraud

North Carolina Republicans’ promise to “fix our broken schools” may go down as one of the great frauds in the history a Southland always susceptible to populist charlatans. Capitalizing on frustration with a weak economy, Republicans rode to power in 2010 pledging to bolster our supposedly lackluster education system. Years later, with eight income-tax cuts behind them, Republicans are coming clean: They are lowering educational standards. 

The estimable North Carolina political observer Tom Campbell flagged this ploy in a recent column. Per Campbell, the GOP has reduced the number of credits required to graduate from high school, exempted weak math students from Geometry and Algebra II, and forced blue counties with rigorous standards to stoop to the level of the Republican General Assembly. UNC campuses have been instructed to lower their admissions standards. DEI is gone, and dumber students are knocking at the door. A merit-based society indeed. 

The GOP’s moves are a remarkably blunt admission of their party’s views on teaching and learning. For years, they bombarded public schools with prepackaged education “reforms” borrowed from red states and right-wing think tanks. Without the needed funding, schools failed to improve. The GOP’s solution to this failure has been not to rethink the party’s dogma but simply to settle for a less-educated population. As Maya Angelou’s famous maxim goes, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Angelou taught at Wake Forest University. It is unlikely that the next Maya Angelou will seek employment at our state. 

The GOP’s lowering of educational standards does not represent the politics of a conservative. It is the politics of a redneck. It’s the belligerent ignorance of a pissed-off provincial, waving his Confederate flag at the elites. North Carolinians are stupid hicks, say the literati. Damn right! our legislature replies. 

I emphasize that “redneck” does not mean “rural.” Some of the most aggressive pro-redneck politicians have been suburban Republicans like the transplanted northeastern blowhard Bob Rucho, who humiliated the state with his clownish rhetoric. He said Obamacare was a greater threat to America than the Nazis, the Communists, and the terrorists. Rucho was considered an intellectual leader on fiscal policy in the legislature. 

And the people fighting the most heroically against the redneck onslaught are rural public-school teachers, administrators, and parents. Polling from the nonprofit Carolina Forward (full disclosure: I am a policy analyst at Carolina Forward) has shown that vouchers are particularly unpopular with rural voters. Rural teachers have persevered in their noble work against relentless hostility from the legislature. These people are the resistance to the rednecks. They deserve our ardent support.