Conservative radio host Mark Levin speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). (Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) — Conservative radio host Mark Levin cited statistics CNSNews reported showing public schools in Washington, D.C. and across the country cost taxpayers significant money and fail to produce students who can reach proficiency in reading, on the “Mark Levin Show” Thursday.
Levin questioned Democrats’ solution of increasing school budgets and rejecting school choice programs. He noted that only 23% of Washington, D.C.
“So who does this system benefit?” he asked. “The education bureaucrats, the education unions, the education administrations, who are in bed with the Democrat mayors and the Democrat party and Joe Biden — $30,000 per student, this is like the college cost for tuition.”
“As I said the other day, you have more choice in picking toasters than you do in picking schools for your own children,” Levin said. “This is a civil rights issue, as the president says, and it’s gonna take a civil rights type battle to get children in the inner cities, especially, educated because the Democrat Party has always stood in the schoolhouse doorway to prevent little black kids, and now little brown kids, little yellow kids, and little white kids from getting a quality education. ”
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Below is a transcript of this section of the show:
Levin:
Here we have a piece by CNSNews.com, by the great Terry Jeffrey: Washington, D.C. Public Schools spend 30 thousand dollars per student. I would ask the citizens of Washington, D.C., does it seem like it? What are you getting for this? Only 23% of eight graders are proficient in reading. So who does this system benefit? The education bureaucrats, the education unions, the education administrations, who are in bed with the Democrat mayors and the Democrat party and Joe Biden — $30,000 per student, this is like the college cost for tuition.
Only 23% of eighth graders are proficient in reading. In any other walk of life, that would be a flunk job. Something would have to change. “The public elementary and secondary school in the District of Columbia spent $30,115 per pupil during the 2016-2017 school year,” according to the Department of Education’s “Digest of Education Statistics.” Only 23% of eighth graders in D.C. public schools were proficient or better in reading in 2019, according to the Department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The Democrats will say “spend more. We’re not paying enough for our teachers who work so, so hard from home on the Internet.”
“The District of Columbia was not the only jurisdiction where public schools cost taxpayers significant money and gave little in return. The eight states that followed” the D.C. area “with the nation’s worst eighth-grade reading scores” “were Alaska, New Mexico, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Louisiana.” And they’re against school choice? As I said the other day, you have more choice in picking toasters than you do in picking schools for your own children. This is a civil rights issue, as the president says, and it’s gonna take a civil rights type battle to get children in the inner cities, especially, educated because the Democrat Party has always stood in the schoolhouse doorway to prevent little black kids, and now little brown kids, little yellow kids, and little white kids from getting a quality education.
And again, they own the school systems, they own the unions, they own the administrators, they own it all, just like they own the forest, they own the timber areas, they own the inner cities, and they’re destroying this country. And they’re telling you that you need to vote for them because they want to destroy even more.
Lucy Collins is a CNSNews intern and a student at Columbia University.
