Florida ranks as the best state for education while deep blue Oregon ranks dead last in this list of the best states in the new Heritage Foundation list.
The report ranks school systems across every state and the District of Columbia by their degree of education choice, transparency, teacher freedom, and return on investment in education.
Heritage ranked schools on the choice parents have over where their kids attend school, how much freedom teachers have over their classroom, the degree to which parents are informed about what their kids are being exposed to in their schools, and how much each school spends on kids with relation to testing scores and graduation rates.
Per Epoch Times:
Florida earned the top spot in the report. Rounding out the top 10, in order of ranking, were Arizona, Utah, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, and Oklahoma.
The bottom 10 on the report were New Jersey, Washington, Delaware, Minnesota, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and, in last place, Oregon. All of these states lean left politically and had a majority of votes in 2020 for President Joe Biden.
And left-leaning policies lead to poor outcomes at schools, Oklahoma superintendent Mr. Walters said.
“As with many subjects, the [political] left is completely dead wrong on this. It’s not that society is causing students to misbehave—it’s that students are not being responsible for their own behavior.”
But education officials in Minnesota, ranked near the bottom of the Heritage Foundation report, believe “restorative practices” are an example of a winning educational policy.
“Restorative practices (RP) are drawn from the traditions of Indigenous people and communities of color around the world,” the Minnesota Department of Education’s website reads. “They are grounded in a belief that people are profoundly relational, interconnected and inherently good.”
“Inherently good” children misbehave because the systems they are in fail them and push them into misbehavior, Minnesota’s guide to implementing restorative justice theorizes.
“It is the system (not the children) that needs to be made whole,” the guide reads.
Conservative policies prevail in nine states in the top 10. Arizona was the only state in the top 10 with a majority of votes for President Biden in the 2020 election that toppled incumbent President Donald Trump.
Clearly the red states are shaping up far better for their school districts, for their parents, and, most importantly, for their students.
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