I think that there is a view held by people living in blue states that they are smarter than people living in red states. If that were true, then we should be able to measure and see what this smartness has achieved. For example, I would expect the smart states to have better academic performance, lower crime rates, better roads, better health care, higher marriage rates, and so on. Let’s see.

Here’s an article from The Federalist by Helen Raleigh, who is very good on these kinds of issues.

She writes on education in blue states and red states:

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2024 school year. Known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” NAEP assesses the reading and math skills of America’s fourth and eighth graders. The latest report reveals something surprising: after adjusting for demographics, the reading and math scores of students in Mississippi and Louisiana, two heavily Republican states and among the poorest in the nation, have surpassed those in deeply Democratic states such as California and New York.

As soon as I read that, I went straight to Grok to get a listening of per-pupil spending in the 50 states. (no point using Google for searching, it’s biased to the far left, and is just a search engine for corporate news media at this point).

Grok said this:

• Louisiana: $12,000
• Mississippi: $10,984
• California: $17,700
• New York: $30,282

So, you would expect the states that spend more on education to have higher test scores on basics like math, reading, science, history, etc. Right?

Let’s go back to the Federalist article, and see what Missiippi did:

The secret of Mississippi and Louisiana’s educational success is not secret at all; it is about returning to the fundamentals and following the evidence. Mississippi’s Republican-led legislature has implemented effective education reforms in 2012 that prioritize phonics — teaching students to sound out words — and enforce a retention policy for third graders who do not meet essential reading benchmarks. Furthermore, the state invests $15 million each year, or approximately $32 per student, into training teachers on literacy and providing dedicated reading coaches in schools.

The reform has produced remarkable results, with Mississippi’s fourth graders’ reading scores rising from 49th in the nation in 2013 to the top of the rankings (after adjusting for demographics) in 2024. The progress among black students is particularly impressive. According to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, the reading scores of the state’s black fourth graders have improved from 45th to third place during the same period. This reflects the effectiveness of Mississippi’s literacy program, which has provided a learning gain equivalent to a full year of schooling. Moreover, the state’s graduation rate has seen a significant rise from 72 percent in 2013 to 89.9 percent in 2024.

And here’s what Louisiana did:

Inspired by Mississippi’s success, Louisiana implemented similar education reforms in 2019. The state focused on phonics instruction and providing “content-rich” literacy curriculums. Additionally, Louisiana has invested in extensive training programs for principals, teachers, and reading coaches on how students learn to read.

Chad Aldeman, who tracks education-related news, noted, “While Mississippi might win the prize for ten-year gains, Louisiana might win for the most significant recent improvements. It was the closest state to recovering from COVID-related declines in eighth-grade reading and math, and it was the only state where fourth-grade reading scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019.”

Now, you might be thinking “but isn’t that what California and New York do, except with more money?” Well, no, they don’t:

According to California Policy Center, “less than half (47.1 percent) of all public school students in California met state grade-level English Language Arts (ELA) standards during the 2021-22 school year … The reading scores of Black and Hispanic students are even worse. Only 30.3 percent of Black students and 36.4 percent of Hispanic students in California met grade-level ELA standards.”

Yet legislation requiring schools to implement more phonics-based reading curricula failed to pass in California’s legislature last year. This was primarily due to opposition from Democratic Party leadership, teachers unions, and advocacy groups.

If you’re thinking “well, I don’t think any state is stupid enough to do things that don’t work”, let me show you another article from Daily Wire about California:

Democrats on the California Senate Public Safety Committee shot down a bill on Tuesday that would have kept male sex criminals out of female prisons.

The committee, which includes far-Left Senator Scott Wiener, voted down a proposal from Republican Senator Shannon Grove to protect women from males who are registered sex offenders from being able to be housed in women’s prisons. The bill also would have given women privacy in sleeping arrangements and showers, meaning that they would be protected from males who have taken advantage of California’s lax laws that allow men to be placed in women’s prisons.

Back to education. California and New York schools are run by Democrats. They want their schools to indoctrinate students in secular left ideology. They don’t hire the best teachers, and they can’t fire the worst ones. They don’t want parents to tell them what to do, and they don’t focus on basics like reading and math. They focus on putting condoms on cucumbers, and LGBT indoctrination. They hire tons of administrative staff to come in and make sure the schools are woke enough. That’s what blue states do: spend more, get less. And when they fail to perform, they go to the government, and have the law enforcement label the concerned parents “domestic terrorists”. Get out of those blue states, and get into a red state. Don’t give them your money.