Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, taught in Minnesota public schools from 1996 to 2006 and then served 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Since January 2019, Walz has been governor of Minnesota, but his state's public school fourth and eighth graders performed horrendously in math and reading on the 2022 "Nation's Report Card," as compared to their superb results on the pre-pandemic 2019 exams.
Between the 2019 and 2022 assessments, American students lost an unprecedented 19 points, including 13 points in math, as total points dropped from 1,006 to 987.
But among the 24 mega-states with more than 5.1 million residents and at least 750,000 public school students, Minnesota was tied with Virginia for the second-largest learning losses.
Maryland's students, under former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, lost 34 points, from 1,003 to 969.
Virginia's students dropped 31 points, from 1,020 to 989.
While Minnesota students in 2019 achieved a highly commendable third place with 1,025 points, they plunged 31 points to 994 points and eighth in 2022.
Gov. Walz's students lost an astounding 20 points on the math exams, and 11 on the reading.
Since 12 points on the "Nation's Report Card" equals one year of educational progress, they regressed by a cumulative 2.6 years.
Moreover, the credit for Minnesota's outstanding results in 2019 doesn't belong to Walz, but to his Democrat predecessor, Mark Dayton, as the exams were administered between January and March, the first three months of Walz's radical-left, disastrous tenure.
Similarly, Virginia's heinous losses on the 2022 exams, also given during the first quarter, must be blamed on former Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, and not on Republican successor Glenn Youngkin, who took office in January of that year.
More granularly, between 2019 and 2022, white students in Gov. Walz's dystopian Minnesota dropped 25 points, from 1,060 to 1,035.
Asian students suffered a mind-boggling loss of 53 cumulative points, or 4.4 years of progress, from 1,042 to 989.
Hispanic fourth and eighth graders in Minnesota dropped 32 points, from 941 to 909.
Black students lost 20 points, from 918 to 898.
Female students lost 34 points from 1,033 to 999, including an abhorrent 24 points on the two math tests.
Male students dropped 27 points, from 1,018 to 991.
In contrast to Walz's educational tsunami, students in neighboring Wisconsin under Gov. Tony Evers — a Democrat who is a former public school teacher and administrator and who served as state superintendent prior to his election as governor — lost 18 points during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 1,018 to 1,000, and his state's ranking "improved" from seventh to third.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who withdrew in late July as a potential running mate of Vice President Harris, saw his state's students lose a humongous 27 points, from 1,009 to 982 points and slip from 12th place to 13th.
Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom's and Vice President Harris' collapsing California ranked next-to-last 23rd in 2019 with 986 points. The no-longer Golden State lost 13 points on the 2022 exams, for a score of 973, and tied for 21st with Republican Gov. Henry McMaster's South Carolina.
But in 2022, California had 5.9 million public school students, while South Carolina had 789,000.
Students in Florida, under the very competent leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, declined by 16 points, from 1,013 to 997. The Sunshine State rose from 10th place in 2019 to a tie for fourth in 2022, with Democrat Gov. Jared Polis' Colorado, whose scores declined by 22 points from 1,019.
Tim Walz's ideological allies, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have the worst cumulative score, 987 points, on the "Nation's Report Card" among the past four presidential administrations.
In 2009, reflecting the excellent progress during the eight-year tenure of George W. Bush, American students totaled 1,008 points.
In 2017, after Barack Obama's eight years in the White House, they improved to 1,012 points.
In 2019, during the third year of Donald Trump's presidency, their total was 1,006 points.
But in 2000, the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency, American fourth and eighth graders totaled only 984 points on the math and reading exams. (Since no eighth-grade reading test was administered that year, I used the score from 1998.)
Thus, Biden and Harris have obliterated the fabulous educational progress that public school students achieved in the first two decades of the 21st century, and they have regressed to the unacceptably mediocre results of Clinton's last three years in the White House.
Moreover, on the 2023 "Nation's Report Card" for 13-year-olds, Biden-Harris' math and reading total was 527 points — 13 points fewer than former President Trump's 540 points in 2020, and an unbelievable 21 points lower than President Obama's 548 points in 2012.
Their score is also 8 points lower than Bill Clinton's 535 points in 1999.
Finally, the Republican-led House of Representatives must expeditiously investigate the U.S. Department of Education, which has recently announced that scores on the 2024 "Nation's Report Card" in math and reading for fourth and eighth graders won't be released until early 2025.
Traditionally, scores were made public in the late summer or early autumn of the same year that they were administered.
Mark Schulte is a retired New York City schoolteacher and mathematician who has written extensively about science and the history of science. Read Mark Schulte's Reports — More Here.
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