President Obama tells his audiences that things are going well, regardless of the facts.
The president, speaking at a DNC fundraiser last night:
On the education front, we’ve seen the high school dropout rate go down, college enrollment rate go up, reading scores and math scores going up.
The truth on test scores:
American high school seniors showed no improvement in their math and reading abilities in four years, according to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often known as the nation’s “report card.”
Adding to the discouraging news, achievement gaps between demographic groups have not lessened. And while the 12th-grade math scores are at least slightly higher than they were in 2005 (the earliest scores available for math, due to changes in the test), the reading scores are actually lower than they were in 1992, when the reading score trend line begins.
New numbers on college enrollment come out later this month, but according to the fall 2013 numbers, college enrollment is sliding:
Overall college enrollment fell for the second year in a row in 2013, from about 20.2 million students in the fall of 2012 to about 19.9 million this year, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse.
College enrollment also dropped in 2012, after increasing from 2006 to 2011.
The president is correct that the high-school dropout rate hit a record low, but that continues a trend that preceded his presidency:
Perhaps in the minds of his fans, President Obama is hitting .333.
The president’s saying something that isn’t true isn’t really surprising anymore. What these lines indicate is that no one around him bothers to check or update the standard fundraiser-speech applause lines, that a lot of what the president “knows” is not actually true, and that his fan base doesn’t really care or bother to check if the condition of the country is getting better under their preferred policies; they simply take it on faith that everything is working out as intended.