Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is taking direct aim at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the GOP presidential candidate who once enjoyed a reputation as a “Donald Trump With Brains” but who has struggled to prove he is deserving of that flattering sobriquet. DeSantis has also notably struggled so far to make a dent in former President Trump’s lead in the GOP presidential nomination polls.
As the “Smarter Trump,” DeSantis’s campaign has placed an emphasis on the importance of education — he has degrees from both Harvard and Yale, after all.
But unlike many politicians who boast about their education initiatives, DeSantis doesn’t always tout his success in raising test scores of Florida students, the most common metric of a successful education agenda.
Instead DeSantis is more often pushing his vow to rid the education system of the so-called “woke ideology” that allegedly pervades it.
That’s a good idea, Sen. Murphy asserts in his latest tweet, if only because DeSantis can’t claim legitimate educational achievements by the standard measures. DeSantis measures his effect by the Savonarola yardstick, Murphy insinuates, in dropping a statistical truth bomb on the Florida Governor.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) July 3, 2023
Murphy doesn’t add a caption to his share, which features a diptych of DeSantis standing in front of a podium labeled “Florida: The Education State” and a ranking that shows Florida with the “lowest math score in the U.S. at 50 points below the benchmark.”
Other sources don’t have Florida last on the list, though the state ranks near the bottom on many lists. In this ranking, only West Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho and Rhode Island scored lower than Florida on overall SAT scores.
And the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2023 that “Florida has the worst learning rate,” delivering this data:
“The size of Florida’s regression is dramatic and growing, especially in math. Florida’s overall average NAEP state rank regression between fourth and eighth grade since 2003 is 17 spots (math) and 18 spots (reading). But since 2015, the averages are 27 spots (math) and 19 spots (reading).”
Tampa Bay Times
[NOTE: That regression is possible because Florida did score high when measuring younger students, the peak from which it fell: last year, Florida students ranked third in the nation in Grade 4 reading and fourth in Grade 4 mathematics.]
One observer points out that Murphy’s stat bomb may be misleading for another reason as well — because of the self-selected group who elect to take the standardized tests that inform the rankings.
“Happy to knock FL any day, but Avg SAT is a poor measure of math education,” writes the commenter. “Some states test all students. Others it is only taken by college bound kids. In others, most kids take the ACT and the small % taking SAT are very strong students trying to get into elite schools.”
