We recently ran this chart, showing the Southern states dominating the much more profligate blue states in teaching poor and black kids to read:

Last week, a commentary on our chart appeared in The New York Times of all places.

David Brooks wrote:

We’ve now had 12 years of terrible education statistics. You would have thought this would spark a flurry of reform activity. And it has, but in only one type of people: Republicans. When it comes to education policy, Republicans are now kicking Democrats in the butt…

Where the hell are the Democrats? One gets the impression that many of them have spent the last decade deciding that social justice ideology is more important than reducing inequality…

We can’t live in a country in which the party that dominates the rural areas has a proven educational agenda while the party that dominates the urban areas doesn’t. The Democrats lost part of their soul when they lost touch with the working class; they’ll lose whatever is left of it if they can’t be a party that champions equal opportunity.