PolitiFact.com brags about its fearless Truth-O-Meter, saying it was created to ensure an honest discussion of the top issues facing the Commonwealth. Well, according to our leading local/state elected and appointed officials, there is nothing ore important to this Commonwealth’s future than the education of our children.
Yet, PolitiFact.com refuses to touch arguably the biggest untruth told in Virginia politics, one that especially burdens the state’s most vulnerable citizens. Why is the Truth-O-Meter turned off for this issue?
A recent study, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, addressed the following claim displayed on the state’s official website:
“A Virginia high school diploma tells admission officers at colleges, universities, and career and technical schools that the bearer is ready for the rigors of post-secondary education.”
Our leaders have spent and are spending $hundreds of millions of dollars to produce statistics to prove this claim. Is there any crueler action by government against a child than misleading her or she about the true nature of their education?
“Diploma to Nowhere” was the title of the Gates-funded study. According to this report:
“A high school degree no longer demonstrates that a graduate is college ready.”
The folks at PolitiFact.com can continue to play “gotcha” with any candidate of any party for any office in Virginia. But if they truly want to improve Virginia, then they need to use their Pulitzer Prize credentials to explain why our top officials at the local and state level continue to claim something about such a fundamental issue that is simply not true (and they know it).
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
