Gee, I wonder why SAT scores keep dropping, federal education spending keeps increasing, and teachers' union bosses keep buying bigger BMWs?

It's not just an unemployment crisis, or a foreclosure crisis, or a deficit crisis... it's also a stupidity crisis: 2011 SAT Reading scores just hit an all-time low.

And please consider these pathetic scores in context.

Over the decades, Americans have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on failed "Department of Education" programs.

They haven't worked and, in fact, have provably made things worse.

Whether measured in aggregate or by pupil, spending on education has increased year after year, decade after decade, while test scores continue to decline.

And all of us know why:

Democrats hate school choice

Several years ago, the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently received an email from a Harvard economist. One powerful sentence read, "The attached study has changed my life as a scientist."

The Harvard Study (conducted by Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie) analyzed charter schools in Harlem. They compared students in the charter schools (called "Harlem Children's Zone") to all New York City public schools. What they discovered was nothing short of startling.

In a nutshell, they found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains: "[The study] makes a rigorous case, using two different methodologies, that the charter school investigated in this area (Promise Academy I, 6-8 grade) had a huge effect on children’s academic performance as measured by standardized tests. The effect size was particularly large in math - enough to close the black-white achievement gap, something that no previous (rigorously demonstrated) effect has come close to.

Let me repeat the key finding: in mathematics, the charter school approach completely eliminated the black-white achievement gap.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that charter schools level the educational playing field for both white and black students, Obama and the Democrat Party leadership have crushed and suppressed school choice programs like that in Washington, DC. Thanks to the all-powerful Democrat constituency -- teachers' unions like the AFT and the NEA -- freeing kids from the slavery of failed public school systems is forbidden.

The Wall Street Journal points out the hypocrisy in stark terms: "President Obama and his Education Secretary have repeatedly promised to support "what works," regardless of ideology. But the teachers' unions adamantly oppose school vouchers, which provably work and work well. Ergo, Messrs. Obama and Duncan decided to kill a D.C. school voucher program that worked fabulously. Instead, they have forced poor kids back into the failed public schools that Messrs. Obama and Duncan would never deign to send their own children. What a disgrace."

* * * * * * * * *
And so I ask you reasonable Democrats: who are the racists here? Which party embraces failed policies, year after year and decade after decade?

And which party wants to fight the tyranny of Statism, dependency and racism?

The answers are obvious. All who favor liberty -- whether they are black, white, rich or poor -- should vote Republican.