Maybe murder factories? Because they’re much worse.

While much of the coverage of last week’s Congressional Inquisition into the Affairs of the Mainland Colony (not its real name) focused on Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s obsession with public urination (I’m not making that up), we shouldn’t forget this idiocy from Republican Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama, who uttered:

“Your schools are not only dropout factories, they’re inmate factories,” Palmer told a panel of D.C. officials that included D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), the city’s chief financial officer and the police union chairman. The statement came as Palmer questioned leaders about juvenile crimes involving guns and drugs.

Funny thing is we can compare how Alabama and D.C. perform on the NAEP, and you’ll never guess what happened next! (akshually, you probably will).

When we do this, no matter how you slice the data, Alabama does much worse. If we break down the 8th grade reading data by ethnicity/race and school lunch eligibility (which is used as a proxy for income), we see that Alabama’s students fare far worse:

1. A Black, school lunch eligible student in Alabama at the 50th percentile in Alabama would fall to the 38th percentile among similar kids in D.C.
2. A Black, school lunch ineligible student in Alabama at the 50th percentile in Alabama would fall to the 28th percentile among similar kids in D.C.
3. A White, school lunch ineligible student in Alabama at at the 50th percentile in Alabama would fall to the 20th percentile among similar kids in D.C.

(D.C. doesn’t have enough White, school lunch eligible students to make a comparison between states)

Replacing school lunch eligibility with parental education, we see that Alabama does worse than D.C. again (there’s not enough data to make the 3-way comparison). For 8th grade math, the ‘White’ gap is even worse.

The (long, belabored) point is that Alabama is doing worse than D.C. when it comes to educating its kids. This isn’t to say D.C. is doing a great job, but if D.C. schools are “inmate factories”, Alabama’s schools are even worse. Time for some Congressional hearings into Alabama’s schools!