Tuberville says he doesn’t know if inner city teachers ‘can read and write’  

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Thursday that he does not know whether inner city teachers “can read and write.” 

In a Thursday appearance on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast, “Triggered,” Tuberville took aim at the public school system in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that he does not know how teachers in the inner city received degrees, pointing to a recent report that said 23 schools in Baltimore do not have any students proficient in math.  

“The COVID really brought it out how bad our schools are and how bad our teachers are, in the inner city,” Tuberville said. “Most of them in the inner city, I don’t know how they got degrees.”

He added that teachers unions have “killed” the schools. 

“I don’t know whether they can read and write. And they want a raise. They want less time to work, less time in school,” he said. “It’s just, we’ve ruined work ethic in this country. We don’t work at it anymore. We push an easy life.”

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, students’ scores in social studies, math and reading have all plummeted. Scores in U.S. history and civics among eighth grade students have also dropped to 1990s levels, according to the Nation’s Report Card, released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress earlier this year.  

Tuberville has come under fire in recent weeks for comments about abortion, the military and white nationalism. In his interview, he claimed that some schools do not teach reading and math but instead teach “social justice and diversity.” 

“If you can’t read and if you can’t write, you can’t live in a country like this and not have somebody help you make it through life, which is what a lot of this government wants,” he said on the podcast.