Educators spend a lot of time evaluating students’ work. And assigning final grades to each of their students.

But how should we evaluate the job public school teachers are doing collectively? How do we go meta? One way is to clue in to positive and negative societal patterns and themes and then balancing them.

Here’s one for the negative side of the ledger.

Over 40% of Republicans wrongly believe conspiracy theory about Bill Gates and COVID-19 vaccines.

When I read stories like this, I think we—since I used to be a public school teacher—have failed. Of course one negative indicator should not determine the final assessment, but I can’t help but be depressed by stories like that.