At Capitol Education Rally, Tough Words for Legislature
At a rally at the Capitol on Saturday, public education advocates accused lawmakers of strangling public schools with out-of-control high-stakes testing and funding cuts.
"There are 5 million kids in Texas waiting for this legislature to keep our forefather's promises," said John Kuhn, the superintendent of Perrin Whitt Consolidated Independent School District, in North Texas. "And to those who want to take away that promise, I'm with the moms and the trustees and local business people who will say what brave Texans have said before, come and take it. Just try to kill that promise of our Constitution ...
Comments (5)
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
Talmadge Heflin and Peggy Venable are pathological liars. Public policy in this state and education funding and policy are based upon falsehoods. Perry and the rest of the Republicans running, called a $5.4 billion dollar cut a budget increase. They repeatedly lie and say state funding for education has gone up 70%, when in reality, adjusted for inflation and population increases, funding has been flat or declining. They respond to these facts by repeating that money doesn't matter. Until they face the music and realize that money does matter. Texas is now 49th in the U.S. in education funding. Dan Patrick is misguided. His biggest priorities are gynecological regulation. His education policies for public education are the equivalent of a vaginal probe. We need real leaders who are willing to govern and do what is right for the people of Texas. We need to start with a new governor and a new legislature.
Lovablelabby 2012
Wasn't the Texas Lottery supposed to fund education? If it doesn't, it should.
Kayla George
@ Talmadge Heflin - Yes, we're asking for funding. What other profession do you know of requires you to have a Bachelor's, take certification tests (which you pay for out of your own pocket), renew your certification every 5 years (which you pay for out of your own pocket), take continuing education classes yearly (which you pay for out of your own pocket), and average less than $45,000/year salary? And let's not forget the money that the teacher spends (out of her own pocket) to fund the supplies in her classroom because the school can no longer fund it because of the budget cuts.
John Johnson
I do support public schools. I do believe that funding should be restored, but spending further analyzed. Teachers should not have out of pocket expenses. Different high school diplomas should be offered.
This being said, please don't bring teacher salaries into the argument. $45K is not bad for 9 months of work. IMHO.
Dormand Long
It is essential to remember that we can only abuse the viability of our nation so much before the
repercussions become overwhelming.
If you have not read the epic work of Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellow Jared Diamond "Collapse-How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed" please do so, so you can see how other once-vibrant societies self-destructed as their cumulative hubris overwhelmed their productivity.
Before you say "that could not happen to us, we are the United States of America!", please take the
time to consider these red flags of warning:
* the healthcare spending in the US is double per capita that of other industrialized countries, yet our health outcomes trail far behind countries with superior public policy. In the vital category of newborn life expectancy, the US trails even Cuba. The epic March 4, 2013 cover piece of Time Magazine by Steven Brill "Bitter Pill" gives 36 pages of shocking detail of stratospheric pricing for medical services by hospitals on their captive audiences. This is a must-read piece for any who cares about our independence. Yet, long established proven research proving that health challenges can be cut in half by simply walking one mile per day ( Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research )
* public schooling in the US also runs double the cost per capita of other industrialized countries, yet the performance of our students runs about 28th in global competition. Our best companies each complain that they are unable to source the quality and the quantity of US college graduates
essential to sustain their global competitive position. We have millions of high school graduates who find their diploma has little value, as they are unable to gain admission to regular college courses without completing developmental ( the PC term for remedial ) courses, to master what they should have learned in secondary schooling.
* millions of US college graduates find that the only jobs open to them are those where they work shoulder to shoulder with high school graduates, even though they bear both college degrees and massive amounts of student loan indebtedness. This macro economic crisis is best summarized in the epic white paper from the Hudson Institute's Director of Research, Edwin Rubinstein,
"The College Payoff Illusion" http://rs.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2147
* the New York Times reports that the defaults on student loan indebtedness exceeds the aggregate annual tuition of all two year and four year undergraduate students.
* markets once dominated by US producers are now dominated by those countries excelling in human capital development such as South Korea, whose consumer durables are cited by Consumer Reports as the most reliable, particularly in autos, appliances, and electronics. Their customer satisfaction creates exceptional repeat and referral business for these foreign producers.
* our key infrastructure is crumbling through deferred maintenance. Our highways, bridges, air traffic control system ( circa 1960 ) and water systems are overwhelmed.
* the national debt, almost retired not long ago, is past $15 trillion dollars, creating a massive burden for future generations to pay, particularly given the quality of education that we are providing for them, which for many is suitable only for employment in a big box retailer.
* both of the major poitical parties have fallen under the control of extreme factions of the left and of the right, leaving those who consider themselves as moderates with no choice but to become independents
* lobbyists dominate both Congress and the state Legislatures decision making, leaving ordinary citizens with little control over their destiny.
* lower socioeconomic youth, seeing no access to the middle class, turn increasingly to crime, resulting in the US having a far higher portion of its population incarcerated than any other country.
* the essential US Postal Service is on the verge of collapse, as it has failed to adapt to the Web and to lower fixed expenses, as has the German Postal Service.
* many public pension funds find that their promised retirement benefits are unsustainable given
yields on acceptable risks in the investment market.
Much of this state of deterioration is due to the myopia of the two political party leaders who have discovered "Hey, maybe we can make a buck off of this" and thus they put the national interest behind the financial gain of private interests, who retain the Jack Abramoffs of the nation to skew public policy away from national interest to line their own pockets.
* egregious public policies such as the fatally flawed ethanol mandates and subsidies have deeply injured public expenses to benefit the few Midwestern corn growing states that also are the handful who as swing states, are the sole determinants of who is elected President of the United States.
It is time to wake up and smell the coffee. The joy ride is over.