Month: <span>August 2010</span>

Making school kids a partisan issue

Public education isn’t a partisan issue, or at least it shouldn’t be. But that is exactly what Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Republicans in Congress are intent on making it. Texas’ public schools are substantially underfunded, and Texas educators are underpaid. Yet, even in the face of an $18 billion state revenue shortfall next […]

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Cracking down on ethnic studies

Arizona’s sunstroke over immigration may soon exact a financial penalty from students in one of that state’s larger school districts. Tom Horne, Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, backed a new state law designed to ban ethnic studies in the state’s public schools. It was signed by Gov. Jan Brewer a few weeks after the state’s […]

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Kicking educators and school kids

Gov. Rick Perry is still trying to win reelection by kicking Washington. That’s a lot easier, of course, than running on his record. But he also is kicking Texas educators and school kids with his opposition to the emergency education jobs funding bill that is set for a vote in the U.S. House on Tuesday. […]

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PreK funding needs a hero

Despite Gov. Rick Perry’s delusional denial, one of the more critical issues facing Texas’ public schools – and threatening the state’s future economic growth – is a school dropout rate that experts estimate at 30 percent or higher. Particularly affected are Hispanic young people who will soon make up a majority of Texas’ adult work […]

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