Month: <span>April 2011</span>

A senator in need of a history lesson

Sen. Dan Patrick is so interested in shoving Texas into reverse, you would think he could remember at least what happened in our state’s recent past. But his memory apparently is as bad as most of his ideas. The Republican senator from Houston was on that city’s Fox TV outlet (Channel 26) yesterday blaming teachers’ […]

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When handwringing isn’t enough

Some of the biggest supporters of educational improvements are, of course, business executives whose own continued success depends in large part on the quality of our public school classrooms. So, it is no surprise that some of Texas’ top business organizations are very concerned – to the point of handwringing about the severity of the […]

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House Bill 400: The math doesn’t add up

Basic math is hard enough for many people, but it becomes impossible when political considerations are thrown into the computations. Consider, for example, the impossible problem of saving educational quality while cutting $7.8 billion (as the Republican majority of the Texas House has done) from the public education budget. We at TSTA believe that every […]

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Living within our (artificial) means

The Republican House members who voted for House Bill 1, a budget plan that would practically dismantle public education and destroy Texas’ already weak safety net for the poor, offer the mealymouthed political excuse that state government needs to “live within its means.” They deliberately are being disingenuous. (I say Republican House members because no […]

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