Month: <span>December 2011</span>

No apology necessary, Perry is a “Bum Steer”

I can understand why Gov. Rick Perry is getting Texas Monthly’s annual “Bum Steer of the Year” award – no Texas governor has ever gone to such great lengths to earn it – but I can’t understand why the magazine was so hesitant to single out the governor, even to the point of being almost […]

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Put the brakes on runaway charter plan

Austin ISD board president Mark Williams admitted last night what has been obvious to just about everyone else in Austin for several weeks now. The school district has “rushed” a controversial proposal to hand over two schools in East Austin to a charter school operator and has conducted a “poor” process for seeking public input. […]

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What’s “good” for schools not good enough for insurers

Remember when Gov. Rick Perry a few years ago issued an executive order purporting to require school districts to spend 65 percent of their budgets on classroom instruction? The order, of dubious constitutional validity, was issued to give Perry cover for underfunding the public schools while perpetuating the rightwing myth that schools were awash in […]

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It’s official: Legislative arm details education cuts

With the campaign season drawing nigh, you can expect a number of incumbent state legislators to continue trying to cover their backsides with denials that they voted last spring to slash funding for the public schools. Now, you no longer have to take TSTA’s word for the fact that they are lying. The House Research […]

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