Grading Texas – Page 128 – Texas State Teachers Association

Playing politics with tomorrow’s history

What good is the Fourth of July to a politician if he or she can’t wave the flag and pass the hat? The Independence Day email that Dan Patrick wasted on me, however, fell flat. He won’t get a dime, and his hyperbolic warning about border “security” insulted the spirit of the day he allegedly was trying to invoke.

The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor is still claiming that hordes of drug-laden, disease-carrying, would-be terrorists are streaming across the Rio Grande, threatening the land of the free and the home of yammering ideologues.

Undocumented immigration, of course, is a problem, but it won’t be solved by the likes of Dan Patrick, who is simply using it to fan the flames of fear and ride the money and the votes of the fearful into the state’s No. 2 job.

Most of the people crossing the border are neither terrorists nor drug traffickers, but are people seeking jobs and a better life. Last time I checked, immigrants causing the most stir were children from Central America, thousands of them, fleeing abuse and criminal activity in their own countries and hoping for a better break here.

“I believe the United States is still the greatest country in the world. It is a beacon of liberty that offers the promise of a better life through equal opportunity,” Patrick said in his email.

Equal opportunity is centered in a strong public education. And, here in Texas, that equal opportunity is being increasingly challenged by public officials such as Patrick who have voted to slash education funding and, if given the opportunity, likely will do so again.

Once upon a time, Patrick got a fresh start in life by declaring bankruptcy, walking away from debts and changing his name. Those kids and parents streaming across the border are seeking their own fresh start, and they are willing to work hard to get it. The federal government, not Dan Patrick, needs to enact a workable immigration reform law with a way for immigrants to earn citizenship.

The United States – Texas included – is a land of immigrants from many cultures, and people who try to ignore that – or use immigration to pander to ideological fear — are placing themselves on the wrong side of tomorrow’s history.

State government shares blame for Beaumont debacle

The Beaumont ISD debacle has all the trappings of a Keystone Cops spectacle, except the comedy. There is a lot of absurd scrambling in high places but nothing funny about the district’s financial trouble, its mismanagement, its history of criminal administrators and the effort to fire more than 200 teachers and other school employees, who have been chosen to take the fall.

The Beaumont Teachers Association and TSTA have one overriding goal for BISD, and that is the opportunity for every child in the district to attend a great school. And, you don’t create or keep great schools by firing more than 200 teachers and support staff.

The elected BISD school board refused last night to proceed with the firings, despite being egged on by a state-appointed conservator who claimed, according to the Beaumont Enterprise, “You have more teachers than you need.”

We aren’t hearing any Beaumont parents make that preposterous claim. Very few, if any, Texas school districts have too many teachers. If they did, more than 600 districts wouldn’t be suing the state over inadequate and inequitable school funding.

The conservator obviously was hoping the departing board would fire the teachers so the incoming board, which will be appointed by State Education Commissioner Michael Williams, wouldn’t have to deal with that unpopular option.

So, the fight over jobs and great schools in Beaumont has only begun. Commissioner Williams must appoint a new board that truly represents all the stakeholders in the BISD community, including teachers and parents. And, the BISD community must demand a representative board that will advocate for the best interests of students, root out local mismanagement and be a strong advocate before a state government that has largely neglected the public schools and allowed BISD to become a crisis.

Teach Common Core and go to jail?

Extremist may not be a strong enough word to describe the education critics who met recently in Austin to rail at the modern world, castigate compromise and entertain the idea of jailing teachers who dared to use the Common Core in their classrooms.

There were only a few dozen individuals at this particular conference, according to the Texas Observer article linked below, and their mindset was trapped in a time warp just this side of the Middle Ages. But, what’s scary is that their views are increasingly taking over the Texas Republican Party and, with it, Texas government.

In fact, at least two of the attendees – state Rep. Bill Zedler of Arlington and Eagle Forum leader Cathie Adams – are prominent in the ultraconservative GOP wing, and Adams is a former chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party.

Scarier still for those of you who know anything about Zedler and Adams is that, according to the Observer, those two were the “relative moderates” in the room.

The group’s basic beef was against Common Core, the national curriculum standards being pushed by the federal government but outlawed by the Texas Legislature, even though many of the standards are incorporated in Texas’ TEKS curriculum standards.

Even reasonable minds can disagree over what should or shouldn’t be in Common Core and whether the federal government should be involved in promoting it. But to members of this particular group, Common Core represents everything they view as wrong with the world, beginning with public school classrooms – including evolution, acceptance of climate change, sex education, social justice, homosexuality and anything smacking of diversity.

“You use Common Core, you go to jail,” one woman declared, obviously wondering where the Storm Troopers and the Thought Police were when she needed them.

http://www.texasobserver.org/next-frontier-in-common-core-fight-cut-budgets-jail-teachers/

Abbott: Still making the wrong kind of news on education

Attorney General Greg Abbott loses so many lawsuits – while wasting your tax dollars – that still another loss barely rates as news anymore. Just yesterday, while a visiting state judge was strongly denying Abbott’s attempt to remove state District Judge John Dietz from the school finance lawsuit, the U.S. Supreme Court was rebuffing Abbott’s latest challenge of federal regulations of greenhouse gas emissions.

Abbott not only wants Texas kids to have to put up with an underfunded, unfair school finance system, he apparently also expects them to wear gas masks to school.

Abbott’s attempt to get Dietz removed from the long-running school finance case was newsy because it was so blatantly political. Dietz already has ruled against the current school finance system once and, more likely than not, he is about to hand Abbott his head (figuratively, of course) with a similar, follow-up decision that the funding law remains inadequate and unconstitutional.

Abbott was trying to delay the inevitable – and more negative publicity during his campaign for governor – by pulling an eleventh-hour political stunt to delay a final ruling from Dietz.

In his decision against Abbott, visiting Judge David Peeples of San Antonio said he “emphatically rejects any suggestion” that Dietz had intentionally communicated improperly with attorneys representing plaintiffs, including more than 600 school districts, trying to get the current funding system overturned.

As attorney general, Abbott continues to defend an indefensible school finance system, including $5.4 billion in school budget cuts. Imagine the political havoc he could wreak on public schools as governor.

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