Grading Texas

What philosophers and welders have in common

One issue the Republican candidates haven’t spent much time discussing during their four televised debates is education, and that’s probably a good thing. I mean, the president of the United States has only a limited amount of responsiblity over public education, and the last two presidents have wasted much of that responsbility by promoting a wasteful, counterproductive testing regime.

So far, about all the current GOP hopefuls have offered for “improving” education are non-solutions like abolishing the Department of Education and increasing privatization. If a candidate on the Republican side has called for a significant reduction in testing and/or a greater investment in classroom resources, I have missed it.

But it was interesting during last night’s debate when Sen. Marco Rubio kind of dipped his toe into the education issue by comparing welders and philosophers.

“Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers,” he said.

His remark earned good marks for rhetoric from debate-raters but maybe not so much from grammarians. The preferred wording, I believe, is “fewer philosophers,” not “less,” although Rubio’s version is much more commonly heard.

I am not sure if the senator was trying to diss philosopers because he believes most of them are liberal Democrats or was trying to make the point that welders perform a more useful everyday function for most Americans. Philosophers teach, write and debate sometimes controversial ideas, while welders build and repair physical things that people can see, touch and use.

Which profession appeals more to the conservative Republican base? Rubio is sure he knows, but apparently he doesn’t know how much most philosophers and welders earn.

The Washington Post gave Rubio credit for a “great line” but said he was totally “off base” on his facts.

Citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Post said the national median wage for philosophy teachers is $63,630, compared to $37,420 for welders. Nationally, the top 10 percent of college philosophy professors make almost $200,000 a year – not sure how many of those are in Texas – while most welders top out at about $58,590.

Philosophers and welders have one thing in common though. They both require educations, and the vast majority got their start in public schools.

Don’t let ideology masquerade as history

Texas, unfortunately, doesn’t have a monopoly on education policymakers who would rather indoctrinate classrooms with their political ideology than actually educate students. Until Tuesday, residents of one of the major school districts in Colorado faced the same situation, but they did something about it. They went to the polls and ousted three board “reformers” who were causing the problem.

Texas voters will have a similar opportunity next year, but, as in Colorado, it will require a committed effort by educators and parents to put school children first in elections.

The problems in Colorado began with the election two years ago of three new members to the Jefferson County school board, the governing body of one of the state’s largest school districts. The three ran on a so-called “reform” platform that, as it turned out, included a misguided effort to tie teacher pay to student performance and direct more funds to charter schools at the potential expense of neighborhood public schools.

According to the Huffington Post, the three also supported the idea of rewriting a history curriculum to emphasize “positive aspects of the United States” – including individual rights, free enterprise and respect for authority – rather than issues that they believed encouraged “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”

It sounds as if they found the long, often bloody struggle for civil and human rights for all Americans just too negative for a history textbook, much as a right-wing bloc on the State Board of Education in Texas found it too difficult to acknowledge in our curriculum standards that slavery was the main cause of the Civil War and that hostile, racial discrimination was a major deterrent to civil rights in Texas and the South for decades after the war.

History is so messy, isn’t it? But that is all the more reason for students to be given an unvarnished opportunity to understand it and for political ideologues to get out of their way.

Although the Colorado board didn’t change the curriculum, parents and educators – including teacher unions — had heard and seen enough. They organized a recall election, and the three would-be “reformers” were sent packing.

Texas voters can’t petition for recall elections, but we do have regular elections, and eight members of the State Board of Education will be on the ballot next year, beginning with the March 1 party primaries.

Not all are ideologues. Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant, a moderate Republican in District 9, is a strong supporter of quality education in public schools. Some of the others, though, are motivated by ideology, notably Ken Mercer of San Antonio in District 5, an active member of the right-wing bloc that assaulted history when curriculum standards were rewritten a few years ago.

Early next year, TSTA will endorse State Board of Education candidates who actually are pro-education. But first things first.

SBOE members are elected from 15 large single-member districts, which means most Texans don’t even know who their State Board of Education members are. Your member may even live in a city a few hundred miles from your home. Find out who represents you on the SBOE by clicking on the link below, filling in your address and choosing the State Board of Education option. Then do some research and wait for TSTA’s endorsements.

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx

Mission impossible: making the campus gun law “reasonable”

It would be impossible to identify the absolute worst law to emerge from last spring’s legislative session, but undoubtedly one of the worst was the law to allow guns on college campuses. Although it is now the law of the state, it is still being debated as fiercely as it was when it was still just a bad idea.

That’s because the law won’t go into actual practice until next fall, when people who are licensed to carry concealed handguns will be able to carry them into buildings at state-supported universities. License holders have to be at least 21, which fortunately will exclude many students. And, private universities can exempt their entire campuses from the requirement.

The debate is now centered around how individual universities should deal with a provision – added to the law as a “compromise” — allowing officials at public universities to designate “reasonable” gun-free zones on their individual campuses.

Much of this debate revolves around whether the law will allow classrooms to continue to be gun-free. Based on what I have read, most faculty members – probably the overwhelming majority – simply don’t want guns in their classes, period, and I don’t blame them. The Texas Faculty Association fought against the law during the legislative session.

University of Texas System Chancellor William McRaven, the retired admiral who directed the raid to kill terrorist Osama bin Laden, also opposed the measure. He told legislative leaders the campus carry law would make universities less-safe.

The argument by proponents that the new law will help make classrooms safer because armed students could defend themselves and their classmates against armed assailants isn’t convincing. There may be an occasional, lucky exception, but most students with handguns would be no match against a surprise attack from a crazed, rapid-firing intruder intent on creating mayhem.

In the terror and confusion of such an assault, a student with a gun is more likely to shoot a fellow classmate or other innocent bystander or be shot by mistake by a police officer ready to fire at anyone with a gun and ask questions later.

Those arguments, of course, were ignored by most legislators. Rep. John Zerwas, the Republican chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, at least offered the provision for “reasonable” gun-free zones. But what is a reasonable definition of “reasonable”?

No guns in any classroom sounds reasonable to me, but not to Zerwas.

He told The Dallas Morning News that he would have trouble with a prohibition on guns in all classes but could understand how some classes “may not be a comfortable setting” with armed students. He didn’t say which ones, but he may have meant classes that encourage highly charged emotional debate or labs with volatile chemicals.

Trying to add a bit of “reasonableness” to an unreasonable, bad law isn’t easy, and most likely the issue, as the newspaper article suggests, will end up in court before it is finally resolved.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/state/headlines/20151101-texas-colleges-could-land-in-court-over-designated-gun-free-classes.ece

Texas’ attorney general needs a basic education in civics

Ken Paxton, Texas’ highly politicized and under-qualified attorney general, is trying to make himself relevant at the expense of educators and school children while he awaits trial on securities fraud charges.

His office is trying to convince the Texas Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that found the state’s school finance system inadequate, unfair and unconstitutional. And, now he claims it was “inappropriate” for more than 600 school districts to go to court to challenge the Legislature’s failure. Never mind, in Paxton’s mind, the Texas Constitution and the separation of powers doctrine.

But what else should we expect from an attorney general who gives more weight to partisan politics than the Constitution in forming legal decisions and opinions? This is the same guy, remember, who tried to suggest – wrongly – that county clerks could disregard the U.S. Supreme Court’s gay marriage ruling if they didn’t like it.

Paxton could use a good civics class in the public schools from which he voted to cut $5.4 billion in funding as a legislator in 2011. Those cuts were the final straw for the district judge who declared the finance system unconstitutional. Yet Paxton continues trying to undermine the schools he voted to shortchange, including local school districts in his home county that are plaintiffs in the case.

In a speech late last week, The Texas Tribune reported, Paxton complained that the state has been in and out of the courts for years over school funding. He blamedTexas’ educators, parents and other plaintiffs rather than state policymakers, such as himself, who persist in violating their constitutional responsibilties to adequately and equitably fund education.

“Opponents of Texas policy use the courts as legislative do-overs where they can seek to accomplish what they couldn’t accomplish during the (legislative) session,” he said.

School districts and their students are entitled to this “do-over” by no less an authority than the Texas Constitution. Too bad Texas voters don’t get a “do-over” of last year’s attorney general’s race.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/10/30/paxton-blasts-never-ending-school-finance-lawsuits/

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