I worked as an election clerk last Saturday where voting took place in a Texas elementary school. I was stunned to see a big Poster "Great things are happening in Texas Public Schools."
This poster goes way beyond positive spin; it’s outright deception.
To quote Molly Ivins, "If you are not completely appalled you haven’t been paying attention."
Yes, folks, the people who were busy gnashing their teeth over President Obama's "indoctrination" of the nation's schoolchildren start their propaganda early.
For those readers who have not been paying attention to Texas and its Board of Education, it is important to understand that what happens there has impact across the states.
From
Dallas Morning News
Republican Cynthia Dunbar of Richmond, one of the most outspoken social conservatives on the State Board of Education, has decided not to seek another term next year. Other members of the board confirmed Wednesday that her current employment with a law school in Virginia has made it difficult for her to remain on the board and she has decided against a re-election bid.
Dunbar is one of seven members on the board aligned with social conservative groups who have generally voted together on key curriculum and textbook issues such as the science standards adopted earlier this year. Most of that debate was over coverage of evolution in high others wanting the standards to cover alleged weaknesses in Charles Darwin's theories about how humans and other life evolved on earth.
Texas Freedom Network
is reporting Dunbar has recruited state Republican Executive Committee member Brian Russell, who may be worse, to fill her seat.
In her 2008 book, One Nation Under God, Dunbar called public education a "tool of perversion," "tyrannical" and unconstitutional. During the 2008 president election, Dunbar attacked then-candidate Barack Obama as a Marxist and a terrorist sympathizer who wanted another attack on America so that he could declare martial law and throw out the Constitution. Dunbar has also been a leader of efforts by the State Board of Education’s far-right faction to politicize our children’s social studies classrooms and to promote creationist arguments against evolution in science classrooms.
In March of this year Russell successfully persuaded the State Republican Executive Committee to pass a resolution demanding that all Republican state board members obey the Texas GOP platform by supporting creationist arguments against evolution in new public school science curriculum standards. He also has served as treasurer of Legacy PAC, a Christian-right political action committee. In 2004 he served on a committee that drafted the Texas Republican Party platform, which called separation of church and state a "myth," demanded that public schools teach "intelligent design"/creationism in science classrooms and opposed including medically accurate information on contraception and disease prevention in sex education classes.
TPM says
The GOP-controlled State Board of Education is working on a new set of statewide textbook standards for, among other subjects, U.S. History Studies Since Reconstruction. And it turns out what the board decides may end up having implications far beyond the Lone Star State.
Because Texas is one of the two states with the largest student enrollments, along with California. "The publishers vie to get their books adopted for them, and the changes that are inserted to please Texas and California are then part of the textbooks made available to every other state," says Ravitch, who wrote a book about the politics of textbooks.
Here are some Texas education stats, courtesy of State Senator Eliot Shapleigh's Texas On The Brink
Average Teacher Salary as a % of Avg Annual Pay = 49th
Current Expenditures Per Student = 44th
State Aid Per Pupil in Average Daily Attendance = 47th
% of Elementary/Secondary...Funding from State Revenue = 47th
% of Population 25 and Older With a [HS] Diploma = 50th
High School Graduation Rate = 41st
Enrollment Rates in Higher Education = 39th
Wake up, Texas.