Posted on 08/20/2011 7:44:27 AM PDT by indianrightwinger
Friday, Aug. 19, 2011 Arne Duncan Can't Quite Explain Why He's Dissing Texas By Andrew J. Rotherham
Why is Arne Duncan messing with Texas? I asked the Secretary of Education about this a few hours after he injected himself into the presidential-election scrum. Policy wonks like me had woken up to baffling reports that Duncan told Bloomberg Television's Al Hunt that the Texas school system "has really struggled" under Rick Perry, the GOP governor who just announced he is running for President. "Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college," Duncan said in the TV interview, which is scheduled to air this weekend, telling Hunt that he feels "very, very badly for the children there."
When I asked Duncan about this dire assessment in an interview I had scheduled today for my next School of Thought column, the former head of the Chicago school system was light on specifics:
"Texas has challenges. The record speaks for itself. Lots of other states have challenges too. But there is a lot of hard work that needs to be done in Texas and a lot of children who need a chance to get a great education." (See the education crisis no one is talking about.)
But what about the fact, I responded, that on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Texas' fourth- and eighth-graders substantially outperformed their peers in Chicago in reading and math?
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Perry has really put them into a frenzy to demagogue and try to get it to spread to the Conservatives too - all the more reason to consider him as a solid potential. The “purists” will find any crack, even from a decade or more ago to “disqualify” him, but we will have a finite choice and should be prepared to go to the wall for whoever it is. Palin/Perry or Perry/Palin might make an interesting and potent ticket - neither seems to be afraid to speak out and hurt the poor Libs’ feelings.
Well there you go! Meanwhile bright U.S. citizen students from out of state pay higher tuition rates. Something isn’t fair here but what do I know.
The Texas education system is as heavily immersed in social engineering from K-university level on the taxpayer dime as any other state, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.
What you say is true and I’m not in favor of throwing any more money at the problem. My opinion is that the problems begin at home. As long as we have parents who don’t value education and language challenged children who are in the system illegally Texas will have children who don’t graduate. I don’t know how we fix the first problem.
Sarah has been there, done that, and the T-shirt is in the laundry.
If he's kept busy with politics, perhaps that will be a good thing for schools...less damage he can do if his thoughts and actions are elsewhere.
Point of information (probably not necessary here on the FREEP), but Arne Duncan chose to live in Fairfax County, VA when he moved to Washington for this gig. Gee, I wonder why he didn’t chose to live in DC proper. Do you think it had anything to do with the public school system there?
Per the video at the link, Arne’s a Faber College graduate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhkyRZoHlTM
Texas schools are never ranked very high, but why? Liberals say it’s not enough money, those that live here say it’s illegal aliens. I just moved my Son from a public school to a private school because he was a minority in his class. The only parents that showed up consistently to volunteer and support their kids, were the parents of the non-Hispanic kids. Apparently, most Hispanics view school as little more than daycare.
I have compared major school district budgets in Texas vs California.
Short answer - you are wrong. Texas is considerably less obsessed with social engineering. Way less of Texas budgets are devoted to categorical funding - money devoted, generally, as targeted spending for social engineering purposes.
Texas schools aren’t ranked high generally because Texas has a very high proportion of minority kids - in fact it has a majority of minorities, of the kids enrolled in the public schools.
That said, minority kids (and white ones too) do much better in Texas on average than than the average of their peers nationally.
Texas has been dealt a relatively poor hand in education, but has done exceptionally well for all that.
Agreed.
Another fact: Texas schools are majority “Hispanic”, and those Hispanics nearly outnumber the total number of students in Illinois. Texas achieves similar test results to Illinois with less money spent per capita and with much, much worse demographics.
Haqving said that, the govenment school system needs to shut down immediately. Conservatives need to rescue their children and become responsible by getting off the government education-welfare teat.
Arne Duncan knows full well why Chicago’s schools perform worse than Texas’s. He just can’t say it because, you see, race is involved. He should have kept his big mouth shut.
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