Teacher Group Opposes Guns for Teachers

EduTex Report-"Reporting" on Education and Education Policy in Texas...often before it happens


The only Texas Legislature-approved teacher group, TAPT (Texas Association of Powerless Teachers), has gone on record to oppose the requirement that teachers post the second amendment in their classrooms and carry concealed guns at all times while at school or school related functions.  TAPT lists several concerns as the basis of their objection to this soon-to-be legislative  requirement.

The simplest objection regards how and where teachers are supposed to carry guns at school.  Teachers will have to constantly carry backpacks, purses or some other item to conceal the weapons.  Coaches have expressed concern about the easy access of guns at their various games...at least, there was a concern raised about whether or not referees would also be allowed to carry guns.  The few coaches who agree with the gun-carrying provision would not support it if referees are also allowed to carry guns during the games.  State representative A.S. Shole stated, "I understand this is an inconvenience, but it is a temporary one at most.  I will propose legislation which will certainly pass which would not require teachers to conceal their guns.  Therefore, all they need is a holster to put on their belts."

A second concern raised by TAPT was the cost of the gun, the training, and the license to carry the guns since all of these are costs that teachers will have to bear plus the legal liability that teacher could potentially face.  Representative Shole responded, " Teachers commonly waste $800-$1000 dollars a year on useless educational material like books, bulletin board decorations, and other unnecessary 'supplies'.  They can simply put that money to good use and invest it-rather than waste it-on things of real value and importance.  We will ensure that any gun bought by a teacher which will be carried at school will be exempt from sales tax and we'll provide a voucher to be used to help cover the cost of the gun itself.  The voucher should be enough to cover a significant portion of the cost of the gun since  the state will no longer be purchasing text books or other so-called instructional material and the state will,therefore,  have enough financial resources to assist in the intial cost of the gun.  We will also exempt teachers or other school personel from any liability arising from gun related incidents.  Teachers should use their best judgement and the state will back them up on this."

TAPT also noted that teachers are under a lot of pressure and stress because of increased state mandated testing as well as problems created by billions of dollars in state budget cuts for education which resulted in larger classes, inadequate supplies, outdated textbooks, less resources to meet student needs, and numerous other problems.  TAPT is concerned that such easy access to guns will lead to an increase in teacher suicides.  Representative A. S. Shole, speaking on behalf of the powerful Texas Tea Party Caucus in the Texas House, acknowledged this is a possibility but his caucus wasn't concerned about it.  "If you can't handle a gun, then you shouldn't be teaching in Texas anyway.  This issue has motivated us to push for some new legislation which would modify 6 credit hours to the teacher certification program at all universities in Texas.  The new classes would require training in handling, firing, and caring for all the various types of guns teachers could carry.  All prospective teachers would be required to pass a markmanship course.  There wouldn't be any additional hours required to be certified  because we will reduce the hours required in the subject by 6.  They can find all the information they need on the internet anyway.  We would also require that all Teacher Retirement System money that these teachers had contributed to TRS would automatically be confiscated and given to the gun voucher program which would also save Texas money. Also, this would decrease the surplus population of incompetent, non-gun toting teachers.  We don't see a downside to this potential issue.   We simply will take a minor negative consequence and turn it into a major positive thing for the taxpayers of Texas who don't want to pay for anything anyway."

More Guns Needed to Curb Gun Violence

EduTex Report-"Reporting" on Education and Education Policy in Texas...often before it happens
 Royal Governor of Texas Calls for More Guns to Solve Problem of Gun Violence

 

 Rick Perry, along with other state officials in Texas, recommends increasing the prevalence of guns to stem the tide of violence caused by the prevalence of guns.  )See the Texas Tribune article

 

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/guns-texas/state-gun/.)  He proposes that teachers and other school officials should be required to carry guns to reduce violence, late work, and tardiness.  According to his spokesman, Gerald Ulysses Nunn, Perry is going to issue an executive order requiring the Texas Education Agency to join with the NRA to submit a plan to implement his proposal.  This collaboration has resulted in a modification of the TEA which is now the TERA or Texas Eduaction and Rifle Association. The president of the State Board of Education has stated that the SBOE was in the process of correcting all social studies curriculum requirements to include a week long emphasis on the need for all Texans to adequately appreciate and admire guns and expect all Texans to own and carry a minimum of 3 guns in order to protect the state from encroachments by the federal government and other anti-American heretics.

New teacher training programs are already developed to train teachers, administrators, and support staff in the proper use of firearms although only administrators will be allowed to carry automatic weapons. 

To help with this measure,the legislature has nullified the sales tax on guns.  State Representative A.S. Shole said that their was no reason to place a burdensome tax on guns when the state doesn't tax other essentials like food. The legislature is also going to award tax exempt status to any business that sells guns since other religious organizations get tax breaks. 

When Mr. Shole was asked about the prohibitive cost of providing training in the  use of guns to all school personel when the state has not replaced out of date social studies textbooks, Mr. Shole said, "There's always money available for important things and guns are important.  To much book-learnin' may make kids think for themselves and that can be dangerous.  The social studies books need to be rewritten anyway to reflect the truth about our God-given right to own guns and the truth about American exceptionalism and God's special blessing on America.  We must fight against anyone who teaches anything other than what TERA commands."

In addition, the legislature overwhelmingly voted to change the state motto from "friendship" to "straight shooters" which was chosen over "Guns and God" because it carries both a "pro-gun and anti-gay message that all true Texans believe" according to the official statement from the propoganda office of the state legislature.  

Op Ed-"Taming of the Shrewd"

Taming of the Shrewd
The Tea Party and other right-wing Republicans in the Texas legislature, including the governor, have organized a shrewd, subtle siege on women under the auspices of fiscal responsibility and it's time for this insidious bombardment to be exposed to the light of day by clearly stating the consequences their actions. Even if they can claim that they do not intend to do anything hurtful to women, the true measure of any group's integrity and compassion are the results of their actions especially when measured against the probable outcomes of alternative choices. A sober reckoning of the consequences of their short-sighted, outrageous policies will serve as a clarion call to real Texans who believe that we are "The Friendly State" rather than "The Fiendish State" to stand up and tame or put to an end their shrewdly cloaked "fiscal responsibility" mantra that, in reality, results in a disproportionate burden on women and children.
Even before the current largely legislative induced fiscal fiasco, Texas displays a level of disdain for social services that is among the most extreme in the nation. Texas is close to first in worst at providing social services. For example, consider the following statistics (50th=lowest, 1st=highest) compiled by the Texas Legislative Study Group: Birth rate-1st; Percent of uninsured children-1st; Percent of children living in poverty-4th; Teenage birth rate-7th; Percent of non-elderly women with health insurance-50th; Percent of women living in poverty-6th; Per capita state spending on Medicare-50th; Public school enrollment-2nd; Current expenditures per student-38th; State and local expenditures per pupil in public schools-44th; Percent of elementary/secondary school funding from state revenue-37th; Average salary of public school teachers-33rd. These are the numbers prior to the current budget crisis. Under the "leadership" of the current administration, Texas has strived to be first in all the worst categories. The state bird should be the vulture rather than the mockingbird.
The current budget crisis was largely created by legislative shenanigans, misplaced priorities, and ignorance of basic economic principles. The state legislature changed the funding formula for education a few years ago with a promise (now broken) to make up the difference if the funding for education fell short compared to the previous formula. The state comptroller at that time, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, stated in a May 1, 2006 letter to Governor Perry, “At worst, it will relegate Texans to Draconian cuts in critical areas like education and health care for at least a generation. This is not a victory for taxpayers. It is a sham, and Texans will see it for what it is.” The state legislature took advantage of federal stimulus money to get by for a couple of year but now they face a shortfall which is partially due to the downturn of the economy but is more due to ideologically driven, tunnel-vision focus on cutting taxes in a state that has one of the lowest tax burdens in the nation combined with a flippant, uncaring attitude of the consequences. The consequences are even greater hardships for poor families and especially women and children in Texas.
In addition to the limited concern with social services and the impact this has on poor families, the state legislature is also leading a march against professional women. With an expected increase of 80,000 new students in Texas public schools next year, the legislature is reducing spending on education for the first time in 60 years. Previously, public schools could rely on funding at least equal to previous levels but now the legislature is cutting funding in an extreme manner which can cost as many as 300,000 teacher jobs plus the jobs of other school personnel. Over 75% of school teachers are women. Women-whether poor or professional-are bearing a disproportionate burden of the legislature's visionless and brutish plans. The governor's stance on refusing to use the Rainy Day fund in the midst of a thunderstorm is ludicrous. His calloused approach is supported by many equally calloused members of the legislature. Governor Perry chooses to ignore the consequences of this destructive approach to funding education.
In an April 26th article in the Texas Tribune, Perry states that he doesn't believe the Legislative Budget Board's projections that the Rainy Day Fund will gain $3 billion by the end of 2013 and, therefore, some reasonable people in the legislature-Republicans and Democrats-believe it would be a responsible move to use a portion of the Rainy Day Fund which Perry and the right-wing oppose. In the same article, Perry states that Texans have been making hard decisions about reductions in their personal lives and the state should do the same. The analogy is disingenuous. Perry has previously stated that there are no sacred cows when it comes to balancing the budget. But the most sacred of all cows to Perry is no new taxes and ignoring the use of the Rainy Day Fund. Families in difficult economic times not only reduce their spending but also look for ways to increase revenue which is why 40% of Texas teacher have second or third jobs (compare this to only 5% of the general population that maintain second jobs). School budgets have been stripped to the bone. Now the state legislature wants to suck out the marrow. The state legislature should fund public schools at least at the same level as the previous budget allowing for the increase in student population. This will require using the Rainy Day Fund and finding ways of increasing revenue which should include the possibility of raising taxes. After all, there are no sacred cows when it comes to providing for our children and laying the foundation for our future.

Interview with John Kuhn who wrote the Alamo Letter

The following is from an interview with Superintendent John Kuhn who has gained attention for writing the "Alamo Letter" in regards to the attack on public school by Texas legislators...teachers in Texas have always been dependent on the kindness of strangers but now the strangers (the governor and state legislators) are really strange and cruel...this interview (I haven't found the source yet) explains a lot... Question: You have become widely known due to your Letter from Alamo. Can you explain the circumstances that led you to write this? (Link to Alamo Letter) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/educational-leadership/texas-superintendent-issues-pl.htmlA Texas state senator spoke to a group of administrators in Austin back in February. It just so happens that this senator is the chair of a couple of very important education-related committees and is a former school teacher. As a result, she is kind of seen as an "education expert" among our legislators. This particular senator, however, has been at the forefront of drafting policies that I see as counterproductive for our public schools: she has pushed for more and more high stakes testing, and less and less funding. She also has advocated for maintaining the Target Revenue System, which is a school funding scheme in Texas that gives certain schools more funding than others, seemingly at random. In Texas, the luckiest schools have a Target Revenue of $12,000 per student and the unluckiest schools have a Target Revenue of $4,000--but all schools are held to the same hard-and-fast standards when it comes to state and federal accountability measures. It's unjust on the face of it.So, going into this meeting, I was already angry about the moral underpinnings of our whole system. It just all seems like a parody of bad government to me, like something you'd read in a dystopian novel like 1984 or A Brave New World--except that it's real.So this senator spoke to us and, after letting us know that there will be severe funding cuts due to the economic downturn--and never once mentioning the 2006 school funding tax swap that she and her colleagues adopted which capped property tax rates and slashed 1/3 of schools' revenue, replacing it with a business tax that generated billions less than what was cut (and which was labeled at that time by our state comptroller as "the biggest hot check in state history")--she then began to talk about a pet project of hers: the new State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, or STAAR test. She spoke about it with a gleam in her eyes, as though it were her new grandbaby. And then she said a word that pushed me over the edge. After having spoken at length about making hard decisions and sacrificing and cutting local budgets, she bragged that spending on STAAR was "non-negotiable." Teachers' jobs are on the line, but not the precious test. I had trouble getting on board with her priorities.She took questions at the end of her presentation, and I let her know my concerns. I pointed out to her that I had given myself a 10% pay cut and would be cutting positions soon, and I asked if anyone at Pearson (the firm that makes the test) would be taking a pay cut. I told her she was "saving the test but not the teachers." Her responses to my (probably impertinent) questions left me even more concerned and frustrated than I had already been. Anyway, this particular senator has been a steadfast critic of public schools, calling us inefficient and creating layer upon layer of bureaucracy to watch over us and micromanage everything we do. This session she has often repeated a dubious statistic about the "1-to-1 ratio" of teachers to non-teachers in Texas schools, and how that ratio was 4-to-1 back in the 1970s--never mind the fact that a.) the state's statistics in the 1970s didn't include lunch ladies, bus drivers, and other non-teachers, creating a false comparison, and b.) the amount of bureaucratic nonsense and inflexible accountability measures piled on Texas schools beginning in the 1980s has created countless man hours of reporting and testing paperwork and has led schools to hire testing coordinators, math coaches, parent involvement coordinators, etc. When this senator implies that the state of Texas is broke because superintendents like me just go wild hiring unnecessary non-teachers, it feels very much like I'm being slapped for doing what the senators forced me to do. I feel like public school officials are the Official Scapegoat of Texas.So, in short, I got my belly full. I went back to my hotel room that night and wrote the Alamo letter. I have written a million rants about government insanity in guiding educational policy over the course of my career, but I have always deleted them after venting. But not this time--I typed that bad boy out and sent it to my hometown paper and to Diane Ravitch, to heck with it. And it ended up on Valerie Strauss's blog at the Washington Post website. Then I spent about three nights not sleeping and asking myself, "What have I done?" But, even as I was pretty sure I was going to die from a heart attack over the near-certainty I would lose my job, I was kind of glad I had taken the things we school people gripe to each other about and put it out there for everyone to read. A wise superintendent friend once told me that teachers who complain to each other in the teachers' lounge don't really want things to change, they just want to gripe; but those who want things to be better will actually voice their concerns to the people who have the ability to fix them. So that's why I wrote the letter--I'm begging our legislators to quit driving us down what I believe is the fundamentally wrong trail.Question: What has been the effect of NCLB on children in your district?Well, they get to take plenty of bubble tests, and if they do poorly they get lots of remediation in the core areas that get tested. I guess NCLB has ensured that our teachers and administrators feel lots of pressure to perform on these tests. Like everyone else, we do diagnostic benchmarking and use released tests in the classroom to get ready. Like someone (I think it was Matt Damon, actually) recently said, we are doing less teaching of kids and more training of them, with an eye toward that test. I'm not blaming our teachers, though, for "teaching to the test," as I have often heard parents and citizens bash the schools for doing. Our leaders have created this creepy environment where standardized test scores are the great false god. If I raised my kids at home according to the prevailing philosophies, we would have a simplistic scoring device for how effectively my kids did their chores--ignoring every other, less measurable way they show me that they love me--and I would then meter out hugs accordingly. If I were to establish such a dazzlingly, nauseatingly wrong system at home, I couldn't very well then turn around and criticize my kids for adopting certain mechanical approaches to getting the results I wanted, could I? So of course teachers are going to teach to the test, and even more so when those scores are tied to them personally (coming soon to a Texas public school near you!) As we move forward, I see the electives withering on the vine and the classroom increasingly becoming a place where kids work on "fundamentals" like they do on the football practice field--after all, that high-stakes test IS the big game, and the consequences of losing are very real. Question: What do you see as the positives and negatives of current education reform efforts in your state and across the country?First, I am not against accountability, just the incredibly convoluted, inefficient, and mean-spirited kind of accountability we have right now. In my mind, we should treat teachers the way we want them to treat students. But we don't. We ask them to encourage and remediate and support kids while we whip, label and threaten them. So the positives would have to be that teachers work hard (which they always did anyway in the rural school I grew up in), and that the top-down pressure has led schools to align their curriculum and really look at what they are teaching. The negatives are huge, however. First, accountability has narrowed our focus down to--in Texas--just four subjects. It doesn't matter to Texas if kids learn anything in any subject but math, science, social studies, and language arts. Therefore, the only saving grace in the arts and foreign languages and vocational classes and athletics is that we have passionate people teaching those subjects who really care about their students and their subjects. And that is the core of my disdain for this ugly baby called accountability--if the test-and-label philosophy really worked, then you would think there would be far worse teaching going on outside the core classes, but there isn't generally. Why? Because good teachers are motivated by passion and a moral sense of mission, not by the threats of absent bureaucrats. We are putting the wrong fuel in our car--it runs best on support, and we are gassing up with intimidation and blame. We are going to burn up this engine by making education a place where only hyper-competitive type-A individuals can feel comfortable, while all of those wonderfully kind and dedicated, supportive people who were born to teach abandon the classroom in search of a kinder profession where their skill sets are valued. The other major gripe I have is this: if we really believed that accountability works, wouldn't we have accountability for all public servants? Why do we not require our legislators to make "Adequate Yearly Progress"? We have the data from their congressional districts, do we not? There is crime data, health care data, poverty figures, and drug use statistics for every state and federal legislative district. Why, exactly, do we not establish annual targets for our legislators to meet? We could eliminate 100% of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and preventable illness by 2014! If accountability is the answer, we must move from the selective accountability that merely targets schools to a universal accountability that targets all players. We know that poverty, illness, crime, and addiction in the home all have a direct impact on the educability of our students--when legislators fail, schools fail. But we only blame the second domino to fall--it seems very cynical to me. It appears that accountability is currently more about finding a convenient scapegoat for our national failings than about really solving problems. I will believe this as long as we hold teachers accountable and not legislators. (I know that a legislator would instinctively say he or she is held accountable at election time, but an election is not remotely like an education-style accountability measure--when superintendents get their contracts renewed, we have a state-assigned label stamped on our foreheads. When politicians go out for re-election, they get to define themselves for voters, sans a state-issued label as to their fitness to serve. This happened recently in Texas, when our governor ran ads touting Texas' huge budget surpluses, which we discovered shortly after his re-election were actually huge shortfalls. Educators can't participate in those kind of games when their contracts are up--we have a label that we can't explain away. If this kind of system truly works to create positive outcomes, why do we not apply it to other public servants?)Question: You seem unusually outspoken for an administrator. Have you experienced any repercussions?My community and school board have supported me, and educators around Texas--as well as nationally--have emailed, called and written letters of support. It's been inspirational. I have received one letter expressing disappointment that I spoke at the Texas Rally to Save Public schools. There have been a few vicious comments posted in the comments sections of articles about the Alamo letter, but I don't take anonymous commenters very seriously. One superintendent indicated in an interview that he felt my letter was inappropriate--he's probably right, but appropriate behavior is what got us here. My contention is that quiet meetings in legislators' offices with frustrated school people asking for support has gotten us the current Rube Goldberg systems. I personally want the general public to be aware of these machinations and the back room legislative wheeler-dealing that gives rise to clearly immoral and self-defeating policies such as the Target Revenue System. I can't bring myself to believe that the average person wants a standardized-test-centric, blame-the-teachers-for-all-social-ills education for their kids. I am tired of educators' silence allowing the public to blindly criticize teachers and local schools for the effects of elected officials' foolish decisions. If elected officials want to play the blame game--and boy do they!--then I'm going to play it with them. There is enough blame to go around. Question: How do you weigh the decision to speak out in this way? I say what I believe to be true. And I'm willing to live with the consequences. Question: Feel free to extemporize if there is something more you would like to share that I have not asked.I have always believed that if a person has the audacity to accept the mantle of leadership, they'd better have the courage to lead. Unfortunately, many of my state elected officials play games and issue half-true sound bites rather than exhibiting true leadership. The greater good is dying on the floor while they preen and play to their fan clubs. (They use the word "constituents" because it sounds more grown up than "fan clubs.") It's all very sad to me, because historically we did education right, and now American education is writhing in hideous deformity on the experimenters' table while other countries do it right. And it's a vicious cycle: the more they mess things up, the more eagerly they then come at us with more clumsy surgeries to "fix" us.I would like to note an incident that gave rise to my speech in Austin. Following the publication of the Alamo letter, I was invited to speak at a college here, and I spoke just before a nationally-known school reformer who is a high school principal. So he spoke about how he got miraculous results in his school, and how 100% of his students went on to four-year colleges, etc. It was all very inspirational. And then, in the middle of his speech, he felt the need to say, "I don't work at a charter school, either. I work at a public high school."The implication was clear--he plays be the same rules as public school principals, he just gets better results. We all play the same game, he's just a better coach.So I was troubled when I got home. I was a public school principal for several years, and I couldn't get 100% of my students to graduate, much less go to college. And I worked hard! What was he doing that I didn't do?So I went to his school's website and I saw an interesting button on the home page. "Apply now!" it said. Weird, I thought. Nobody "applies" at my school. So I clicked on it and discovered that his "public" school is actually a "public magnet" school. He strategically left out that important detail in his speech. You have to apply and be accepted to get into his school; you only have to breathe and live in the district to go to my school. If you don't toe the line at his school, this golden child principal will--wait for it--send you back to the public school! He drafts his players and I play with the Bad News Bears over here, and then he sticks his chest out and tells us all what a skilled coach he is.In short, he deliberately, calculatingly lied by omission to an unsuspecting audience.And that's when I realized that the school reform movement is populated by self-promoting snake oil salesmen, and our elected officials are buying their tonic by the truckload. It's hard for me to watch this train wreck slowly unfold.The narrative of the school reformer is a simple formula: kids are victims, teachers are the villains, and some administrator is the messianic hero. A dynamic personality comes into a bad school and doesn't accept mediocrity. He or she cleans up the discipline and fires all the bad teachers, confronting the wicked teachers' union along the way. The hero is this lone special individual and the administrative mechanisms the he or she put in place. It is, basically, the Heroic Ballad of the Bureaucrat. It sells books and dupes legislators. It makes people rich. It only requires a certain amount of arrogance and duplicity to pull it off. It relies on the same dangerous logic that tyrants use to justify lording over peasants and restricting their liberties. In this case, the benign dictator is a self-promoting principal or superintendent with all the answers, and the poor clueless peasants in dire need of a paternalistic leader are the teachers.The narrative I cling to is also simple, but it doesn't make anyone rich. It would also make for a remarkably boring book. In my ballad, kids are still the victims, but bureaucracy is the enemy. Legislators too afraid to accept responsibility for the persistence of poverty, crime, poor health care, and methamphetamine addiction are the villains, eager only to place blame and not willing or able to actually fix things. And the passionate, beleaguered teachers picking up the pieces in their classrooms day after day are the heroes. My story plays out over years, with a million tiny acts of heroism, each one too small on its own to matter much--but when all of them are put together, how they speak powerfully of a life well-spent! These are the teachers I am sticking up for. And my story doesn't have a Hollywood ending. 100% of my kids don't go to a four-year college. Some of them become house framers or work for our local oilfield companies. But they grow up and raise families and go to church and serve on the school board. They are successes in every sense of the word. And there are others who aren't. Some of my students have gone to prison. Some struggle with addiction. My ballad isn't tidy.But, the nice thing is, I don't have to leave out inconvenient details when I sing my ballad. The assumption that the school reform movement doesn't permit negative outcomes requires you to believe that they fix kids when the hard, unmentionable truth is that they cull them. And I take the culled ones and do the best I can with them. And I'm good with this arrangement because you can't spin the story when you stand before God. God sees through the omissions and knows that the reformer above runs a magnet school and that I take all comers. He can convince the politicians and his readers if he wants to. I'm good with that. I'll soldier on.

More on the attempt to kill the Advanced Placement program in Texas...

Assistant athletic trainer stipend: $5500
Assistant coach stipend: $6300
Head coach stipend: $9500

Advanced Placement teacher stipend: $0

Educon "News" A Possibily Satirical Look at Education in Texas

Educon news continues our interview with the royal governor of Texas

Educon News: A recent article indicated that the AP Program in Texas is very successful-more so than any other testing program and the state doesn't have to spend $78 million to have someone else develop it. Yet the legislature is stopping the small incentive program that subsidizes the AP exams. Do you think that's a wise thing to do?
RG: Absolutely, we need to not spend money an AP tests. This successful program is contrary to our goal. This helps student go to college and encourages all students to think they can be successful in college. Then a lot of just normal kids go to college and are successful. We don't want that! We only want the select few who can already afford to go to college. We don't want regular students to get any high-minded ideas. They might think to vote intelligently and then where would we be?

Educon News: So, the goal is not to lift everybody up but to keep most people down?
RG:Has that not been clear? We've spent a decade working towards that goal and we're closer than ever now...thank God for the downturn in the economy which gave us the excuse to push our agenda without being too obvious as to what we wanted.

Educon News: So what is your message to AP students specifically?
RG: Don't get such a big head. You just think you can handle college. Leave college to those who can afford it and have the right connections.

Educon News: Moving to a different subject...the state requires four years of all four core subjects-math, science, social studies, and English-which Educon News thinks is a good idea. But that requires more teachers and more books yet the state is not only not funding this but is cutting funding. Isn't that the type of thing that you complain about in regards to the federal government? Does this seem right to you?

RG: Of course. That along with harder and harder tests which we pay tens of millions of dollars to develop will undermine the public schools. Demand more and more and provide less and less. If we can keep this up, we'll demoralize teachers and students, we'll discourage talented young people to go into education, the wealthy will pull their kids out of the public schools and then we can have more private schools for my class of people. What's wrong with that?
Plus, we now are expecting them to do it without up-to- date textbooks. There's no way they can be successful and then we can complain about funding or, more precisely, underfunding public schools and then we can basically shut them down and save all those tax dollars for tax cuts for my friends. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Student testing incentives on the chopping block

Student testing incentives on the chopping block

What do you say to the Texas high school students who took more than 325,000 AP exams last year, but won't get to take another if these schmucks have their way?

"Sorry kids. It's not like we were going to cut football. Giddyup, pardner!"