Rick Perry is Wrecking Education in Texas – As Perry plays partisan politics with our public schools, our students and educators are left without the resources they need for a quality education:
· Texas ranks 45th in the country in per student expenditures ($7,818 per student, about $2,000 below the national average), and Texas schools have a higher debt than any other state in the country, even California. (Source: Austin American-Statesman)
· Texas teachers are paid worse than $6,000 below the national average. Half of all new teachers in Texas quit within five years. (Source: Washington Post)
· Rick Perry and Republicans waste hundreds of millions on a failed “merit pay†system that allowed the Houston ISD superintendent to get a $67,250 bonus, an amount 35 times the average teacher bonus. (Source: Houston Chronicle via Burnt Orange Report)
· Rick Perry pushes failed voucher schemes and giving $100 million a year to private companies to administer standardized-tests – despite the fact that Texas’ incredibly high drop-out rate is directly related to our failed standardized-test system. (Source: Rice University’s Center for Education)
· Under Rick Perry, we have a public school system driven by “test and punish,†resulting in more dropouts. The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University recently released a report stating that Texas loses as much as $9.6 billion a year in earned income because of our dropout crisis. (Source: Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University)
· During President’s Day Weekend in 2004, Rick Perry took a junket to the Bahamas to discuss school finance with school voucher kingpin Dr. James Leininger and political extremist Grover Norquist. When public interest groups complained about the unseemliness of the governor vacationing with deep-pocketed donors, spokesman Robert Black described the cruise as a “working trip†paid for by “campaign funds†and devoted to a discussion of “public school finance.†That is, during a luxury retreat in the Bahamas, the governor discussed “public school finance†with a group of wealthy right-wing activists who have done everything in their power to undermine, or even abolish, public education. But we should be reassured by the knowledge that foxes paid for the chicken feed. (Source: Austin Chronicle)
And Lt. Governor David Dewhurst Makes the Education Mess Worse: – Dewhurst had championed a 2007 bill that created a public school athlete steroid testing program at a cost of $6 million over two years. The program only produced 11 positive tests from a pool of 29,000 student-athletes tested in that time. This year, the Texas Education Agency recommended cutting the current $1 million cost of the steroid program among its recommended $135.5 million in proposed cuts. But state leaders left in $750,000 for that program as they cut $1.2 billion from the current two-year budget.
Regards,
Jim
Andy Hailey