Month: <span>September 2011</span>

Promoting Big Brother, not education

The recent furor over the San Antonio teacher who called a tea party leader a “Nazi” makes me realize I haven’t been fully depicting the tea party movement. I usually call the tea party an antigovernment group, and that’s true, but only up to a certain extent. The movement is decidedly antigovernment when it comes […]

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How would these tax breaks play?

As most of us know, Gov. Rick Perry doesn’t really care what school districts, their employees and most taxpayers think. If he did, he wouldn’t so eagerly have taken an ax to school district budgets. Now, another financial issue posing additional millions in potential losses to many districts and local taxpayers has bubbled to the […]

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Voting for football and (we hope) classrooms

This will be a discussion of how Texans weigh their priorities, and at the outset I want to acknowledge the obvious. Parents can value football, band and other extracurricular activities for their children while also valuing the classroom and teachers. I know. My son is in a high school marching band, and I also enjoy […]

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Like it or not, quality requires money

The Economist article about education “reform,” linked at the bottom of this post, tries to make the point, I think, that teachers’ unions overemphasize the importance of government spending in the development and maintenance of quality public schools. The article, however, meanders around the world and is a bit contradictory. For example, it cites a […]

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