Ed Secretary’s Curious Attack on Texas Schools
posted at 11:16 am on August 20, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Education ]
To hear Secretary of Education Arne Duncan describe it, the Texas school system is a shambles:
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.
Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college. I feel very, very badly [sic] for the children there.
Putting aside the secretary’s grammatical infelicity (after all, he’s only Sceretary of Education), his criticism is baseless.
In an article in “TIME,” Andrew Rotherman, head of a nonprofit organization aimed at improving educational outcomes for low-income students, challenges Duncan’s claims. Writes Rotherman:
Overall, Texas students scored right around the national averages in reading and math on the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress ]. And according to an Aug. 17 report by the group that administers the ACT college-admissions exam, Texas high school graduates only narrowly trail national averages for college readiness. True, the national averages aren’t great, but Texas is right there with the pack. So why is Duncan dissing the Lone Star State?
But Rotherman’s criticism of Duncan doesn’t stop with the Ed Secretary wrong-headed assertions about Texas schools. Rotherman further states:
[Texas’s] minority students outperform minority students in Chicago, albeit by smaller margins. And with a high school graduation rate of about 73%, Texas may be slightly below the national average, but it’s doing a lot better than Chicago, which only graduates about 56% of its students.
Any why is that relevant? Because in Duncan’s previous life, hewas head of the Chicago school system.
After presenting his facts, Rotherman asks why Duncan is “dissing the Lone Star State.” The question is coy. I’m confident that the author knows that the state’s chief executive is running for the job currently held by Duncan’s boss. The attack on Texas schools is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on Rick Perry. And a bogus one at that.
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It’s not that curious. Earlier this year even Laura Bush was incensed over the draconian cuts being made to an already near-bottom ranking education system and publicly criticized the Governor. Why would she make a ‘bogus’ claims on the subject?
lexhamfox on August 20, 2011 at 2:27 PM
For the hard of thinking, let me repeat: Texas public schools rank at around the national median in reading and math and slightly below the national average in college preparedness. The national average is low to start with. Hence, Laura Bush’s concern.
What makes Duncan’s claim bogus is that he overstates the situation in Texas.
Howard Portnoy on August 20, 2011 at 2:46 PM
It’s actually weirder than you state. A large number of students in the district in which I live in Texas, and have raised kids through the system, are Spanish speaking only when they begin their matriculation. They have classes named ESL (English as a Second Language) which were demanded by the Dept. of Ed out of DC. I personally know teachers that tell me that during their careers ESL was implemented. Comparing earlier Spanish speaking students with those later in their careers after ESL was implemented, student achievement fell as students became lazy, not needing to make as much effort to learn English which by no mere coincidence is the language in which increasingly more difficult studies are taught.
As some of the lazy or slow kids fell further behind they took “easier” classes or dropped out altogether. So some became less prepared for college while others became less prepared for life. Not unlike other races, only that they started with a language deficit which a gubmit bureaucrat’s theory made worse while convincing the do-good society they were helping.
And with such programs in place they’ll never take a second look, ask a teacher’s opinion, just throw more money at it, hire more ESL teachers, and look for another program to implement.
Robert17 on August 20, 2011 at 9:54 PM