Dueling Divas Stage Public Pillow Fight
Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Shirley Neeley and Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling laughed at Texas children’s expense. It was all great fun. When nearly half of Texas schools missed the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements mandated by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Neely changed accountability rules, abandoning nearly 2 million Texas children to failed schools. Spellings responded by fining Neely barely ten cents per child.
The TEA was fined $444,282, or about .001345455% of the agency’s budget. The agency spends over $33 Billion dollars a year. With this $33 billion, it controls the lives of over 4 million Texas children. Texas teachers failed nearly half of those children. By statute, these Texas teachers’ abysmal failure should have led Neeley to communicate with the parents. The communication should have admitted failure and offered options that let students seek educational opportunities from competent providers. Thanks to Neeley, these hapless children will remain trapped in failed Texas public schools.
Texans thought the Federal Department of Education might call TEA to account. We waited eagerly as Spellings furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. In the end, she rejected Texas parents’ pleas. Instead, she sided with Educrats, unions, administrators, and the failed system they represent. Because of Spellings’ inadequate response, dollars will continue to gush from Austin, and our children will continue to suffer.
Thank you, Secretary Spellings.
Let’s bring the fine a little closer to home. It’s very important that readers understand that this is a “show fine.” The only reason to waste time on such a trivial fine is to say you did something. This fine is nothing but a CYA for the Secretary. It serves no other purpose.
Continuing, if you were one of those incompetent Texas teachers earning an average of $41,000/year and were fined .001345455% of your salary, your fine would be about 55 cents. If you were a Texas superintendent running a school full of these incompetent teachers, you’d earn at least $200,000/year. Your fine would be about $2.69.
Secretary Spellings hopes that Texas parents will believe that inflicting a pittance of a fine on an arrogant agency willing to walk away from their mandate will produce results.
Inexplicably, these ladies are in charge of educating Texas children.
The government does some things well. At the federal level, we need the government to organize and maintain an army to fight our wars. Try though I might, I could never have personally defeated the old Soviet Union. At the state level, we need roads. Try though I might, I could never personally build a road from the Red River to the Gulf of Mexico.
The best things to leave to government are tasks where success and failure are very, very clear. For example, if the US Army fails, we all have to learn a new language. If the roads aren’t passable, they aren’t passable. Both circumstances are irrefutable.
NCLB was an attempt to introduce this type of irrefutable certainty into public education. Texans are tired of failure, tired of excuses, tired of kids that can’t read, write, or compute. As far as most of us were concerned, NCLB was the last hurrah for public education as it’s currently administered. Now that they’ve failed, we want our fully funded Texas education vouchers.
Before NCLB, education was different. In the past, incompetent educators had wiggle room to excuse their failures. There’s no more wiggle room. If not for Neeley and Spellings meddling, two million Texas children would be poised to flee failed Texas public schools.
For incomprehensible reasons, Neeley and Spellings decided to protect incompetent teachers and damn Texas’ most vulnerable children to Texas’ worst schools.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Vouchers let all parents ensure their children get the best education available. Vouchers enable parents to do the job the TEA and the Department of Education refuse to do.
The only reason the incompetent teachers who failed nearly 50% of our children still have jobs is that their parents can’t afford to flee their schools. Fully funded education vouchers rectify this inequity. Vouchers will force incompetent teachers out. When every Texas child learns from a qualified educator, we’ll leave Austin and Washington to stage their pointless histrionics in a vacuum.
The state does a poor job with education. We need to relieve them of the burden.
Given our current public education system, is it any wonder our children can’t read or write? Is it any wonder that Texas Public Schools are referred to as: “The Locomotive To Third World Status?” Is it any wonder that millions of Texans have zero confidence in our public school system? Is it any wonder that a growing number of Texas parents want only one thing from their public schools: out?
We can’t control what Neeley and Spellings do. We can, however, make them irrelevant. To do so, we need fully funded Texas education vouchers that let parents take full control of their children’s education. Full control means parents can send their children to the best public, private, or parochial school available to maximize their learning and success.
Texas parents gave these women time to show us something. Neeley had an opportunity to call her associates to task; she didn’t. Spellings had an opportunity to call Neeley to task; she didn’t. We now know that neither of these ladies is conspicuously overburdened with courage or character.
Public pillow fights to hide systemic incompetence will not educate our children. It’s now time for these ladies to go away. It’s time to put parents in charge. It’s time for fully funded Texas education vouchers.
Work with us!! We’re committed to Educational Excellence for all Texas children. That means empowering parents with “The Power of the Purse.”
Write the Governor, your state senator, state representative, and your State Board of Education Representative today. Urge them to join Texas parents and Texas Educators working for our children. Urge them to support 100% Fully Funded School Choice in Texas.
To find the addresses of your elected representatives: Click Here.
