White Opposes National School Standards

The first debate among the Texas candidates for governor is now over, and as expected, Republican Rick Perry was a no-show.   Perry is still giving excuses for not debating, but it's pretty obvious that he doesn't want to do anything that might affect his 6 or 7 point lead in the polls.   He's going to try and coast into election day with making any political waves.   But while Perry stayed away, three candidates did show up -- Bill White (Democrat), Kathie Glass (Libertarian) and Deb Shafto (Green).

For most of the media the big story was Perry non-appearance coupled with charges traded by White and Perry from a distance.   But something else came up during the debate that came as a rather unpleasant surprise to me -- something that the media either ignored or included in one line at the end of their article.   Here's how the Fort Worth Star-Telegram put it,   "White and Glass both questioned the need for national public school standards. . ."

I've known for quite a while that Rick Perry opposes bringing Texas schools up to national standards.   He's a right-winger and a creationist.   He likes the idea of the State School Board dumbing down science and history courses by injecting religion and right-wing propaganda.   He has even rejected hundreds of millions of federal dollars for Texas schools to avoid bringing Texas schools up to national standards.

And it's no surprise that Kathie Glass opposes national education standards.   Libertarians are not great fans of anything the federal government does (or most other governmental entities for that matter).   But I was shocked to hear Democrat Bill White say he sees no need for national public school standards.   I knew he was a "blue dog" conservative but I had assumed he would be in favor of establishing standards for the education of all children in the United States, especially since he has made education one of his main campaign issues.

I would have thought that the need for all states to come up to a set of national standards would make sense to someone who claims to have education as a priority item in his agenda.   United States students are already falling behind other students in several developed nations. A set of minimum national standards is the first step toward rectifying this situation.  

It is obvious that without national standards there will be some states that do not meet those standards -- especially those states (and communities) that are ruled by right-wing religious fundamentalists, many of whom put forwarding their religious views and political propaganda above truly educating children.

I honestly don't know why supposedly intelligent people could be against national educational standards.   It is not a ceiling on educational knowledge.   It is just the bare minimum that is expected of all schools and students.   Good school systems should not even have to be worried about national standards because they should be striving to exceed them.

Some right-wingers see the establishment of minimum national standards as the federal government taking over their schools.   That's a ridiculous argument though.   Establishing minimum standards has nothing to do with the running of local or state schools.   It is just an effort to make sure our students learn enough to be able to compete in this ever more complex modern world.

I can only assume that White is trying to reach out for the votes of right-wingers with this silly stance against standards, and that is just dumb (because he couldn't get those votes if he paid for them).   And Democrats and Independents (whose votes he could get) have no problem with establishing national educational standards.   They want students in every state to be able to get the best education possible.

Making matters even worse is the fact that Bill White has seen what the current State School Board is doing to dumb down education in Texas.   He has to know that Texas is one of the states that could well fall behind without minimum national education standards.   His opposition to the idea just makes no sense.