Destroying Education In Texas

Right-wing fundamentalists are in control of the State Board of Education in Texas. They, with the blessing of Governor Rick Perry, have refused to adopt the more rigorous national standards in education that most other states now use. Instead, they have injected their religion in science classes and their replaced real history with their own right-wing ideology. The chart above shows the result of this. SAT scores are dropping each year, and currently are the lowest they have been in over a decade. But these right-wing fundies don't care. For them, propagandizing the students of Texas is far more important then educating them.

And the Republican-controlled state legislature is complicit in this destruction of education in Texas. They could have stepped in and reined in the Board of Education, but they didn't. Instead, they compounded the problem by slashing $5 billion from education funding (even though Texas already had the lowest per pupil funding level for education in the country). This has resulted in an increase in class sizes, because thousands of teachers have had to be laid off.

The Texas Legislature and the Texas State Board of Education have combined to do serious damage to the state's education system. What's worse is that the people of Texas don't seem to care. It is highly likely that after the November election both of these entities will still be controlled by fundamentalist right-wing teabaggers --and they will undoubtably continue in their quest to destroy public education in Texas.