The GOP Has Seriously Damaged Education In Texas

The Republicans who run Texas (the state has no statewide elected Democratic official) like to claim they are improving education for Texas students. That is a lie. They cannot tell the truth because it would hurt their electoral chances -- and outside of cutting taxes for corporations, getting re-elected is their only real concern.

The truth is that the governor and the Republican-dominated legislature have acted in collusion to damage education in the state. They did it by rejecting the common core national standards accepted by most other states (thus losing hundreds of millions of dollars that came with those standards). Then they compounded this failure by cutting the education budget by more than $5 billion dollars (restoring only a small percentage of that funding after experiencing voter outrage).

Texas already had the lowest per pupil funding for education of any state in this country -- and this huge cut just compound the problems of an underfunded education system. The GOP claimed the cut in funding didn't hurt Texas education -- but the fact is that thousands of teachers were laid off, and classroom size had to be increased far beyond established standards in many school districts. And there is no way that laying off teachers and increasing class sizes could not diminish the education offered.

Texas already had one of the highest dropout rates in the nation, and forcing students who are already struggling into larger classes will almost certainly exacerbate that problem. But the problem doesn't stop there. Now there is evidence that the GOP actions have also hurt Texas' better students -- the ones who go on to college.

The chart above was done from information in a Dallas Morning News article on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) taken by graduating seniors wanting to enter college. Texas seniors were already scoring below the national average on all three parts of the SAT (math, reading, and writing) -- and they have lost even more ground in the last 10 years. Scores dropped by 5 points in math, by 17 points in reading, and by a whopping 26 points in writing.

As the chart below shows, most Americans (59%) think the students graduating from high school these days (nationally) are not ready for college (do not have the skills necessary to be successful in college). They are right to a large extent, and it is why colleges now must have remedial math and English courses.  Unfortunately, Texas students are doing even worse.

We need to reverse this trend of falling SAT scores (and reduce the number of dropouts). But it has become obvious that this will not be done as long as the Republican Party controls the state government.

Rasmussen Poll -- random national sample of 1,000 likely voters (October 5th & 6th) with a margin of error of about 3 points.