140 Days of Hell
I’m headed to Austin tomorrow to watch the Texas Lege get sworn in and to make fun of what Debbie Riddle says.
Our Lege meets for 140 damn days every two years and makes more mess than finger paints in a kindergarten class.
If anybody has any extra free time, you can help me find crazy bills at this handy location. Thee will be some real crazy stuff filed in the coming month so you might want to wear a gas mask while you search.
I’m serious. We elect some crazy people to the Lege. Apparently, there’s no rules about that.
The big issue this session will be vouchers. The big money boys want to open for-profit private schools n Texas and Rick Perry wants to help them.
I will see your Texas lege and raise you one Virginia lege. Not a hairs breadth of difference between them when it comes to insanity.
1Heard something over the weekend i hadn’t expected. The vouchering program would would apply as an offset of tuition expense for all currently enrolled in prvt schools. So I’d get a vouchers reduction for any children I might already be sending to St. Johns school. Which is cost prohibitive for most Houstonians budgets even with the offset. How very Repuglican of the lege.
2He’s caught the Bobby Jindahl disease, privatizing/destroying public education. We need a vaccine against that. Look no further than your next door neighbor for a preview of what’s coming.
3Juanita, I think Austin might have ’bout as many asshats as our legislature here in Nashville… and that’s saying something! We have GOPers promising more guns in classrooms, guns in bars, guns in cars, and all sorts of “Don’t Say Gay” bills lined up behind those. They want to voucher-ize public schools, so that scarce dollars can be diverted to Christ R Us Academy, where all the kids are lily white and they teach Bible verses instead of biology. On top of THAT they will offer even more voter registration laws designed to keep the “wrong” people away from the polls, and are gerrymandering their butts off to keep things nice and Red here in Tennessee.
(heavy sigh…)
4Vouchers accomplish so many Repugnican goals. They get rid of teachers’ unions, don’t have to adhere to the same stifling “test ’em ’til they drop”
5regulations as public schools, don’t have to worry about diversity (take that Civil Rights), the companies who own them make millions and best of all, they do it all with our tax dollars.
If they divert money for vouchers, then those private schools better have to suffer through the STAAR testing debacle too. They better have to disaggregate their data of all their subpops, they better have to take every student who comes through that door and not be able to kick them out for behavior or low academics. Parental volunteer hours can’t be mandatory. I could go on and on.
6Repug-ni-can’ts. Bunch of losers…. everywhere but the ballot box.
7There was a woman on Morning Joe today that is with a group that evaluated the laws on education in all of the states, then “graded” each. On the top of the list, with a B- (the highest grade), was Louisiana. (HUGE surprise) Texas got a D (small surprise that it wasn’t an F). The issue she mentioned the most was the degree to which the state gave parents the right to place their children in any school they chose. The problem I’ve always had with that (send your kid to the *best* school) is that ALL schools should be the *best.* It occurred to me that even those with “good” intentions still get it wrong. The educator me sighs heavily and tries not to despair.
8Here’s a Daily Kos link to an article about my previous post.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/07/1177063/-Rhee-s-StudentsFirst-grades-education-on-ideology-not-results?detail=hide
9Gosh, I thought I would stay home tomorrow however I could call one of my friends in Austin to check if I can spent the night. I can’t afford the Hilton this month even for one night even if they had a room. On second thought, just post something interesting about the big day and I’ll go fishing if the weather isn’t too bad.
10I live in Austin. I just moved here a few months ago. Perhaps we could meet for a chat. I need a sane person to explain Texas to me.
11I went through public schools in Texas. There was a time they taught kids reading, writing, and arithmetic… and you got an education. You were not just taught how to take tests.
Because I own a home, I have paid school taxes for more years than I can remember. I haven’t had a kid in school in about 40 years. I wouldn’t mind at all having to pay the taxes, if I knew that the kids who are in school these days were getting enough “education” that a high school diploma would get you into a good college, and a college degree would get you a good job.
I do take exception to the possibility that my tax money would be used to fund some kid’s private school. If people can afford to send their kids to private school…… good on them…. but don’t ask me to pay for it. I believe in the public school system. I think it’s worth preserving, so that anybody’s kid can go to school. And, I don’t think it’s an “either” “or” proposition.
We have got to stop electing people to make our laws…. who think everything that isn’t “privatized” should be “out-sourced”.
We have to start with “unelecting” Rick Perry. JMHO.
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