Texas is a very big, small-government state. No place on earth is perfect, but Texas does an amazing job of leaving the law-abiding alone while dealing with crime and, according to Forbes, has managed to keep its takers-to-makers ratio viable despite the graying of America at large. The trade-off for all this, according to what’s left of the Texas left, is that we’re not properly educating the next generation because we’re not spending enough per pupil in the classroom. When Gov. Rick Perry rejected President Obama’s “Race to the Top” game because it came with tricky federal strings, the Texas left derided him and mocked him. They insist that Texas under our dullard governor is falling behind.
Well. That idea has been shot down. Comparable big blue states spend more, but graduate fewer students, than Texas.
The Department of Education has just released its first state-by-state comparison of education statistics, and the report has a few surprises. Texas performed extremely well, tying five other states for the third-best graduation rate in the country, at 86 percent.
And Texas isn’t the only high-performing red state: Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Tennessee all place within the top ten as well. Meanwhile, New York, Rhode Island, and California, all of which take a traditional, high-spending, blue model approach to education, are closer to the middle of the pack , with graduation rates in the mid-70s.
The blue state model is a failure across the board. It doesn’t deal well with past promises made under threat from the unions, it fails to deal with the present reality of a weak economy and insane government spending, and it is now shown to be failing to keep up with the future as well. The blue state model is running out of money to steal from one batch and promise to hand out to another. But the arrogant blue staters keep exporting their poisons on us anyway.
We’re more than fed up with that.
As for our dullard governor, he is the only one to come up with something that has a chance to bend the higher education cost curve back toward sanity: the $10,000 university degree. Due to Texas’ outsized influence, if that initiative succeeds here it may drive similar changes elsewhere, making higher education affordable for millions who cannot afford it, at least without going into crippling debt, now.
How can this be?
A quality education at an affordable price?
I’m assured by all liberal commentators that Southerners are ill educated knuckle dragging unimaginative neanderthals, so this just can’t be accurate….
Graduating drooling morons is no great accomplishment.
But graduating drooling morons indoctrinated in postmodern/leftist drivel is worse and it’s ultimately lethal.
Lets be fair when claiming educational success by a particular state at any given time.
Texas brought within federal control of education during the GWB era, a thing called NCLB. A proven costly failure when not cheating and teaching specifically to the standardized tests developed by the states.
Then we became blessed with Chicago’s functional illiterate Duncans grand hoax of RTtT. Yet again proving to be a costly failure.
Of course we have Jeb Bush who claimed his Florida plan to be the solution to education and today it is left failing.
Going way back we had California with all its grand educational reforms and success for which was to be the national model for success. For decades it has gradually failed and look where it is today.
Perpetual educational experimentation with ‘experts’ in the thousands with this claim or that claim for more experimentations that will work if only it is implemented. All that exprimentation has only seen a steady national decline from the starting point of the mid 60s.
Until the ills of our nations society are fixed, education will continue to be a failure — even for Texas.
I don’t want to have to move to Texas, but compared to California it might be the only sane thing to do.
Governor Perry has actually been promoting two approaches that institutions of higher education can beneficially contribute. The first as cited in this article “the $10,000 university degree” is being considered in Florida as well. His latest “Skilled Workforce Initiative” can provide an valuable pathway to success for educators, the businesses seeking credentialed applicants and the participants in these programs. Too often student loan and private moneys are being invested in coursework that yields minimal if any benefit for the real world, all the while contributing to lack of funding for valuable knowledge in needed and available jobs.
Kudos to your Governor. Would his and your “Texas vision” drive similar changes elsewhere!