This post is fourth in a series on the education planks of the 2010 Texas Democratic Party Platform.
This is an unofficial version published in advance of the final version from the Texas Democrats, but I expect very few changes.
EXCELLENT SCHOOLS FOR EVERY STUDENT
To make public education our highest priority, we believe the state should:
- provide universal access to pre-kindergarten and kindergarten;
- provide universally accessible after school programs for grades 1-12;
- provide free, accurate and updated instructional materials aligned to educationally appropriate, non-ideological state curriculum standards and tests;
- provide free computer and internet access, as well as digital instructional materials;
- provide early intervention programs to ensure every child performs at grade level in English Language Arts, Social Studies, Math, and Science;
- ensure that students with disabilities receive an appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, including access to the full range of services and supports called for in their individual education plans;
- provide appropriate career and technical education programs;
- reject efforts to destroy bilingual education;
- promote multi-language instruction, beginning in elementary school, to make all students fluent in English and at least one other language;
- replace high-stakes tests, used to punish students and schools, with multiple measures that restore the original intent of the state assessment system–improving instruction to help students think critically, be creative and succeed;
- end inappropriate testing of students with disabilities whose individual education plans call for alternative assessments of their educational progress;
- enforce and extend class size limits to allow every student to receive necessary individualized attention;
- support Title IX protections for gender equity in public education institutions;
- ensure that every school has a fully funded library that meets state requirements;
- provide environmental education programs for children and adults; and
- oppose private school vouchers.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
SenseI,
Thanks very much for your post. I haven’t time to assess all of it, and there are surely more learned people here than me.
However, I would like to ask for some clarification. You suggest that the public school system functions as “a center for indoctrination into economic, political and cultural Marxism. Would you care to enumerate some examples of each? I am familiar with economic and political Marxism, but less so with “cultural”. Just what are the public schools doing to bring this about?
I detest Marxism, so I guess I should be more informed.
Thanks a bunch!
Jim
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By the way, SenseI, teachers unions have no significant power in about 90% of the 15,000+ school districts in the nation. One way to tell someone is completely out of touch with education is when they start to complain about teachers unions. You might as well say that schools problems are the result of the invasion of the Moon People, but even Dick Tracy gave up on that story.
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We in Texas believe in public education. Under the Texas Constitution, a free education is the duty of the state to provide to all children.
We believe education is the foundation of liberty and freedom. That is why, Democrats believe, Republicans don’t like it — they are opposed to all people having liberty and freedom, especially people of color, and people without a lot of money.
Democrats believe in opportunity. That’s true free enterprise. Republicans mouth opportunity, but they legislate against it at every turn.
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The Democrat have been running this nonsense and bathos by us since the New Deal. They are incapable of delivering it, if only for the reasons that they are, like all collectivists, themselves mediocrities and both deeply frightened and scornful of all excellence. In fact, a great many of them have no notion of what “excellence” is in the first place. This is why they belly up to the government trough. Besides, it is a logical fallacy: If the same school is to focus on excellence for the excellent, it cannot focus on mediocrity for mediocrities, and, let us be clear, “excellence for mediocrities” is a contradiction in terms. The rest of the civilized world knows this; this is why they have vocational training tracks in the EU and Japan.
The only way to solve the problem is to gradually dismantle public education down to the point that it is merely a safety net in a system that primarily relies on competing private institutions. Only through competition in a mostly private system can we get rid of incompetent, rent seeking teachers(provided that we forbid them to unionize, of course).
The first steps are 1) Getting the democrats out of it, 2) De-unionize the teachers (and forbid them any active political participation in the system, much like we expect out of LEO’s and the Armed Forces), 3) get the federal government out of it, and 4) Allow opt out via vouchers.
The public school system today functions as a patronage system for the Democrat Party and a center for indoctrination into economic, political and cultural Marxism. These overarching facts are the primary (and fatal) flaws of the current system and little can be done about anything unless they are removed from the system
The majority of teachers today are corrupt rent seekers with decidedly Un-American political views. The taxpayer owes them nothing other than to take the public purse from their greedy grasp–this would be an act of charity in the end for it would force our “teachers” to confront their sizable immorality.
No “excellence” for anyone is attainable in any constant and consistent sense until they are cast out of the system.
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