Recently in Education Category

This Op-Ed, by Charles M. Blow, documents the United States decline in a number of measures.  Not only are we no longer "Number One", in many measures we are among the worst of the worst of industrialized countries.American Shame.html...

We've heard proponents of drastic spending cuts to our state's education system justify these cuts by using the old adage that "throwing money at the problem won't help anything" and that "we need to spend smarter."Ok, fine.  Yes, yes yes, you are correct.  Throwing money at anything without a plan of improvement will fail.  That's a cop out that doesn't require much thought or effort, and I'm tired of hearing it.   I live in the...

First of all, I wanted to thank Voice for publishing the letter that the HISD superintendent mailed home to parents. It deals with the huge budget shortfall in the state of Texas. The state legislature may be attempting to scare citizens with these cuts. Who knows, maybe they want to coerce people to accept property tax increases. Maybe they will come in at the last minute and suggest smaller cuts to education. Then, they look...

Due in large part to Republican mismanagement of state finances, and due to the failure of many ordinary Texans to meet the everyday obligations of citizenship, the State of Texas faces a massive budget deficit.(Above---Not long after the Arizona shooting rampage, the Austin State Hospital, which offers mental health assistance, faces drastic Texas state budget cuts. Photo by Larry D. Moore.)State Comptroller Susan Combs says the deficit could possible be as high as $27 billion for the 2012-2013 biennium.The...

As much as the news changes it always remains the same. Dog bites man doesn't create any headlines. Man bites dog stops the presses. The same occurred with me when I was watching the news. Reports cards come out all the time but HISD has announced plans to include a grade for parents on the report cards. Naturally, this bit of news should be of interest to anyone with a child in school.For most of...

Voice has a great piece up about getting support for the School of Visual and Performing Arts. In the comments for that post, one of our regular readers asked why a particular student was not being praised for brilliant work while other students were being praised for mediocre work. I tried to respond in the best way I know in a few paragraphs, but this is an important issue in education I have yet to...

As many of you already know, Senator Jim DeMint told his followers that education needs an overhaul. More specifically, we need to clean up our act in education by removing promiscuous single women (single guys can continue to sleep around I guess) and there shouldn't be anyone in education that is openly gay or lesbian. He didn't advocate a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for educators, so I guess he left the door open to...

As usual, the Perry campaign is trying to create a lot of confusion about the expected shortfall in the state budget. Naturally, he doesn't want voters to go into the voting booth with the facts because that would mean they would be less than impressed with his leadership. Those of us that have been voting against him in every election cycle want to put leadership in quotes. Like most states, Texas has a balanced budget...

Last time, I talked about Rick Perry and got right back to education. My thoughts always go out to education. My father was a high school teacher and administrator. My mother taught third grade for more than thirty years (more than twenty in the same room). My sister teaches and coaches in high school and if you haven't figured out already, I am currently an elementary counselor. Education is in my blood. That being said, I...

When I read Astrogirlkel's piece on our state deficit I am reminded of all of the ways where Rick Perry is not a real leader. Real leaders take on difficult issues and make the choices that have to be made. Fake leaders find a way to put off difficult decisions and even worse, they blame their problems on someone else. There is no better area to consider than in education. Nationally, you can argue for...