TAKS Season and Texas Cuts Education

It's the beginning of TAKS Season again. I wonder how many casualties we'll have this year? Will the socio economically disadvantaged be left behind or will it be our English as a Second Language students? From what I'm hearing, we in the great state of Texas will all be left behind, due to pending budget cuts.

According to our state legislatures, the administrators of education need to trim down their education budgets by 10 percent. Of course, the powers that be, believe that this "trim" back would be the cutting of "unnecessary" non-teaching jobs.

“Local school district officials are in process of making some very difficult and very painful budget decisions. Leadership is about making choices. We strongly urge them not to be shortsighted by sacrificing the classroom in favor of bureaucratic education establishment.”

But isn't that exactly what our state government is doing? Sacrificing education in order to keep the status quo of bureaucratic education establishment? Isn't all the unnecessary spending actually due to the increasing efforts to improve an antiquated system of assessment? Aren't we now, changing directions and creating a whole new testing system, titled the STAR? When is this testing madness going to END? Oh, yeah...that's right, it became law under George W. Bush.

"HEY, President Obama! Do us a favor and REPEAL the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!" Want to make your presidency count for something or are you really the puppet of the Republican party after all?

HEY, Honorable Shapiro...I'm thinking that maybe our lovely state government should do a bit of cutting back as well. How about you fellas and gals make your own phone calls, pick up your own lunches and dry cleaning, mail out your own letters and important documents, lick the back of a few stamps, make copies of valuable propaganda rhetoric, kill a few more trees in the name of TAKS, vacuum the carpeting in your offices, clean the windows, take out your trash, scrub the toilet down the hallway and a few of those other "can't survive without" functions. Then and only then, I'm sure you will possess the ultimate wisdom, the empathy and passion to address the state budget deficit. Since when did becoming an elected official allow one to be an elitist?

Oh, and don't think Shapiro was working alone, she had a bunch of support, here are a few of the names: Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound), Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Austin), Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Southside Place), Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), and Sen. Craig Estes (R-Wichita Falls). And if you'd like to watch the atrocity of a crime against the children of our great state...be my guest. Once you're there, click on Press Conference: Senator Florence Shapiro.