Rick Perry to U.S. Government: Keep Your Education Money

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“Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education,” Gov. Perry said. “If Washington were truly concerned about funding education with solutions that match local challenges, they would make the money available to states with no strings attached.”

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Texas’ curriculum standards, which determine what students are taught in Texas classrooms, are set by the elected State Board of Education (SBOE). The SBOE recently adopted one of the nation’s first college- and career-ready curriculum standards in core subjects after receiving widespread input from Texas education and business leaders.

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The first draft for proposed standards in says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.”

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Bill Ames had neither history or education credentials nor respect for fellow committee members who did. Indeed, the retired IBM executive and conservative gadfly believed they had been planted there in a conspiracy of “liberal groups” and unions who wanted to “hijack” U.S. history — or so he would later write in a three-part, 9,300-word rant, “The Left’s War on History,” that was published by the conservative web site Texas Insider.

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When the committee took up McCarthyism, for instance, Ames argued that disgraced Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was actually an American hero. “The SBOE, noting the predictable leftist condemnation of … McCarthy for his anti-communist activity, requested the inclusion of the Venona papers, which revealed that the U.S. government was in fact infiltrated by communists,” Ames later wrote.

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One section required teachers to “analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information,” and the other required high school students to study the “sufficiency or insufficiency” of key principles of evolution.

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As reported by multiple researchers, approximately 67% of all students are graduating statewide, just 60% of African Americans, and 58% of Hispanic students. Graduation rates in our large urban districts hover around 50%.