1. hahahah, I love when you decide to tear into someone, and I’m DAMN glad to have you on our side now!

2. I do feel badly for you though, because you’ve now become part of a deliberately stupid right wing horde.

3. Texas students perform better than Wisconsin students per Iowahawk. http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html

4. Do see http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html

5. neo shoves the stilletto in adroitly. Poor Arne should feel bad after being fisked for his careless language skills.

   Thank you, neo, for being gentle with your commenters, especially me. My malapropisms are all too frequent, I fear.

6. Beat me by a nose, stan !

7. Texas was not in the forefront of education..

   Textbook publishing in the U.S. is a business primarily aimed at large states. This is due to state purchasing controls over the books. The Texas State Board of Education spends in excess of $600 million annually on its central purchasing of textbooks

   and they set the flow of textbooks for the nation, which is why they are such a big battle ground… duh

   they basically know something you dont
   and until you figure it out, you wont figure out why or what they do… it dont make sense, as your missing the critical piece of data…

   http://www.historytextbooks.org/publish.htm

   The underlying problem with textbooks is a commercial one: a flawed production system. Four companies — Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Reed Elsevier, and Houghton Mifflin — offer “elhi” textbooks in all major subjects and at all grade levels for states, districts, and teachers to choose from. Elhi is the term universally used in the industry to describe the school market.

   The textbook market features a relatively small number of volume buyers (i.e., school districts) and an even smaller number of sellers. This market is efficient, profitable, and reliable — but also deadly to quality. Whatever visual trick — or content fudge — is necessary to sell a book and its ancillary ornaments, runs the contemporary line of editorial thought, so be it. Each of these four publishing giants is intent on maximizing its revenues and is essentially indifferent to the means of doing so. Field representatives, sales forces, market researchers, product managers, and editorial directors help determine the content of a textbook. So do state frameworks, advocates for diverse groups and causes, and numerous focus groups that round off any sharpness or edge that may be perceived in a text.

   designed by a soviet… i mean commitee

   and texas?

   Publishers are attached like barnacles to frameworks such as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Texas law mandates this scope-and-sequence framework as the basis of the state’s curriculum and thus of textbook content. If the TEKS specifically mentions South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, for example, as it did in 2001, it is guaranteed that Desmond Tutu will obtain a prominent position in new editions. If a largely unknown figure in antiquity, Erastothenes, appears on the TEKS list, he too enters textbooks with a flourish. Erastothenes was a Hellenistic astronomer who discerned that the Earth was round. These are not necessarily bad changes, but they are grafted onto already overburdened world history textbooks with little regard for coherence.

   texas wants to educate.. so they have a HUGE market and can dictate what appears or doesnt appear in text books

   Some adoption states are far more attractive to publishers than others. California, Texas, and Florida offer the potential for large profits; collectively, they represent about 25% of the total national market. (See Appendix II for “Percent of Total Sales” by State) If the publisher’s book can clear the adoption hurdle in one or more of those states, the company’s viability is virtually guaranteed. Conversely, if a company fails to win state approval, it is shut out of the entire market in that state, and may even be forced out of business. Adoption contests are a treacherous business, especially in California. Therefore publishers study the curriculum frameworks, bid specifications, selection criteria, and politics in those states with the concentration of someone facing the prospect of an immediate hanging.

   so texas is the odd child out.. the thing blocking progressives from having more control

   “School of Darkness” (1954)

   The Communist Party operates by infiltrating and subverting social institutions like the churches, schools, mass media and government. Its aim was “to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control.” (162) Bella Dodd

   “The party did all it could to induce women to go into industry. Its fashion designers created special styles for them and its songwriters wrote special songs to spur them…. War-period conditions, they planned, were to become a permanent part of the future educational program. The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete.” (153) Bella Dodd

   there is a long line of people who were to testify and confirm, spanning more than 50 years… a very long list of mostly suicides..

8. feminist historian Kate Weigand in Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation says:

   “ideas, activists and traditions that emanated from the Communist movement of the forties and fifties continued to shape the direction of the new women’s movement of the 1960s and later.”(154) Weigand

   “second-wave feminism stands as an excellent example of a 1960’s movement that blossomed from the seeds that Communist women germinated thirty years earlier.” (156) Weigand

   They write about it, claim it, love it, make books about it, but their followers believe otherwise. who is right? the followers who set no policy, have no real say, devote their lives to others ideas… or the people who set policy, have all the say, use people devoted to them?

   “Rape is a violent expression of a pattern of male supremacy, an outgrowth of age-old economic, political and cultural exploitation of women by men.”

   Does that sound like a 1970s feminist? 80s? 90s?
   How about 1948? Betty Millard said it and it was published by the CPUSA…

   hey… how did we get to all these impoverished rioters?

   Having failed to peddle class war, Communism morphed into a movement dedicated to gaining power by promoting gender conflict.

   and now we have class war…

   texas is part of the class war as its a bastion of the ideals that they have eradicated elswhere

   feminism dominates the schools, and business administrations

   but i would ask, why doesnt the societies its from and who are supposedly at the forefront of socilalism, not have it?

   “Almanach” is a good example, as its what happened to feminism in soviet states

   Wiegands says her “book provides evidence to support the belief that at least some Communists regarded the subversion of the gender system [in America] as an integral part of the larger fight to overturn capitalism.”(6)

   if not, then why are the feminists on the side of islam? and against judaism/christianity?

   wouldnt it make more sense to help the system that had provided women with more emancipation than any other? nope… it was always “for consumption” and “for export”…

   its as simple as whether you want to drink from the flagon with the dragon
   The Court Jester – The Pellet With The Poison
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS75NtlH3gI

   the thing to remember is that who gives the poison also refuses to partake of it…

   so if it comes from X, and X refuses to have any of it, and punitively so (and had eradicated it when they invented it), perhaps its NOT what it sells itself to be.

   or do we expect Bernie Maddoffs to be honest too?

   and given that it takes work to find out Almanach…

   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatiana_Mamonova

   Tatyana Mamonova, is a founder of the modern Russian women’s movement, an internationally renowned democratic women’s leader, author, poet, journalist, videographer, artist, editor and public lecturer.

   Mamonova was the first feminist dissident exiled from the Soviet Union in 1980 for re-igniting the Russian women’s movement; initiating her organization, then called Woman and Russia, the first NGO promoting the human rights of women from the Soviet Union and connecting Russian speaking women’s voices and needs with the international community; and editing and publishing the samizdat Woman and Russia Almanac, now called Woman and Earth Almanac, an art and literary journal containing the first collection of Soviet feminist writings, which has now been published in 11 languages and in over 22 countries.

   but, how do you reconcile her being deported for re-igniting something they destroyed for doing so much harm to them?

   the americans say this…

   “Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” – Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10

   “A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised.” – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806

   but the soviets deport her? why?

   During her Ms. Magazine tour, Mamonova was invited by the Ford Foundation in New York for a meeting and round-table discussion by leading executives from the foundation shortly after her exile and she received the highest praises from the Ford Foundation’s executives for her intelligence, leadership and courage

   Feminism in Russia: Two Centuries of History

   Links between feminism and revolutionary-democratic movements was also characteristic of Russia. Russian women’s movement of 1905-1917 was mature and well prepared, both ideologically and organizationally. The revolutionary wave of 1905 summoned women who had been previously only demanding higher education and professional work to struggle for civil and political rights. In January 1905 about thirty women from St. Petersburg announced the creation of all-Russian “Women’s Equality Union”. In April 1905 it carried out the first rally in the Russian history in defense of women’s political rights. In the summer of 1913 “Voice of a woman-worker” and “Working woman” magazines began to be published. In March 1917 more than 40 thousand women came to take part in a demonstration in front of the Temporary Government residence in St. Petersburg. Their streamers read: “Women’s place is in the Constituent Assembly!” Background of Russian Feminism of “second wave”. Bolshevik decrees of late 1917 – early 1918 banned the work of all feminist organizations – together with the activity of other parties and unions.

   and then they skip to the 1970s… why?

   Only in the late 1970-s one can see the resurrection of feminism in Russia in frames of dissidents movement. Russian feminism of the second wave (late 1980’s to the present). The reforms of mid 1980’s changed women’s position in the Russian society. They created conditions for new forms of women’s movement, the emergence of many public associations which began to strive for not just formal and legal gender equality but the real one.

   read about Zhenotdel…

   i will bet 100 that maybe only one other person or two would know or remember that…

   The Zhenotdel (Russian: Женотдел) was the Women’s Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1919 – 1930).

   In November 1918 Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Konkordiia Samoilova, Klavdia Nikolayeva, and Zlata Lilina organized the First National Congress of Women Workers and Peasants. This was not actually the first national women’s congress, as Russian feminists had held a huge conference in St. Petersburg in December 1908. Kollontai and her comrades, however, explicitly rejected any parallels to the earlier conference, arguing that they sought not to separate women’s issues from men’s but rather to weld and forge women and men into the larger socialist liberation movement. Despite serious ambivalence over whether to create a separate women’s organization, the Congress passed a resolution requesting the party Central Committee to organize “a special commission for propaganda and agitation among women.” The organizers limited their designs for this commission, however, initially claiming that it would serve “merely as a technical apparatus” for implementing Central Committee decrees. This was not, they insisted, a feminist organization.
   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
   With the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, Zhenotdel activists faced a whole host of new problems: rising and disproportionately female unemployment; cutbacks in budgeting for local party committees which prompted them to try to liquidate their women’s sections altogether; cutbacks in the social services (child care, communal kitchens, etc.) that Zhenotdel activists had hoped would assist in the emancipation of women from the drudgery of private child care and food preparation. Kollontai and her colleagues now began insisting, in Kollontai’s words, on not eliminating but strengthening the women’s sections. They wanted the women’s sections to have more representatives on the factory committees and Labor Exchanges (which handled job placements for unemployed workers), in trade unions, and in the Commissariats.
   

   They kicked kollontai out and replaced her with a contemporary…

   The party responded to this increased insistence with charges of feminist deviation. In February 1922 Kollontai (now tainted as well by her involvement in the Workers’ Opposition) was replaced as head of the Zhenotdel by Sofia Smidovich.

   Kollontai and her close assistant, Vera Golubeva, did not cease to sound the alarm… From her exile in 1922, Kollontai, calling the New Economic Policy “the new threat,”…

   The Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 reacted vehemently against the possibility of any such feminist deviations.

   At the same congress, Stalin (normally reticent on women’s issues) now praised women’s delegate meetings organized by the Zhenotdel as “an important, essential transmission mechanism” between the party and the female masses. As such, they should be used to “extend and direct the party’s tentacles in order to undermine the influence of the priests among youth, who are raised by women.”

   Through such tentacles, the party would be able to “transmit its will to the working class.”

   Three months later Smidovich announced that Kommunistka would no longer carry theoretical discussions of women’s emancipation.

   you see… Stalin saw what it could be abused for… and loved it… as in america, the feminists are a direct line from statism to the women. and did the same to the kids and churches…

   Unfortunately, the historical record of the Zhenotdel for the period after 1924 is less clear than the earlier record because the relevant files of the women’s section are missing from the party archives. – Wiki

   convenient, eh?
   kind of like lost birth records, and such…

   In May 1924 the Thirteenth Party Congress again attacked the Zhenotdel, accusing it this time of one-sidedness (odnostoronnost) for focusing too much on agitation and propaganda rather than working directly on issues of women’s daily lives. Soon thereafter Nikolayeva, Krupskaya, and Lilina became embroiled in the Leningrad Opposition. It is quite likely that the Zhenotdel records were purged because of this.

   and here is the PUNCH LINE if you got that far!!

   Alexandra Artyukhina, newly appointed as director of the section (replacing Nikolayeva), made a point of arguing that the women’s sections should propagandize against the Leningrad Opposition on the grounds that otherwise female workers would fall for their false slogans in favor of “equality” and “participation in profits.”

   yes…
   thats right..
   they feared that the women would be sucked into the false ideology of “equality” and earning money like men….

   well, did they get sucked into it here or not?

   could it be why the ruling left liberals are Leninists?

   The Union News.
   Community Organizing for The New Progressive Era
   We’re All Leninists Now
   theunionnews.blogspot.com/2011/08/were-all-leninists-now.html

   “Lenin thought that a nation could only grow more prosperous when a nation is controlled by a vanguard and elite – a people who know better than you what to do with your property. The Leninist elite would lead people to a world free of pain and poverty. There would be no more haves and have-nots or private property. Just boundless prosperity. All a nation had to do was transfer its entire wealth to Lenin’s vanguard.” savage…

   In January 1930 the Central Committee of the CPSU announced that the women’s sections were being liquidated as part of a general reorganization of the party. While the decree declared that work among the female masses had “the highest possible significance,” this work was now to be done by all the sections of the Central Committee rather than by special women’s sections. In some parts of the country, especially Central Asia, the women’s sections were replaced by women’s sectors (zhensektory). Kommunistka was completely closed down. Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s spokesman for this move, claimed that since the women’s section had now completed the circle of its development, it was no longer necessary. The historic “woman question” had now been solved.

   While the founders of the Zhenotdel had hoped that they could carry women’s voices and needs to the party, the party insisted that the principal role of the women’s sections was to convey the party’s will to the female masses.

   due note that Kolontai was the woman known for the Sexual revolution of women…

   she said love should be free!!!
   lenin said “who wants to drink from a dirty glass”

   today, western women are like a spitoon, and a dirty glass would be a clean refreshment comparitive to yester years

   they declared the thing solved, then disbanded them… and then what?

   went on a big thing trying to get the fertility of the people back up because feminism destroyed it!!!
   sound familiar?

   you have to dig a bit more to get past the cleaning of wiki…

   Historical Background of the Russian Women’s Movement
   filebox.vt.edu/c/choey/website/russian_women_under_communism.htm

   they have the story a bit wrong.. but at least they have the story

   By 1919, their efforts began to be realized in the creation of the zhenotdel, the Women’s Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee Secretariat. Zhenotdel activists traveled throughout the country, spreading the message of women’s liberation under the Soviet regime, and local versions of the zhenotdel were organized

   -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

   Their concerns were focused primarily on the issues of motherhood, collective childcare, and relieving household burdens. In 1930, Stalin decreed that all women in the USSR were “free, equal, and emancipated, having been liberated by the revolution”, and subsequently disbanded the zhenotdel, claiming that they were no longer needed

   By claiming gender equality and therefore gender neutrality, Soviet officials created the basis for ignoring any analysis based on gender

   In spite of Stalin’s claims about gender equality, Soviet women continued to experience discrimination in the workplace, being mostly relegated to the lowliest jobs with the worst pay

   oops… they lied…

   but see, how a problem can be solved easily there, but here, it cant even be touched..

   but its the same lie..

   are there more women in poverty today or less?
   are there more children in poverty today or less?

   [edited for length by n-n]

9. “Replacing the Dead: The Politics of Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union, 1944-1955” (University of Chicago)

   “This is a brilliant dissertation with enormous implications for how we understand the effects of the Great Patriotic War on post-war Soviet society and especially gender relations, the continuities and discontinuities between the Stalin and Khrushchev eras, the relationship of professionals to those in positions of political power, and the capacity of ordinary people to maneuver within and even to effect change to officially imposed strictures.

   It is about the “politics of reproduction” in the sense that power relations between state institutions and individuals as mediated by medical, demographic, and child welfare professionals had huge implications for whether and in what circumstances people procreated and raised progeny.
   

   ie… my point that abortion and social welfare together equals eugenics… and social engineering of outcomes down to whether someone lives or not at all…

   but we dont get to read such open pure discussions, we only get to read the articles for consumption, and we refuse to break out of them, despite literature and facts that would negate it.

   children not born are not educated in texas or anywhere else… and where lots of children are born, the states dominate education…

   The dissertation is expertly conceived, methodologically sophisticated, exhaustively researched, and written with admirable clarity.

   It analyzes the thinking behind population policies, the impact of the social catastrophes of the Stalin Revolution and the Great Patriotic War on fertility rates, marriage and divorce practices and policies, child welfare provision, and a host of other dimensions of reproduction politics.

   ie… it discusses the policies we copied and their destructive effect and how the soviets dodge the bullet, we are dying from

   “The argument begins with the Marxist intellectual inheritance and political origins of Soviet pronatalism before the war, the war-time demographic catastrophe, and the “solution” to the crisis proffered by Khrushchev in his family law draft of 1944.

   think of this…
   they did what we did in the 1960s… but in 1917
   by 1940-1950 they were being depopulated

   Stalin was mentor to kruschev, and in order to save the sovoit union from the feminist policies and such, they cameup with that family law draft.

   eep.sagepub.com/content/20/1/40.full.pdf

   the Soviet Union tried to replace the dead by promulgating the pronatalist Family Law of 1944. The results would be many and varied, both planned and unintended.

   This article, based on recently declassified Soviet archives, analyzes high level discussions that preceded issuance of the new law and reveals N. S. Khrushchev, the future Soviet leader, as the measure’s author.

   However, his clear statement of pronatalist goals was covered up by euphemisms regarding protection of mothers and children in all public versions. By comparing the internal and public texts, we can discover much about the interrelationship of reproduction, language, and politics in the postwar USSR.

   yes.. you too can read the stuff for the public and women to hear… and the stuff that tehy diddnt… and so how they are really using people.

   study enough of this and you get a clear picture of people today who studied this stuff AND are applying it to their own goals, and ends…

   Khrushchev’s proposal for a new family law consisted of two documents: the informational note (spravka) and the draft ukaz.

   The draft ukaz was a proposed law and therefore written for public consumption. The spravka, titled “on measures to increase the population of the USSR,” outlined the underlying pronatalist logic and highlighted the acute problems of declining birthrate in the Soviet Union and the need to take decisive action to increase fertility. Because the spravka was prepared for top echelon Soviet leaders, it was written in much more pragmatic language than that of the draft ukaz.1 Both were prepared by Khrushchev in Ukraine and submitted as a set to Molotov in April 1944. My goal is to compare the two documents as texts that frame the same policies in very different language.

   got that? spravka and ukaz

   what the feminists and leftists believe is from the stuff written for consumption… ukaz

   what i have been trying to show people is the other stuff you can read from upper echelon academics and policy makers, that would appaul people who didnt make apologies and ignore them.

   but what THEY write is policy… spravka
   it talks as to eugenics, extermination of populations, and all kinds of things.

   here is an example of spravka that we dont take seriously

   “If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.” — Mary Daly, former Professor at Boston College, 2001

   its for the other elite.. and policy makers
   we as regular people disbelieve..
   but its that that makes policy

   what WE get is arguments for consumption
   ie. say anything, promise anything, etc to get power and ends..

   Soviet leaders discussed reproduction and population increase among themselves but created a coded language of paternalist protection for mothers when they presented the pronatalist policies to a wider
   public.

   created a coded language

   diversity is such a coded language, it means favoring volk of race… and so on….

   ie… when obama says he wants peace, is his definition that of the common man, who believes nice

   or the stalinist that says, its the absence of all opposition?

   i say the later since i understand coded conversations..

   ie. like speaking in front of children but you dont want them to undertand… and if they ask, make up some excuse to settle them…

   ANYTHING but the truth, which they would oppose.

   read the spravka…

10. In the most general
    sense, the two documents show that intervention into the
    population’s reproductive practices involved distinct forms of
    political language. Each legitimated the policies in different ideological
    terms for different audiences. Equally broadly, reproductive
    policies created new political realities. As I show, the law
    instituted the legal category of “single mother” and vastly
    increased the number of illegitimate births. It forged a new set of
    gender relations. These consequences led to public protest
    against the law in the late 1950s.

11. oh… and pay attention to the USE of taxes and things to control people and cuase them to make decisisons

    NOT to pay bills and such

    you know, like obamas… for fairness reason

    or others who want “incentives”

    all that is SOVIET… as taxes in the US are not supposed to be a means of state control… ARE THEY?

    but thats what communism and fascism turn them into

    they stop being a means to pay for the things we have to have collectively (military)… and as a means to get money to pick winnners and losers and socially engineer outcomes… (eugenics).

    how well did they engineer a 45% disenfranchised base of crippled humans for voting?

12. There were some significant changes in the TX body that oversees textbooks this year; actual professing Christians. Caused Liberal gnashing and squeeling.

13. When Arne was head of the Chicago public schools did he take credit for some of the worst schools in America and some of the highest drop out rates? One would be much better off in most Texas schools.

14. My sister used to teach in Houston public schools. Her class was filled with students whose native language was Spanish, and where one or more parent was a Mexican citizen.

    Is it really surprising that her class performed poorly on the Texas standardized tests? In fact, the boundless energy and dedication my sister brought in to the classroom, probably went a long way in raising those scores from what they would be.

    Of course, because of the budget issues in Texas she, and all junior teachers, did not have their contract renewed.

    I’m not sure what the moral of her story is. Don’t be a teacher?

15. Artfldgr,

    Perhaps you should start your own blog, instead of blogging on somebody else’s turf.

16. Thomas…funny, I was thinking the same thing!

17. Thomas,

    I figured out a long time ago that Art writes for Art, not for us. It is therapy for him. If he wrote for us he would make one major point per post and limit length to a few paragraphs. The only defense for the reader is to scroll past his posts which is a shame because he is a very bright and knowledgeable fellow with much information to share. The alternative is to shovel through a pile of manure in hopes of finding a pony.

18. Damn! Stan and Don Carlos beat me to it. Iowahawk is the best. Well, except for neo of course.

19. Mr. Frank, et. al.: I agree that Art’s comments are extremely long. But there is sometimes a whole stable of ponies in there.

20. The Iowahawk piece was in response to the Wisconsin shenanigans of the spring. Did a nice job of eviscerating the Wisconsin progressives.
    Each demographic, black, hispanic, and white in Texas did better than the same demographic in WI.
    Averages differently due to differing demographics.

21. Art is WAY off base when he writes about the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s and its effects on today’s young women.

    Today’s young women can follow their dreams instead of having to pretend that they’re dumb. They can also run important operations instead of always taking orders from men who were sometimes less qualified.

    Yes, Art, it’s true.

22. 1. The reality-based community has done its research and reached its conclusions. (So quickly? Yes, they applied their off-the-shelf climate change methodology.) All intelligent, enlightened progressives know that:

    a. If something bad happened in Texas, it’s Perry’s fault.
    b. If something good happened, Perry had nothing to do with it. In fact, he probably opposed it.

    2. Don Carlos Says:

    There were some significant changes in the TX body that oversees textbooks this year; actual professing Christians. Caused Liberal gnashing and squeeling.

    My impression is that it’s not the Christianity that caused the ‘squeeling’, it’s the efforts to force Creationism into the public-school curriculum.

    3. If 2012 were a contest for President of the United States Economy, I would be fine with Perry. It is not, so I could still get perrytonitis from his supposed religious extremism.

23. Oh rubbish, Promethea. “Follow their dreams” seems to be something I’ve heard before, so many times-usually from the XX crowd- that I treat the phrase as BS.
    Take medicine: We used to graduate MDs >90% XY. Now MDs are >60% XX, a huge shift. It costs a whole lot to make each doc; tuition and/or loans don’t nearly cover it; society pays, via grants and other gov’t subsidies. Do we get one FTE MD per graduate? Well, uh, no; about .75 FTE per XX doc. Some still, even today, wanna be mamas, and then they want to work part-time. We claim we’re making more MDs and isn’t it wonderful all those dreamy dreams have been realized?
    Just a small example of an unintended consequence. But let’s just dream on.

24. Titmouse:

    My parents went to schools where the native languages of the students were Yiddish, Polish, Italian, German, Ukranian, Slovakian, and a host of others. They would have thought the Texas standardized tests were a breeze.

    Is the difference perhaps that the parents of that immigrant generation wanted them to learn?

25. Promethea:

    I always wanted a traditional Jewish marriage — the wife works and the husband sits in the synagogue and studies all day. But alas, my wife was too modern to allow it!

26. If I remember correctly, demographics was a better predictor of school success than how much was spent “on education” in a state– to the point that if you compare apples to apples, spending didn’t have a consistent effect. (middle class children of married parents, “Hispanic,” Asian, etc)

27. Liberals like to spend money on education because it makes them feel good. There is very little research suggesting a link between expenditures and outcomes. The most important variable in a child’s performance is the social and educational level of the parents. The second most important variable is the social and education level of the parents of the other kids in the room. Looking at a whole school the percent of kids from two parent households is a good predictor of success. The only school variable that seems to matter is the intelligence and verbal ability of the teacher. Class size does matter at the extremes.

28. When the Texas Legislature announced that there would have to be large cuts in education, the education establishment in Texas reacted as it always does. “100,000 teachers will have to be fired”, “Millions of poor children will have no free meals at school and will be hungry.” etc etc etc. And the Texas TV & other media pumped up the message that schools were ‘gonna crash’. Same exaggerations that are a reaction to announcements of budget cuts. Guess what? Less than 1,000 full-time regular teachers lost their jobs … unfortunately, a lot of working staff (that means janitors, instead of paper-pushers) got fired. After a week of watching videos of grossly overweight kids being made the poster children for “starving children ’cause Perry’s too cheap to use the rainy day fund”, even Texas Democrats started to see the B.S. in it. Any change for the worse or for the better in kids’ educational achievement comes from their parents, that means their mom and their dad (assuming they know who he is). Nowhere else. I know that’s horribly old-fashioned, but modern ‘scientific’ research is re-proving that old truth. It’s the parents, not the school, not the amount of tax dollars spent on education, not the fancy cirriculum, not the 12 administrators for each 5 teachers ratios, not 20 kids per classroom with one teacher and her teacher’s aide… none of that produces educated kids. Parents produce educated kids, parents who care about their kids.

29. It’s as Mr. Frank says…this would be the same Arnie Duncan that did such as bang-up job reforming the Chicago public schools when he was in charge?

    I feel bad for the students in Chicago, not Texas.

30. Mr Frank, liberals aren’t spending money on education. They’re spending it on more low performing government workers.

31. gs:
    What is it you find off-putting about Perry’s “supposed religious extremism”? Or at least seem to be put off by it.
    Was Lieberman’s much greater than average adherence to Judaism also off-putting? I never heard a national Dem mention God as often as when Lieberman was the VP candidate. Lots of “Thanks be to God” from him.
    Neither bothers me in the slightest, and I am not in either the Evangelical nor Jewish camp. LDS doesn’t bother me either. Perry & Lieberman provide me some reassurrance of their faith in God and their search for truths and morality from something beyond themselves.
    Islam and militant atheism, on the other hand….

32. Don Carlos: As my previous comment indicated, Perry seems okay with teaching Creationism in TX schools.

33. Richard Saunders asks, “Is the difference perhaps that the parents of that immigrant generation wanted them to learn?”

    I do believe the answer is yes. Even in largely unpopulated Iowa we have immigrant families, many illegal no doubt, who seem blind to the concept that to ‘fit in’ they must assimilate and that learning english is the first step.

34. gs:
    There are lots worse things being taught in schools, TX and elsewhere, than creationism v evolution. I give you Howard Zinn and other corrosives, presented unilaterally. You are playing into the hands of the thought police.

35. There was a huge amount of wailing an gnashing of teeth about textbook hearings in Texas, and all the Really Smart People delivered themselves of the Really Smart Opinion that the stupid Texans were trying to insert Creationism into the school curriculum.

    The only problem was that the hearings were not about biology textbooks, but about history textbooks.

    Some more Really Smart People have told us that Perry’s budget cuts have caused a drop in academic achievement in Texas. That’s terrible! Imagine what might happen when those budget cuts actually take effect. Oh!! Woe is we!

36. thanks neo. I cringed when I heard this supposed expert make that grammatical error through his crocodile tears. I even heard my mother say from heaven, “Isn’t that supposed to be bad? I feel bad?” That’s the way she always corrected. I thought I was the only person who still cared. I was going to try not to care any more when I heard the Secretary of Education be so uneducated – and then Laura on FOX news unwittingly repeated the error when she tried to put him down. Sigh.

37. “”My impression is that it’s not the Christianity that caused the ‘squeeling’, it’s the efforts to force Creationism into the public-school curriculum.””
    gs

    Funny how the “religious extremist” have allowed for the darwinist view to flourish in schools but the reasonable and rational darwinist tolerate no opposition. Hmmmm. But don’t let facts on the ground define who the extremist actually are.

    A reasonable scientist knows he’ll carry views to his grave that will be utterly debunked. It is the story of every scientist that ever existed. The scientist who thinks himself immune from such a fate to the point of turning his views into etched in stone dogma is a fool and extremist of the first order. And unfortunately the scientific world in 2011 is full of such cocksure idiots who call themselves scientist.

38. “Perry seems okay with teaching Creationism in TX schools.”
    -gs

    That’s a link to one of the Really Smart People at the Houston Chronicle. Next time, go to the top, gs. Give us a Krugman or a Mathews.

39. I want to restate what several have stated above.

    Texas students performed better than WI students when demographic groups (whites, hispanics, blacks) were compared separately. Our overall scores were worse because we have more low scoring demographic group students than they do. It’s simple math.

    Any time you hear something negative about Perry, always check it against these two well researched articles:

    http://tinyurl.com/3s6gfzn

    http://tinyurl.com/3u2xcl9

    My wife was an elementary school principal here in Texas, so we are wired into a network of professionals who work in education. The small town where my wife worked has lost NO employees because of the belt tightening…none…zero. Austin has lost a few but not many and all of the ones lost were involved in something other than the solid courses needed to get into college and/or perform effectively in the workplace.

    This belt tightening reminds me of several corporate turnaround situations in which I’ve been involved. Usually someone with courage simply said “Cut all costs 10%, including personnel.” Know what? After the cut, you usually weren’t able to tell the difference in how well things get done.

    That’s one reason I like the “Penny Cut” approach to cutting federal government costs.

    Hard choices are going to have to be made to bring our government costs down and sometimes it may seem like we are cutting something essential.

    I bet we won’t be.

40. Great links, texexec. Thanks for the ammo.

41. TX students doing poorly? Classify their transcripts top secret, and vociferously insist that they’re geniuses. Problem solved.

42. Thanks to Iowahawk and the links texexec provided we have much more information about Rick Perry than we have ever gotten about Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the vast majority of voters will never be exposed to this information, only the innuendoes, rumors, false statistics and damned lies. Will we ever have access to Obama’s college records, his record as the president of Harvard Law Review, his records as a community organizer, his records of activity in the Illinois legislature other than voting present, and much more? He successfully conceals his record and even now he is trying to act like he was not a part of the debt ceiling debate. And the MSM is not calling him on it. True journalism has died and our country is so much the worse for it. I hope Perry gets a good media response team up and running to combat all the MSM attacks.

43. Liberals are obsessed. 🙂

44. “”Will we ever have access to Obama’s college records””
    J.J.

    How about a comment from just an old girlfriend (boyfriend?)? Or a college buddy? His mechanic?

    Anyone who thinks this sort of scrubbed history is appropriate for the mayor of their town, much less the POTUS is a fool.

45. Thanks for the links, texexec. As this commenter acknowledges, they do not address Perry’s stance on evolution.

    Every politician has positives and negatives. That statement seems too obvious to state–until one sees how many people behave otherwise.

46. SteveH Says:

    …And unfortunately the scientific world in 2011 is full of such cocksure idiots who call themselves scientist.

    Cocksure idiots are a clear, present and growing danger to the prosperity and survival of the USA.

47. From yours truly’s comment on National Review’s Kevin Williamson’s column about the evolution incident:

    Kevin, you gave the best defense of/advice to Perry I’ve seen regarding the evolution incident. Most of the so-con hyperventilation that crosses my screen leaves me more, not less, skeptical.

48. The feds have no legitimate authority per the Constitution to stick their ugly camel’s nose into the tent of education. This is a responsibility of local communities and perhaps the individual, sovereign states.

    Whenever I hear a federal official utter the words “for the children” I itch to reach for my model 65.

49. Parker said, “The feds have no legitimate authority per the Constitution to stick their ugly camel’s nose into the tent of education.”

    I can remember the day that the Feds became deeply interested in education. October 4, 1957 was the day the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite. President Eisenhower called for a nationwide increase and improvement in science and engineering education. It spurred a national effort to improve our science and engineering education. From Wikipedia:
    “The value of Sputnik 1 as Soviet propaganda was especially evident in the response of the American public. Sputnik crushed the American perception of the United States as the technological superpower by demonstrating that the Soviets were not the ignorant Easterners they had been perceived as prior to the launch.[58] As a result, panic overtook the American public, which created an enormous sense of vulnerability regarding the United States’ ability to defend its territory.[59] Adding to this fear was the element of surprise with which Sputnik entered the world, which left the American public in what was observed as a “wave of near-hysteria”.[59] The United States appeared at the mercy of a new technological power which shattered any notion of internal security or confidence for the American people and significantly elevated the perception of the Soviet Union in the international community.[59][60]

    The elevated status of the Soviet Union was further solidified by the actions of the American government following Sputnik 1. American society underwent an enormous shift that emphasized science and technological research. Sputnik forced the Americans to take up a more offensive stance in the emerging space race.[61] Everything from the military to education systems were revamped by the government and unimaginable economic possibilities ensued.[56] The federal government began pouring unmatched amounts of money into science education, engineering and mathematics at all levels of education.[58][59] An advanced research group was assembled for military purposes.[58] These research groups developed weapons such as ICBMs and missile defence systems, as well as spy satellites for the US.[58] After several failed attempts, the US successfully launched a satellite, Explorer I, on January 31, 1958.[55]”

    As time went on the Feds intruded more and more until Jimmy Carter established the Department opf Education in 1979. The purpose was to help improve, not just science and engineering education, but all education results, which were seen as faltering. Again from Wiki:
    “The primary functions of the Department of Education are to “establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.[4]”

    Recent Federal assistance amounted to:
    US$32 billion (2009)
    US$56 billion (est. 2010)
    US$71 billion (est. 2011)

    It is those billions of dollars that capture the attention of so many local school administrations. Even before 1979, they were adding employees whose only function was to make sure the schools were complying with government edicts so they could receive the maximum amount of money.

    This has not, unfortunately, improved education results. A case could be made that it has made our education system worse. Why would that be? IMO, another example of the failure of central planning. Central planning doesn’t work well for economics or for education. Yet, per the increasing funding figures above, the progressives are absolutely certain that more money is the answer.

    For economics education we still have videos of the inimitable Milton Friedman.
    Anyone who wants to can watch his PBS series, “FREE TO CHOOSE,” here:
    http://tinyurl.com/muaba

50. When the Texas Legislature announced that there would have to be large cuts in education, the education establishment in Texas reacted as it always does. “100,000 teachers will have to be fired”, “Millions of poor children will have no free meals at school and will be hungry.” etc etc etc. And the Texas TV & other media pumped up the message that schools were ‘gonna crash’.

    Berkeley called me to shake me down for a contribution, the pitch being that budget cuts were going to cause loss of faculty, higher tuition, dogs and cats living together, etc. I asked how many diversity coordinators had been fired.

    End of conversation.

51. SteveH: “How about a comment from just an old girlfriend (boyfriend?)? Or a college buddy? His mechanic?”

    This is what I find remarkable. The media can’t find a single person who knew him back when? Nobody? Not one? People in Witness Protection have better back stories than this. The collusion of the media in this triumph of the marketer’s art is truly reprehensible.

52. 1. Occam’s Beard Says:

    Berkeley called me to shake me down for a contribution…I asked how many diversity coordinators had been fired. (p) End of conversation.

    During my graduate work in the 1970s, my university took hard economic hits, and the necessity for layoffs was announced. Thereupon, according to the grapevine, Human Resources (or whatever it was called then) said they would need to hire additional staff to handle the cuts.

    2. OB, if UCSD is an example, your Berkeley fund drive might be conducted to hire diversity administrators. (HT: Instapundit.)

53. gs, UCSD sends out an alumni magazine that is heavily larded with hard-left articles and assorted lefty rubbish such as wistful musings about Herbert Marcuse, and his wife’s recipe for some pastry, to be made “only for radical causes,” a paeon to the “Che Cafe” (no word about the “Himmler Hut”), and nauseating tie-dyed reminiscences from the Peter Pan set.

    The other hardy perennial in each issue is the plea for funds from the capitalist oppressors that the rest of the magazine disparages so roundly.

    Good strategy.

54. Texas Schools and crooked Leftist statistics
    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/275027/texas-schools-revisited-john-derbyshire

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