Education Debate

Public education and education reform have been a key point of debate in the Texas governor’s race as well as the national debate. It has become a focal point again this week at the national level with the release of a new documentary highly critical of public education and a “summit” on education issues.

While President Obama may be trying to use the education issue to draw attention away from the economy and high unemployment rate, his agenda to fix education has not been particularly popular either. The Washington Post said, “The recent project by the Los Angeles Times, in which some 6,000 teachers were evaluated solely on the basis of student test scores, was another example of a news organization promoting a highly controversial way to assess teachers as effective.” Funny though that critics of home education argue that testing of home schoolers should be done to determine of home school parents are really effective teachers.

Governor Perry has reinserted himself in this debate by taking the lead from a principled standpoint to argue against the federal government’s “attempted takeover” of education from the states. In an interview with the Heritage Foundation, he explains why other states are following Texas’ example of rejecting federal dollars in exchange for supporting national education standards. He believes, as do most Texans, that control of education should be at the state level not with federal bureaucrats in far away Washington, D.C.