Amid TEA takeover of Houston ISD, what would father of Texas education think of our...
“Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth,” predicted Ashbel Smith, soldier, physician and the Texas Republic’s charge d’affaires to England and France ., soldier, poet, painter and the second president of the Republic of Texas, expressed similar sentiments . “The cultivated mind,” he proclaimed, “is the guardian genius of democracy and, while guided and controlled by virtue, the noblest attribute of man.
“It seems fundamentally unfair that Texas has underfunded its public schools decade after decade and then blamed and punished the schools that most needed help in bringing their mostly minority and low-income students up to speed," Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, told the editorial board recently.
Texans have founded schools from the beginning, either locally funded or church-related, but a statewide publicuntil after the Civil War. School planning and supervision remained localized and attendance sporadic at first; funding into the 20th century was spotty and inadequate. Schools serving Black and Hispanic students in post-Reconstruction Texas were an afterthought, with hand-me-down books and equipment and poorly paid teachers and principals.
Statewide concern about declining test scores in the early 1980s prompted then-Gov. Mark White to appoint Dallas billionaire H. Ross Perot to head a select committee to investigate and implement school reform. In 1984, House Bill 72 strengthened teacher-certification requirements and initiated competency testing.
Given the heightened rhetoric from Republicans vilifying public schools and eroding local control these days, we can understand the suspicions of Houston leaders such as Mayor Sylvester Turner:"This is about Austin and the leadership in Austin wanting to run local government, and they want it their way,” he said of the takeover.
Dutton is well aware that HISD can boast some of the finest schools in the nation. It already does. He’s also painfully aware that HISD also includes schools burdened with the special challenges that accompany entrenched poverty , multiple languages, health challenges, food security, frequent dislocation, persistent crime, violence and gun proliferation.
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