Courtesy of Patricia Kilday-Hart:
(It’s time to reframe the school debate. Patricia Kilday-Hart, Chron.com)
After the House vote to renege on the Howard amendment, State Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, had an epiphany. What public education needs, he decided, is a scorecard, based on pro-school litmus test votes, to reframe the debate:
Are you for public education, or are you against it?
That’s not exactly the question at hand. After weeks of the media consistently mis-identifying an overall increase in school funding as “$4 Billion in Cuts” the real question should be this: “Are you a supporter of the status quo or would you believe education reform is necessary?”
Given that, after years of throwing money at the problem, our public schools are doing a worse job of educating the public than ever there’s a strong argument to be made for the latter. Of course, the teacher’s unions and special interest groups who benefit from rolling out a catapult would argue for the former. What they have has worked quite well for them. By proposing her “reframe” of the issue what Kilday-Hart suggests is that she, and the Hearst Austin bureau, will be working aggressively to see that the status quo is defended.
Facts be damned.