I'm not the biggest fan of the University of Texas' Student Government, but I do enjoy my campus's tradition for joke candidates and campaigns. Last year, Zak Kinnaird insisted he deserved the student body presidency because he looked good in a suit. A handful of students voted for him, but no one thought he was truly ready to run student government.
It was a joke, and it was funny. A guy named Liam O'Rourke was elected student body president and everyone moved on. We laughed safely because student government only slightly affected our lives. But for a real government leader, one in a position that significantly affects my life, to put on a suit and expect us to think good of him?
Oh wait. We have Rick Perry. Bill White succeeded to make education a priority in the 2010 election talk, because that's part of what state government does. In response, Governor Rick Perry just puts on a suit. He's just disguising himself and looking good.
Education Facts To those who paid heed to Rick Perry's misrepresentation of border violence facts, it should come as no surprise that he's doing it again with education facts. The topic of the week is the dropout rate, and he insists that only 10% of Texas students drop out of school. Or something like that, which is a more obvious fabrication than his attempts to mislead the state about our border communities. Those who lived on the border saw how wrong Perry was then; everyonesees how he's wrong now. (For the record, Bill White and his campaign has pegged that number at 30%.)
Even conservative leaders criticize Perry's numbers. The method he is using has been criticized by the Texas Association of Business, for instance. Representative Rob Eissler, the Republican Chair of the House Public Education Committee, said, "Yeah. That's not what I base my stuff on. You've got to categorize that as a bit campaign rhetoric. If our dropout rate were just 10 percent, I'd be feeling a lot better."
Since Rick Perry failed to avoid education as a campaign issue, he just decided to make himself look better here. But his suit is out of fashion. The truth is, the dropout situation is an ugly one, and almost everyone sees it. As Lisa Falkenberg reports,
The organization [the Intercultural Development Research Association] generally calculates that Texas public schools fail to graduate one out of every three students, with the percentage inching up to 40 percent for black and Hispanic students.
These numbers shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention. They're in line with what a diverse array of groups, from Education Week's Research Center to the Manhattan Institute to the Libertarian-leaning Foundation for Educational Choice (formerly, the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation) have found.
Education Policy It's old news when Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison promote education policy ideas that Democratic groups have been promoting for years. But here's a new one: promoting ideas that Democrats have already passed This suit of Perry's is fancy, indeed, as he promotes an idea passed in a bill authored by Democratic Representative Scott Hochberg. Perry wants such a bill considered in 2011.
Hochberg's House Bill 2488 allows Texas to use online textbooks. What Rick Perry wants has already been done. The law has been effective for over 7 months, too.
The Governor of Texas has the power of appointment. If Rick Perry focused on doing good instead of looking good, he would have appointed a State Board of Education chair who wanted to move forward on this issue, but the SBOE has not.
The presentation of this idea looks good on the surface, but truly Perry is just ignoring the issue, and a deeper look shows his lack of leadership. Online textbooks is not a proposal for which we need to wait on the legislature.
RIck Perry's getting all dressed up for the Texas voters, but he can only try to hide his deficiencies. With two issues this week, he has ignored the thoughts and actions of Representatives Rob Eissler and Scott Hochberg, the Republican and Democratic Chair and Vice Chair of the House Public Education Committee. He first claimed our education problems (with dropouts, specifically) are much lower than reality. Then he wanted to do something that has already been done.
Just like Zak Kinnaird, Rick perry has put on a suit that he looks good in. But in no way is Rick Perry a joke candidate. He's a candidate for the dominant political party in this state. So let's ignore the suit, and let's look at the issues. Some people might have voted in Student Government elections for good looks, but remember: we are electing the governor of Texas. I like Zak Kinnaird, but this won't ever be my vote for Governor:
