This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1451405
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1451405
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Gov. Greg Abbott, Education Commissioner Mike Morath and the Republican state legislature are manufacturing an education crisis to prevent people of color in Houston from exercising their citizenship rights and seizing political power.
So, Texas is doing what everyone in the United States has been doing before it was even the United States. And will always do. In perpetuity. Minorities, LGBT and women better be careful. Y’all get too uppity and instead of disenfranchising you white men will start killing you. Well, not start. Just doing it more earnestly than they already are.
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The 60/40 split between POC/whites in Texas is what is driving most of the Republican descent into madness.
Well, not madness really, but a realization that the white majority that is rapidly approaching a white minority status means a loss of power and control, and that is just un-American and can’t be allowed to happen, no matter the cost.
It is no longer “give me liberty or give me death”, but “give me white power or give me white power. The alternative is simply unacceptable and will be thwarted by any means necessary and if a bunch of POC people die in the process, so much the better.”
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Republicans are clearly able to think and plan for the long term. Being in a position to gerrymander every ten years, encouraging their base to take over precinct-level positions, building the media infrastructure and media influence machine … and now, cutting the legs out from the schools, while loudly championing “Let the (WHITE) parents decide!”
Dems have once again been caught with their pants down. A “big tent” is great, but Texas (and other) Democrats need to be able to act in a unified, coordinated, and intelligent manner. Otherwise, the increasingly marginalized Republican Party will continue to dominate.
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Sort of a cowboy version of Apartheid, when I think about it. Really, both here (Texas) and in Florida, you don’t necessarily have to be a white person to be on the Right’s side. All you have to do is agree with them, vote for them, and keep quiet.
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I wish I could find a better word, but the Texas Education Agency, is such a cesspool of right-wing, anti-everything, know-nothing, pro-privatizing commissioners that there is nothing stopping Abbott and Morath from doing whatever they want. There are a few good commissioners, bot too few. Our guy isn’t over-the-top crazy, but he owes the charter school crowd big-time. Sadly, so did his opponent; for this seat, it was win/win for the charters in south Texas. Horace Mann is persona non grata in Texas these days.
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Counterpoint:
HISD is corrupt and incompetent.
Same story in Little Rock, Arkansas when the Republican state government took over the city’s school district. Was only allowed by law to control it for five years and they somehow held it for six years.
And test scores dropped during the state-control by the DOE. It was a clusterfuck.
You searched for State takeover of LRSD - Arkansas Times (arktimes.com)
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Counterpoint:
Abbott and TEA are corrupt and incompetent.
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Not really a counterpoint, but sure.
ETA: I should be clear that there’s no evidence either Abbott or TEA are corrupt in a pay-to-play sense, though HISD certainly has been. And Abbott is competent in the sense that he knows how to accomplish things that he wants to accomplish and doesn’t give a shit about the rest.
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Like the state government is any better…
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So one high school with 500 kids and 50 teachers isn’t the reason why TEA and governor had to save the whole HISD?
So much is left out of why this one small HS is reason that the whole district must now be run not by local elected officials, but by the state. Things like what the economical situation for this one HS? Is it more urban than suburban? How many principals has this school had in the last 10 years? What’s the teacher retention rate look like? What do the elementary and middle schools that feed this HS look like? If this one HS was eliminated from all the rest of the schools in HISD what would their grade be?
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I gotta disagree with the premise of this piece–that the takeover is an attempt to weaken PoC political power. That’s certainly true in the Northeast, where the author is. I live in Newark, and know something about school takeovers–he’s right on that. There’s also an antipopulist angle independent of the racial angle, with the respectables (often themselves black) putting the sweatier sorts (invariably PoC) in their place.
But my guess is that the Houston takeover is quite different. In Texas, it is a chance to play Trumpazoid politics with education, without pissing off any white parents who would never send their kids to the Houston public school system in the first place. It’s a trifecta–masculinism (“GROOMERS!”), racism, and the simple ressentiment that animates Trumpazoids where masculinism and racism don’t suggest any policies on their own.
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A take over is simply a take over cause they can.
That’s a really low bar, but HISD can’t clear it.
That one school is the legal justification for the takeover, but HISD’s more general corruption and incompetence made it an easy target.
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So why would a state take over a school district that has earned a B rating from the state?
Simple. Houston is the most diverse city in Texas, and one of the most diverse in the country.
Gotta keep these n*****s in check er, school standards up.
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Pretty broad brush there. You have about half a dozen people, out of many thousands, involved in a contract kickback scheme involving a single contractor.
But the entire school district is corrupt? Right.
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“Entire” is your adjective, not mine.
I would guess there is plenty of evidence that shows both Dallas and Houston ISD’s to be corrupt and incompetent, as there are at many smaller ISD’s and CISD’s throughout the state. Similar stories are a staple in the Rio Grande Valley new outlets. The big picture tells us that many of these school districts have been abandoned by the community influencers. They send their children to private/parochial schools, regional schools, or charter schools to the detriment of the local public-school districts. Often, the “best” candidates for school board don’t have enough support from the “best” people (business/professional types whose kids and grandkids are in private or charter schools), so the person with the most relatives get elected. Years ago, Mike Moses said, semi-seriously, that his greatest accomplishment as Dallas ISD superintendent was preventing fisticuffs at board meetings. Some of these districts, probably including Houston, are low-hanging fruit for Abbott.
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DISD hasn’t had any graft scandals that I can recall in the last few years, but it’s still horribly mismanaged. I live in Dallas, but deliberately live in an adjoining school district.
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