How Texas Ranks Among the 50 States [pdf file]
(50th=lowest, 1st=highest)
* State Aid Per Pupil - 46th
* Current Expenditures Per Student - 40th
* Per Capita Spending on Public Elementary-Secondary Education - 38th
* High School Graduation Rate - 35th
* Average Teacher Salary - 32nd
* Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) Scores - 47th
* Percentage of Population over 25 with a High School Diploma - 50th
And if Republican Texas state legislator Warren Chisum, whom Molly Ivins called "the Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa", gets his wish, kids in Texas, with the second highest public school enrollment in the country, will wind up with the same ignorant science background as his:
The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a Georgia lawmaker's call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges.
The memo assails what it calls "the evolution monopoly in the schools."
Mr. Bridges' memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect's beliefs.
"Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years.
[Full story at The Dallas Morning News]
It makes me sick to know that someone in a position to do some real good in helping to improve the education system in Texas is so blinded by his absurd religious beliefs that he prefer kids in this state graduate scientifically illiterate rather than learn globally-accepted sound science. Yes, Molly, Chisum is a mental midget and the Texas education system—and the education and future of its kids—will be degraded still further as a result of his petty mind.
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