Why Are Texas Republicans Behaving Like Democrats?
By Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. June 5, 2019'
In a great show of “unity” and “cooperation” during the 86th Texas Legislative session, Republicans handed Democrats their goals on a platter: universal Pre-K, expansion of classroom technology, and socialist workforce learning for young children. Since there is always a money trail linked to education today, it appears we should be asking why Republicans are behaving like Democrats.
The massive education spending House Bill 3, touted by Republicans as “transformational” and “landmark,” included a Democrat Party platform plank – Pre-K – disguised as a solution for the problem of low reading levels for 59 percent of Texas third graders.
Their rationale? The Texas Commission for Public Education Finance 2018 report’s advice, “Testimony reflected that students who were kindergarten ready were more than three times more likely to meet the state standard for third-grade reading vs. those students who weren’t.”
Not according to decades of research which prove that Pre-K has NOT increased academic achievement and can create permanent harm by pushing young children into formal instruction. Nearly every study over the past 60 years reports that Pre-K benefits disappear between kindergarten and third grade.
Early elementary children learn more and faster when they begin school at a later age because they are in their major development years and learn four times as much material during a regular school year as in the preschool years.
With the addition of Pre-K to the budget, Texas taxpayers are saddled with more spending without solving the literacy crisis. The blame for students not learning to read lies with Colleges of Education which promote the teaching methodology of whole language, a failed method since the 1800s. Teaching reading through phonics is the solution for low reading levels for third graders, NOT Pre-K.
The real goal of universal Pre-K is not about helping poor children but government gaining early control over the minds of young children. Pre-K also is about free daycare for thousands of illegal alien children. Government Pre-K is not necessary for disadvantaged children because they already have access to private daycare centers that receive federal funds for low-income children. Those centers will probably close because children who parents pay for daycare, can also attend free Pre-K, costing taxpayers ever more.
The point? Private daycare centers are not government controlled indoctrination centers as is Pre-K soliberals want all children in government Pre-K.
HB 3 also funds digital learning for Pre-K students. Never mind that research shows that children under 10 are especially susceptible to screen addiction and digital learning lowers reading comprehension and academic achievement. Computerized learning interferes with the development of motor skills and the ability to think logically and to distinguish between reality and fantasy.
Moving away from capitalism toward a planned socialist economy, HB 3 adds grades 6,7,8 to the career and technology programs that are already in place for high school. Under the School-to-Work Act (STW) from the Clinton administration that kills capitalism, students are required to choose a career track where core subjects are merged with vocational education courses. By the 11th grade, students are locked into a career track.
Corporations are dictating what schools must teach students. Soon STW will attempt to steer them into slots determined by regional workforce needs, rather than allowing student choices.
Children do not have the necessary experiences or intellectual capability to make a long term career decision. What about late bloomers who decide at age 18 they want to be scientists, doctors, or lawyers? Did you know what career you wanted when you were 12 years old? 18? Did you change your college major? Or totally change careers later?
Since our nation’s founding, young people have had workplace training as apprentices, but that has been a choice, not an education requirement. Schools should provide a broad academic base without required career courses through the 10th grade. After that, students can choose to participate in an apprenticeship program for a trade career or take advanced studies in preparation for university.
Turning schools into chiefly job preparation centers will not produce a highly educated, active, and free people. Students are being dumbed down to work and live under collectivism with a government planned economy.
Why are Texas Republicans complicit in killing capitalism for socialism? Why are politicians so eager to push more students onto computers when Silicon Valley elites send their own children to schools that do not use digital learning?
We need to look more closely at who is funding those rogue Republican politicians.