Lubbock Left

For all future haters of public education, I have written down the 5 easy steps for assaulting our schools:

1) Underfund schools and underpay teachers for at least a decade in the name of “cutting taxes” and “smaller government”
2) Create bullshit standards for everyone to meet, and watch the poorer schools fail to meet them
3) Complain that schools are failing to meet standards while at the same time criticizing them for not teaching important civic and life skills because they spend all their class time “teaching to the test”
4) Offer the “solution” of letting a “free market” of competing private schools educate our children
5) Profit!

The rest of us — who believe that public education is America’s greatest strength — are up against “Attacking Public Education 203,” the advanced class. For their class project, state legislators like Lubbock’s own Carl Isett are actively writing legislation to destroy public education. Financiers like Leninger bankroll pro-voucher candidates to speed their project along, and privatization cheerleaders like Robert Pratt rant about their project on the radio. They’re working hard to get an A at being the bad guys.

That means we need to roll up our sleeves and work to elect people that are serious about preserving and improving our system of public education, as opposed to those who want to throw out the whole thing and start over.

If you’re not happy with our current system of public schooling, get in there and fix it… before it hits the auction block!