What does Greg Abbott’s reliance on Charles Murray for his education policy and the specific provision of standardized testing for four-year-olds have in common? According to Abbott, both are just for informational purposes. Nothing to worry about here.
Davis persisted on the point including when she outlined her education policy in Corpus Christi last week.
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As Sarah Jones explained, Abbott was already on the ropes,
The pre-K brawl is going down just like the fight over Fair Pay brawl: The Texas Republican says and does some foolish things, and then walks them back and tries to claim they don’t mean what they mean, and then eventually Democrat Wendy Davis clobbers him with his own policies by simply revealing them to the public.
Today, Wendy Davis can declare victory because Jim Windham, a key Abbott adviser and Chairman of the Texas Institute for Education Reform, came clean.
We do need diagnostics to determine the needs of the child and efficacy of the methodologies being used. There have been a number of normed Pre-K assessments that evaluate vocabulary and fluency very easily.
The Davis campaign documented Windham’s long history of supporting standardized tests in articles he wrote. So Wendy Davis isn’t relying on gotcha questions by media tricksters or by snippets of quotes taken out of context. She has Windham with his own words.
In an article published on October 7, 2012 Windham wrote:
“For the past year in almost every available venue, opponents of high stakes standardized assessments of public school student achievement have been droning on about the perceived oppression of the Texas public school accountability system, which has been rated by national education organizations as having produced the best high school graduation standard in the country when fully implemented.”
Zac Petkanas, Wendy Davis’ communication director, commented on Windham’s admission made earlier on Monday.
Someone forgot to tell Jim Windham that the part of Abbott’s pre-k plan that calls for standardized testing is there for ‘informational purposes only …. Despite the Abbott campaign’s claims to the contrary, there can be no doubt that Greg Abbott’s plan would impose standardized testing onto 4 year olds now that their education advisor admitted it at an official campaign event.
Someone might want to tell Abbott and his key adviser on education that on-line newspaper articles are a lot like video tape. Once you’ve said it, it’s forever because on-line publications keep archives.
The Texas Press has been busy exposing Abbott’s lies about standardized testing. Here are a few examples.
“The $118 million Abbott plan calls for lawmakers to require school districts with pre-K programs to administer assessments at the beginning and end of the school year in an effort to measure the quality of such programs. One of those assessments referenced in Abbott’s plan is standardized testing.”
“One of the candidates’ biggest slug-fests over Pre-K has focused on Abbott’s call for assessing what these four-year olds have learned and how that would be done. A paragraph in Abbott’s 22- page plan says standardized testing is one way of doing that.”
“Abbott’s plan would grant an additional $1500 per pre-k student in districts that agree to meet new “gold” standards, a determination that would be made through testing and other assessments.”
The last time Wendy Davis caught Abbott in a lie, Abbott took the coward’s way out by being a no show for a scheduled press conference. Abbott was busted by his own policy statement. When he finally surfaced, Abbot played the “just for informational purposes” card.
This time, Abbott and his key advisor were caught in a blatant lie, completed with proof that Windham’s long history of favoring standardized tests. Moreover, the media has rejected his “just for informational purposes” excuse. Any bets on which card Abbott will try to play this time?
Former contributor.
