Government "Education" Bureaucrats honor Straus

"Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”
1 Corinthians 15:33

If you were wondering why School Choice has gone nowhere in the Texas House the past few sessions:

AUSTIN– Texas PTA has selected the Honorable Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio as Texas PTA’s 2015 Legislator of the Year. Speaker Straus has been a staunch advocate on behalf of the children of Texas for many years.

In his fourth term as Speaker of the House, Straus has proved he is truly a friend of Texas children through his support of several pieces of legislation impacting children and youth including:

• Earmarking $1.2B in new money for public schools. 

• Encouraging a bi-partisan group of House members to work throughout the interim to develop a new system of school funding and prioritizing the legislation that resulted from the work, HB 1759, for debate in the House. In the end, the members were not prepared to move forward with the legislation, but an important debate was begun. 

• Supporting and encouraging the development of a new system of accountability for public schools that focuses more broadly on the work of schools. Supporting fast track legislation to offer an alternative for 2014-2015 seniors who passed all required courses but been unable to pass one or two end-of-course exams. 

• Supporting legislation to create an alternative method of assessing writing, and legislation requiring state-mandated assessments to be validated by an independent entity and ensuring that there are appropriate limits on the length of time a test may take to be completed. 

• Supporting legislation requiring the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills to be reviewed.

Speaking after the presentation, Leslie Boggs, President of Texas PTA said, “I was honored to present Texas PTA’s Legislator of the Year award to Speaker Joe Straus today. Speaker Straus’ actions improved our system of public schools, expanded opportunities to some of our most at risk students, and in doing so helped to re-enforce Texas PTA’s mission to make every child’s potential a reality.”

In addition to corrupting children, government "education" is one of the largest components of Texas' state budget (to say nothing about all the lawsuits).  For both educational and fiscal reasons, Texas needs to structurally reform this component of the budget.  This award illustrates why that will NEVER happen as long as Joe Straus runs the Texas House.