The Mess in Texas
I knew it was bad, but (from Gail Collins' op-ed in the Times today):
Texas [is] currently rank[ed] 47th in the nation in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores. ...The birth rate there is the highest in the country, and if it continues that way, Texas will be educating about a tenth of the future population. It ranks third in teen pregnancies — always the children most likely to be in need of extra help. And it is No. 1 in repeat teen pregnancies.Collins continues:
[Texas Governor and Tea Party Sweetheart Rick Perry] is a huge fan of the deeply ineffective abstinence-only sex education. Texas gobbles up more federal funds than any other state for the purpose of teaching kids that the only way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is to avoid sex entirely. (Who knew that the health care reform bill included $250 million for abstinence-only sex ed? Thank you, Senator Orrin Hatch!) But the state refused to accept federal money for more expansive, “evidence-based” programs.Secession. Still an option.“Abstinence works,” said Governor Perry during a televised interview with Evan Smith of The Texas Tribune.
“But we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country,” Smith responded.
“It works,” insisted Perry.
“Can you give me a statistic suggesting it works?” asked Smith.
“I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works,” said Perry, doggedly.
For the love of all that is holy, someone kick them out of our country. Oh, but keep Austin. And maybe Dallas. But the rest, just let them go.
That said, I guess I know where I'll be able to find a teaching job in a few years, so long as I can find ways to teach around creationism and avoid any references to sex in literature...oh wait...never mind.
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Kick them out!
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I read this yesterday as well. The trends she outlined in her OpEd are certainly disconcerting.
I disagree w/ Thom - let the entire State go. I'd even be willing to pay a one time tax to bribe them to leave.
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I support an Airlift for Austin.
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Austin & San Antonio are worth airlifting, the rest can go right to their beloved Fundamentalist hell...Dallas included (give the cute gay cowboys fair warning to get out to New Mexico...)
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No disrespect intended for Austin - I go there somewhat regularly, but there are a bunch of towns of similar size that are equally cool (e.g. Boulder, CO - Kirkland, WA - Madison, WI) and they don't carry the baggage of TX. I'm comfortable saying "Adios" to them all. Its a small price to pay if you think about the rest of the state.
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I did see an L.A. Times article earlier this month indicating the teen birth rate in CA had fallen from 70/1000 in 1991 to 32/1000 in 2009. California is alone in refusing Fed funds limiting counseling to abstinence-only programs. Not that I'm saying "all hail California", though, amidst the gloom and doom in the not-so-Golden State, it's good to see one improvement. I also checked a CDC site indicating overall U.S. teen births have fallen during the last decade as well. That CDC page went on to show that in the Northeast and California non-Hispanic white and Hispanic births were lower, and in the Southeast were higher, while non-Hispanic black births were higher in the Upper Midwest and Southeast. These variations occur on account of race and Hispanic population differences in the various states.
As far as Tejas goes, well, it's always helped me to recall it was a slave territory (and later state) before that little war we had in the early 19th century with Mexico over the region.
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