Within the Republican Party, people no longer strive for compromise in a range of opinions.  Rather, in a phenomenon called social norming, they vie for the position of most conservative.  Each candidate tries to prove that he or she is even more right wing than the other, and the result is a party that swings further and further toward crazy.  Fed by radio talk shows and Fox News, followers live in an odd echo chamber, in which pundits parrot identical phrases for each news story.  These party lines make wonderful fodder for the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but what are they doing to our ability to function as a civil society?  What are they doing to promote an educated citizenry with a thriving economy?

While the larger political world churns away, another sector quietly widens this separation of Texas from the rest of the nation.  Eight people who dislike and mistrust public education dominate the State Board of Education, which rules elementary and high schools in Texas. They have turned the 4.7 million young people in K-12 into pawns in a series of culture wars over the last two decades.  The results have been devastating.  Fed an anemic curriculum that focuses increasingly on standardized tests, Texas now ranks 49^th in Head Start programs and 51^st in high school graduation rates.

Texas was once a leader in textbooks around the country.  Few people realize that today we no longer have that influential connection with the rest of the U.S.  Through the wonders of customized publishing, Texas now has its own special set of dumbed-down textbooks, filled with inaccuracies and lacking the information other students across the nation receive.  Our teachers suffer a relentless grind of preparing students for tests.  If they don’t succeed at this mind-numbing routine, they risk losing pay and even their schools.

We might wonder how primary and secondary education in Texas developed into such a peculiar institution.  Follow the money in order to understand why this handful of board members ignores the true mission of education. Some people make (and contribute) a great deal of money selling these instruments of academic torture.  Designed and administered by Texas-based companies, these exams are not nationally normed, so no one can judge how the young people of Texas compare to the rest of the country.  When students hit college entrance exams, we get some inkling that our students perform below other states, but these tests measure only the fraction of elite students who plan to go on to higher education.  Therefore the growing gulf between our students and the rest of the nation doesn’t look as wide as it really is.

Given this educational and political divide, we have to wonder if Texas hasn’t already seceded.  Let’s bring Texas back into the union by changing the face of Texas education.  We can make Texas a leader once again. Isn’t it time to rejoin the rest of the nation and give new board members a chance to restore respect for our State Board of Education?

Rebecca Bell-Metereau