LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE KATY TIMES FROM MARY MCGARR:

 

Editor

The Katy Times

 

Dear Editor,

 

In the April 1995 issue of Texas Lone Star, the publication of the Texas Association of School Boards, Governor Bush is quoted as saying, “The biggest struggle of all is going to be to free school boards, teachers, and parents from the clutches of the Texas Education Agency and the unfunded mandates of the Texas Legislature.”  Reportedly a ballroom full of school board members from across the state “applauded in support of the promised deregulation efforts.”  Governor Bush initially campaigned for the office of governor  with the promise that he would “do away” with the TEA. 

 

The recent letter sent to the Times by the commissioner who runs the TEA, Mike Moses, would seem to provide good reason for the governor to carry out the promises that he has made. The TEA, under Mr. Moses’ leadership, works diligently each day to establish the National Center on Education and the Economy’s restructured education plan in our states’ public and private schools.  Mr. Moses, in characteristic ostrich-like fashion, denies he is supportive of the tenets of Outcome Based Education and restructured education, but with his very next breath utters OBE’s patent phrase-- “...we should develop standards about what children should know” and “be able to do.”  Those are words straight from Marc Tucker, Bill Daggett, William Spady, and all the others who are proponents of the OBE/School to Work initiative. If the commissioner is going to practice duplicity, he needs to get his act together.

 

Mr. Moses is very definitely leading the rush to implement OBE “and all that that entails.”  He may not have started the push, but his agenda is the same as Skip Meno’s, and his protestations are wearing thin.  For him to suggest that he is not a member of the Board of the NCEE when his name appears on all kinds of documents from that organization is ridiculous. If he is not on that Board, he has had ample time to get his name off their materials.  If the TEA paid that organization 2.1 million, what exactly were we (taxpayers) buying?  I would imagine that the positions on the NCEE Board came with the payment and the contract, and if Mr. Moses were doing his job, he should have known the terms. 

 

It occurs to me that perhaps Mr. Moses’ name on things does not mean as much to him as it does to me.  I resigned from my elected position when I realized the intent of these people, and I could not bear having my NAME affixed to their programs, curricula, policies, etc. that so negatively affect school children.  At the SBOE meeting on February 6, in response to the Republican SBOE members’ charges that he had not been truthful with regard to the implementation of OBE, I heard Moses deny that this state has OBE, but the evidence of its existence is everywhere....

 

Mary McGarr 

 

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