Sometime in the early 2010s at a teacher prep for our state’s high-stakes test at my old high school, one voice stood out. After we’d weathered the administrators’ obligatory pep talks, Kirk Ninemire’s hand shot up. As nervous titters ran through the audience, the visiting administrators exchanged wry looks. They had been clued. They knew what was coming. Even so, they tried to put it off, but finally they had to call on that big arm that was straining to the ceiling.
And when they did, the big man made quite a production of it. He knew all eyes were on him. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, exhaled a big sigh, then said with his best stentorian teacher voice, “We’re being set up, people. The state is setting us up for failure.”
On the word “failure,” his big hand slammed the table. What my fellow teacher said back in those bygone days was not only true but scarily prescient.
The state of Texas, governed by a right-wing clique, set public schools up for failure with its unfunded mandates, high-stakes testing, constant underfunding, and the over-the-top denigration of educators the past few years. Someone who gets this is former award-winning Fort Worth high school teacher and current candidate for Texas House District 97 Beth McLaughlin, who has pointed out, “The ‘crisis’ in public education has been managed and amplified for political gain and profit.”
And from that whirlwind, we’ve reaped a state takeover of the ninth-largest school district in the state, Fort Worth ISD. And how is that going?
On April 29, braving a tornado watch, the Fort Worth community showed up in great numbers to plead with the state-appointed board and superintendent to not close the International Newcomer Academy (INA) and fire educators. The board heard them. I suppose they weren’t all playing Royal Kingdom, but they might as well have been. They totally ignored citizens’ concerns. And, suddenly, a political cry from the beginnings of our nation came to be more than lifeless buzzwords: taxation without representation. Though we are taxed to fund Fort Worth ISD, what we want no longer matters. And that should make us all angry.
What Tiffany Perkinz sees emerging after speaking with teachers in districts the state has taken over is “the outline of a much larger educational philosophy built around centralized control, compliance structures, surveillance systems, scripted instruction, and measurable outputs.”
In short, our far-right Christian nationalist state government is turning our neighborhood schools into mini-military academies. If you want creative teachers inspiring students, too bad. Now “teachers” have scripted lessons that, as a longtime now-retired teacher, I can tell you totally destroys what gives the spark to education and makes teaching worthwhile. That’s more like being a prison guard than a teacher.
To be fair, I’m sure there are some educators in this brave new world of “militarized” schools who honestly believe they are helping students. I’m even sure some scores will go up, but to me the costs of the state takeover are way too high. Disenfranchising Fort Worth residents, running off any teacher with a spark of creativity, ignoring the educational needs of different populations, decimating teacher morale, and ruining education for far too many students are prices too high to pay.
One thing we can all do is support FORT (Families Organized Responding to Takeover) as it works to hold the state-appointed board accountable while “demanding … a clear return to local elected control.”
After that, vote out all candidates with an R by their names. I don’t care if they’re reluctant, scared, or stalwart MAGAs. Every single one of them must go. For that we should really thank Trump, that unfettered id of country-club Republicanism, for being so brazenly corrupt — making bank — while making us all poorer.
And here in Dystopian Texas, Trump’s anti-democratic, petro-state, toadies-to-the-1% minions have made it clear. They care nothing about our neighborhood schools. They’re working overtime with state takeovers of districts, their voucher scam, and the encouragement of charter/religious schools to destroy public education in Texas. The only way to bring sanity back to our state and responsibly do the job each generation is tasked — educating our kids — is to 86 the right-wing monopoly that our state government has suffered through for the past 30-odd years. It’s way past time to vote all these paid haters out at every level. — Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue
Now retired, Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue taught English-as-a-Second Language at Amon Carter-Riverside High School for 17 years.
This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
