National Board Certification—the “gold standard” of teaching that’s reportedly harder to get than a Master’s degree—is currently on the chopping block in Austin. Why? Because it turns out being an “accomplished teacher” involves things like “self-reflection” and “not traumatizing children,” which apparently doesn’t sit well with the Texas brand. Our brilliant state leaders are worried that the 1,200 overachieving teachers in Texas (that’s a whopping 0.3% of the workforce) are secretly radicalizing our youth by making them feel “safe” and “included.”
State Board member Julie Pickren is leading the charge, terrified that teachers might use literature featuring—heaven forbid—diverse gender roles. According to the state’s logic, if a teacher acknowledges a student’s identity, the entire Texas education system might crumble into a pile of “woke” dust. Senator Brandon Creighton claims we need “merit-based” pay instead, conveniently ignoring a study from our very own Texas Tech University that proves these certified teachers actually boost math and reading scores. But since when has “data” or “local research” ever stood in the way of a good political panic?
While the grown-ups in suits debate whether empathy is a liberal conspiracy, the students are making a break for it. Public school enrollment just saw its first non-pandemic drop in forty years, with 76,000 kids—mostly Hispanic students—vanishing from the rosters. Education Commissioner Mike Morath claims he “cannot tell you the precise cause” of the decline, which is a world-class performance in playing dumb. It’s almost as if years of hostile rhetoric and underfunding schools might actually make people want to leave.
Does it ever occur to the folks in Austin that if they spent half as much time funding schools as they do investigating whether teachers are “too nice,” we might actually have enough students left to fill a classroom?
Sources:
