The Lone Star of Texas

Not because it has one star on the flag, but because, if I were handing out stars for taking care of its people, Texas wouldn't rank very high.

Yep, Texas was on the front page of the NYTimes website again, this time in an Op-Ed by Gail Collins. It's never good, ever, when Texas is in the news in New York.

Check it out . . .

• 47th in the nation in literacy
• 49th in verbal SAT scores
• 46th in math SAT scores
• used $3.2 billion in stimulus money for schools for other parts of the budget
• refusing $830 million in federal education money because Democrats are requiring it be used for students!
• and let's not even talk about the extremely conservative State Board of Education's stance on history or science, or recent textbook hearings . . . .

Are schools not important because all good religious people are homeschooling already? Or because minorities and "illegals" are in the public schools? Or because keeping the population uneducated is the only way to maintain the religious and political footholds of the conservatives and Republicans in the state? (Republicans hold all statewide offices and control both houses of the legislature.) Sarcasm aside, yes it matters to me, ex-pat though I am living here in Yankee Connecticut, because pretty soon, Texas, with its population explosion (more on that in a bit), will be educating 10% of the nation! (Or not educating, as it were.) And that affects all of us.

Now back to population:

• highest birthrate in the country
• 3rd in teen pregnancies
• #1 in repeat teen pregnancies
• and receiving $250 million in federal abstinence-only funds, because it works, Gov. Perry says
• a bill requiring only medically-accurate sex-education information was controversial, and defeated

And, even with a lesbian mayor leading Houston, don't get me started on Texas's GLBT laws. Or approach to health care for children. I'd like to be able to be proud of Texas. And I can say the people are nice and the land is beautiful and the food is good and the history is interesting and all that, but to paraphrase my fellow Texan Dixie Chicks, it's embarrassing. And sad.

I guess Texas doesn't need to warn everyone not to mess with it, it's doing just fine on its own.