Dewhurst using Enron math on school finance issue

[TexasTowelie]

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a successful Houston businessman, prides himself on his fluency with numbers. When it comes to Texas public schools, however, Dewhurst mangles the one question that should come effortlessly to a good CEO: What's the bottom line?

In Houston recently to campaign for the U.S. Senate, Dewhurst claimed the state of Texas this year appropriated more money for public education than ever before in its history. It's technically true, in the way that Enron was technically a viable company. So here's the real bottom line, summing up the entire financial picture: Texas public schools now have less money than ever to educate our school­children. Saying otherwise is just "balderdash," says Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston.

"When I read that he said that, I thought, 'There he goes again,'?" said Coleman, expressing the collective exasperation of Texas' education community. Like an improbable urban myth that just won't die, the claim that schools didn't really take a financial hit this budget cycle keeps circulating.

Speaking to the Houston Republican Jewish Coalition last week, Dewhurst assured his audience that our schools were flush with cash. "We appropriated more money for public education than we have ever appropriated in the state of Texas," he asserted. People complaining about public school funding "have a problem with math. The facts are the facts."

http://www.chron.com/news/kilday-hart/article/Dewhurst-using-Enron-math-on-school-finance-issue-3439355.php

[mbperrin]

1. Some days I wonder if the last 3 decades of teaching has even slightly eliminated the surplus of

calculated stupidity in my great state of Texas.