Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a former talk show host in Texas (the Texas version of Rush Limbaugh), hates public schools. He hates people who work in public schools. As a member of the State Senate, he has introduced voucher legislation year after year, only to see it blocked by Republicans in the House, allied with urban Democrats.
Patrick has viciously attacked Baptist minister Charles Foster Johnson of Pastors for Texas Kids for encouraging people to vote. Patrick thinks it is illegal to urge people to vote. Most people would say that getting out the vote is good citizenship. Patrick is not a good citizen. He even claimed (falsely) that Charlie Johnson had been “defrocked,” when the truth is that he never got “frocked” in the first place. Clearly, those Baptists ministers who stand up for separation of church and state get under Dan Patrick’s thin skin.
Now he has an opponent in the Republican primary for Lt. Gov.: Scott Milder, a public school supporter. Ninety percent of the students in Texas are enrolled in public schools.
Early voting by mail started on February 20. Election day is March 6.
The Dallas Morning News endorsed Milder, a reasonable conservative over Patrick.
It wrote:
Patrick, 67, still seems to think he’s speaking to a talk-radio audience that looks for nothing but red meat. That includes favoring divisive legislation such as the bathroom bill and his propensity to exert state control over local issues, such as when he proposed a math-challenged property tax bill suggesting increasing regressive sales taxes to replace the lost revenue.
Milder, a self-described Reagan Republican, understands the value of a conservative framework on issues but decries the kind of radicalism emanating from many on the right. Milder opposes sanctuary cities, but he also recognizes the absurdity of the “show me your papers” focus of SB4. He says the state should focus on more critical issues such as infrastructure and state funding for public education, instead of the infamous “bathroom bill” — which he described as amounting to nothing but “chasing political squirrels.”
It is time for the voters in Texas to throw Dan Patrick out and let him get behind a microphone again, spouting his nonsense.
Superintendent John Kuhn tweeted:
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made vouchers & privatization of public schools his #1 issue for years. Now he’s opposed in the R primary by the most ardent public school supporter in TX. Desperate Dan has spent over $5m on ads. Has billionaire $ to spend, but @smilder has teacher votes.
One word of advice to my friends in Texas: VOTE!
Reach out to friends and family—and at the risk of annoying blowhard Dan Patrick—urge them to vote for Scott Milder.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks, Diane. We need this information. Dan Patrick is indeed a blowhard and wants to be god. I just read more about this simpering, money grubbing idiot with no moral compass whatsoever.
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I keep reminding people that this is supposed to be the “The Great State of Texas” not the “great state of little dan patrick”.
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It’s great they’re getting a real debate and real options in Texas.
I hope the public education supporter wins.
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This is true in my state:
“In Pennsylvania, Michigan, South Carolina, Ohio, and Florida, poor students from rural areas as well as those in underfunded urban schools that primarily educate students who are Black and Latino today face a new response to the question of how to solve the riddle of race, poverty, and educational underachievement. Increasingly, despite little supporting evidence, a growing number of states and local school districts no longer believe that the solution is merely about infrastructure, class size, funding, or hiring more teachers. In states with high levels of poverty and “hard to educate” Black and Latino students, virtual schools are on the rise. Such schools are not growing nearly as fast in school districts that are white and relatively wealthy, nor are they the educational strategy of choice in most private schools. As much a business strategy as one promoting learning, virtual education allows businesses to profit from racial inequality and poverty. Sadly, this particular cure to what ails our education system more often than not exacerbates the problems.”
True. Ed reformers only do the big ed tech sales and marketing campaigns in working class and poor areas.
What’s appalling about it is how the US Department of Education is so wholly captured and corrupted they are essentially salespeople for ed tech product.
I don’t want to pay these public employees to push their cheap garbage on my son’s public school.
If they can’t offer anything of value to public school families- and they can’t, they add no value at all- they should stay out of our schools. They are doing harm.
Stop selling us this stuff. Enough. Public school children are NOT the experimental population for the ed tech industry. Cram this junk into your own private schools, ed reformers. Stay out of ours.
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You hit it exactly right. The message is that our young people, particularly the poor, are not worth an investment of legitimate education dollars. If the tech companies prevail, middle class students will be next.
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little dan has been saying he will give teachers a $10,000 raise. What he is not telling people is that it will be an unfunded mandate and the districts will have to come up with the money from their already tight budgets.
A 10K raise for all professional staff would amount to $4,512,535,000.00
please remove this humanoid from office and elect someone that will fight for public schools.
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