By: Travis Hairgrove
Democratic candidates, Mike Collier for lieutenant governor and Kendall Scudder for State Senate District 2, “campaigned with and for” one another at a town hall meeting at Texas A&M University-Commerce Thursday.
With the location of the meeting being a university and education being central to both candidates platforms, issues concerning public education featured prominently in their talking points.
Scudder got the ball rolling by denouncing school vouchers.
“School vouchers are little more than a veiled attempt to privatize public education,” Scudder said. “They’re not fair to rural kids, they’re not fair to kids of color and they’re not fair to economically disadvantaged kids.”
When members of the audience asked about the candidate’s thoughts on standardized testing, they both took firm stance against it.
“Standardized testing is awful and we should get rid of it,” Collier said. “Critical thinking skills are going down, and teachers, parents, kids, professors and employers all don’t like it. I spent years working for Exxon. Everyone in management knew how to work an oil drill. In Austin, you have legislators voting on bills that affect education who have never set foot in a classroom.”
Scudder, added to their case against standardized testing by tying it into campaign reform and mental health support in schools.
“The state is giving so much money to testing companies and the testing companies are, in turn, paying into the campaigns of their supporters,” Scudder said. “For that reason, the issue of standardized testing is tied to that of campaign reform.
“Also, a lot of the moral problems we’re seeing in schools these days are partly the result of schools not being able to provide adequate mental health support because counselors are too busy dealing with test coordinating,” Scudder said.