Empower Texans on Friday, May 14th, 2010 in a Web video
I heard a former school principal tell me this one just one week ago. I have spoken with school bus drivers who think so too. When you get the very people who are the butt of this lie to tell it and pass it on, you are winning the battle for public opinion , hands down. Here is the truth:
So who are the other 302,670 employees - the bulk of the "non-teachers" in Sullivan's claim? About 5,136 are librarians, 11,082 are counselors, 5,916 are nurses and 3,924 are speech therapists, among others. Some 178,140 are classified as auxiliary staff, a category that includes security personnel, public information officers and grant writers.
Compared to the rest of the nation, we are right on par.
The best lie is the half-truth, the feckless, factoid without context. That makes this lie especially useful and timely. Politifact calls the statement with which I started "mostly true", and it is. But it is still a lie because it implies that this is unusual, unwarranted and corrupt. It is none of these.
Again form Politifact:
According to another report, released in November, instructional aides accounted for about 12 percent of all full-time public school staff nationwide, instructional coordinators and supervisors made up 1 percent, guidance counselors (2 percent), librarians (1 percent), student and support staff (23 percent), school administrators (3 percent), school district administrators (1 percent) and administrative support staff (7 percent).
Where does all this leave Sullivan's statement?
He correctly cites the number of teachers and non-teachers, per the education agency's latest snapshot report. More recent data available from the agency shows both have increased; still, the ratio of teachers to non-teachers is about the same.
But Sullivan's online call to action doesn't do justice to the state's actual mix of school workers. The majority of non-teachers aren't administrators or paper shufflers; they're people who work directly with students including counselors, librarians, therapists and bus drivers.
Old Easten European folk saying: "The lie can circle the world 7 times before the truth gets its pants." We are paying dearly for the feckless messaging response from the Texas Democratic Party over the last many years, over the entire period of the Perry governorship. Perry knew, Republicans know, rig the public discourse, keep it full of your lies . When the time comes to answer for your misgovernance, just repeat what is now "common wisdom".
We are soo totally tooled and there is no quick and easy way out. There is some evidence that Democrats now get the messaging thing,(witness the semi-coordinated response to Perry's fairy tale "State of the State" address0 but it will take years.
