Southern Hospitality

Texas is leading the country in "Innovation in Education..." Innovations that can create long-lasting effects, positive or negative.

Deep in the Heart of Texas - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com: "Now an entire state is on the brink of implementing just that bite-sized style of teaching under the rubric of “customer satisfaction.” Texas, currently in a contest with Arizona and South Carolina for the title “most retrograde,” is signing on to a plan of “reform” generated by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank dedicated to private property rights and limited government. Backed by Governor Rick Perry (yes, the one who thinks secession is a viable political option), the plan calls for college and university teachers to contract with their customers — that is, students — and to be rewarded by as much as $10,000 depending on whether they meet the contract’s terms. The idea is to hold “tenured professors more accountable” (“A&M regents push reforms,” The Eagle, June 13, 2010), and what they will be accountable to are not professional standards but the preferences of their students, who, in advance of being instructed, are presumed to be authorities on how best they should be taught."