Sherry Sylvester - Distinguished Senior Fellow, TPPF Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To say goodbye. It's the time to say goodbye to
the Department of Education. Seven twenty two is our time
here in Houston this Morning News. Cherry Sylvester's with us
distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Would
you like to see it go away, Sherry, the Department
of Education or would you just like to see it performed?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Absolutely, let's get rid of it. Jimmy, thanks for having
me on this morning. You know, the Department of Education,
it's not like it's sprung up from need. Jimmy Carter
established it and made a deal with the National Education Association,
which is, you know, is a big Democrat lobby. I
mean they are one of the biggest ender underwriters of
the Democrat Party. They don't do anything that actually helps

(00:42):
the schools. I mean, let's dismantle it. They are the
people that gave us Title nine directives to make sure
that anybody could go in any bathrooms, getting rid of
privacy bathrooms for girls, and saying, you know, all schools,
in order to get federal money, had to open their

(01:02):
bathrooms to anybody who said they were a boy or
a girl, regardless of what they actually were. Sports teams,
keeping putting people the opposite sex on sports teams don't do.
And they also put these mandates in on what you
have to teach, you know, so we have to deal

(01:22):
with fighting those off. Let's just take the money, give
it to Texas. Let Texas block grant it. And it's
not all that much money. You know, we've been billions.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
As I recalled, wasn't the idea behind the Department of Education.
The excuse given for the Department of Education is that
kids in Mississippi were not getting the same level of
education as kids in New York State, for example. So
we're going to make sure that all students are created
equally and that they all have the same opportunity and
they all get a great education. Has that even happened,
of course not.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
No, it doesn't look had to have gotten any better
since the Jimmy Carter's days, which the ancient ancient history. No,
everything that they think they know how to do is wrong.
I mean, one of the things that I was looking
at this morning, Jimmy before talking to you, was just
in Houston. You know, think of all the blowback, and
I'm not sure what you all have discussed. And I'm

(02:14):
not an expert on this against Mike Miles. Why everything
that's happened happened over there. But when they went in
and we were still measuring, there were one hundred and
forty one schools in Houston that were scoring at least
d's and f's. Now there are forty I fired two
hundred administrators. Yeah yeah, and administrators in our school have

(02:38):
increased almost eight hundred percent over the last forty years,
while students have only increased like two hundred and fifty.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeh that's it's pretty top heavy how most most public
schools are these days. Let me quickly ask you to
before we run out of time. There's another issue we've
been talking about this morning on the show, and as
the state of Texas is looking to try to figure
out how do we get social media out of the school?
Social media is causing bullying problems, fights, all sorts of
all sorts of other issues. Of course, the only way

(03:06):
to really do that is to get cell phones out
of schools. And of course the parents always complain because
they want to have a way to communicate with their child.
Of heaven forbid, there's a school shooter or something. What
do we need to do to get control of cell
phones and the social media.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I don't think it's magic. I think it's the obvious answer,
just JACKO. We cannot have them. They're too distracted. And
you know, a lot of private schools, a lot of
charter schools already just take the phone away. There are
other ways to keep parents informs. That's a school's job.
Anything bad happens, school's on fire, they can get to

(03:40):
the parents. But yeah, we've just got to pull them
out there, we know, I mean, you know, it's that
great thing that we learned that the people that invented
the cell phones and that build them, they don't let
their kids have them.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
That should tell us something.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Right, Absolutely, absolutely

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Sherry, thanks as always, good to talk to you, Distinguished
Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Sherry Sylvester
seven twenty six