Perry May Eclipse POTUS

He may or may not get elected president, but Texas governor Rick Perry may wind up having more of a lasting influence on education than the last two occupants of the White House ever did.

“In Florida, college professors, presidents and lawmakers are preparing for a vigorous debate about faculty performance, pay, and productivity,” Audrey Williams June wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education on September 23, 2011. “That’s because Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has made it clear that he’s looking toward Texas for ideas on how to revamp higher education in his state. In Texas, a controversial plan—backed by Gov. Rick Perry, another Republican, and his allies—proposes to do more to measure faculty productivity, emphasizes teaching over research, and advocates paying faculty members based on their effectiveness.”

“Governor Scott, who has spoken publicly in recent weeks about his interest in the Texas proposal, hasn’t yet talked specifics about which pieces of that plan he would push lawmakers to adopt. But he’s actively soliciting feedback on Texas’s ‘Seven Breakthrough Solutions,’ which was written by the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, a research institute. Just a few of the solutions have been adopted, most of them at Texas A&M University.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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