Attorney General Greg Abbott, state Sen. Wendy Davis’s (D) Republican opponent in the Texas gubernatorial race, cited controversial conservative scholar Charles Murray in a explaining his plans on pre-kindergarten education this week.
Abbott cited the scholar in an education plan his campaign unveiled this week on how he would reform pre-Kindergarten through third grade education in Texas. The citation comes in the second paragraph of the introduction of the education proposal.
“Family background has the most decisive effect on student achievement, contributing to a large performance gap between children from economically disadvantaged families and those from middle-class homes,” the sentence read. It’s accompanied by the footnote “Murray, Charles. Read [sic] Education. New York: Crown Forum, 2008.”
Murray’s book, Real Education, argues that “Family background has the most decisive effect on student achievement, contributing to a large performance gap between children from economically disadvantaged families and those from middle class homes.
Murray is the notorious American Enterprise Institute scholar whose book, The Bell Curve, has often been criticized as racist for arguing that African-Americans are less intelligent than white Americans because of genetics. Murray’s most recent book is Coming Apart: The State of White America: 1960-2010.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) recently fell under criticism for citing Murray’s work in a speech on the culture of inequality in cities.
(H/t: The Huffington Post)
