Texas Education Agency Firing

12/7/07 UPDATE: Someone who is close to this situation reminded me that the media seldom provides a complete picture of events. My own experience with the press, particularly over the last year, certainly confirms that perspective. It is possible that media reports haven’t provided enough detail for me to make a fair assessment of Lizzette’s role in this matter. I know the liberal blogosphere is unlikely to be particularly concerned with the details in light of the end result. Comer shouldn’t have been fired and the concerns about science education her firing raises are legitimate. But upon further reflection, I am willing to withhold judgment of Lizzette’s action in this case given that the media reports may not be complete or completely accurate.

As I read the Statesman editorial yesterday about the TEA science curriculum director who was fired, my first reaction was to sigh in frustration – yet another infuriating example of a Republican-led government promoting a religious belief.

Then I noticed the name of the TEA advisor who recommended the firing. Lizzette Reynolds? I looked up from the paper and asked my husband – That couldn’t possibly be Lizzette Gonzales, could it? Actually, it is, he said. She married So-and-So Reynolds and they’ve moved back to Texas.

I knew Lizzette back when she was working for then-Governor Bush and I was working for a state senator. I really liked her – she was smart, funny…and didn’t strike me at all as a Republican true-believer, just someone doing their job.

Which isn’t that unusual. There are people who wouldn’t even consider working for an elected official of the other party, but there are lots and lots who just enjoy political or policy work and will take a job for the job, not the political affiliation of whomever they or their boss or their boss’s boss (etc) ultimately reports to. Technically speaking, I worked for Bush too, since he was Governor for most of the time I worked in a state agency. But I, like countless others not on the top couple of rungs, didn’t perceive my job as ‘working for Bush’. I actually perceived more impact from legislation than from Governor fiat, although certainly that would be different for the head of an agency. And even though I disagreed with the policy direction of some of the legislation my agency had to implement (or, more importantly, with the budget priorities put in place by the Legislature), I viewed my role to some degree as trying to make lemonade out of the lemons the agency was handed. Much of my work pertained to Medicaid services for people who are elderly and have disabilities, so it was a question of doing the most good for those people as possibly within the constraints imposed by the budget and legislation.

Anyway, the point is that people don’t necessarily buy into the ideology of the person at the top of their chain of command, so to speak. And Lizzette was someone I would have pegged in that way. In fact, you could look at her action in this case that way. Part of her job is to make sure the agency stays in the good graces of the Governor and legislative leadership (which every agency strives to do, obviously). After all, they are the ultimate ‘bosses’ of the agencies. Part of doing that in Texas, apparently, is playing to the ultraconservatives who support intelligent design.

However, Comer wasn’t setting or implementing agency policy with that email. Sending out a notice of a lecture whose content conflicts with someone’s religious beliefs cannot reasonably be construed as undermining agency policy, unless squelching any mention of evolution is in fact agency policy, which obviously is the big issue raised in all of this. What Lizzette did is an explicit endorsement of a religion-over-science policy. And to me, she’s crossed the (admittedly fine) line between just doing her job and actively pushing the ideology.

And as strange as it probably sounds, I still sort of have a hard time believing she could have done that. Maybe I’m just not good at reading people.