"I have trouble believing that this guy could win in Texas but Paxton got pretty well beat-up politically several years back and spent several years in court."
"James Talarico has a compelling story about teaching classrooms with 45 students during a two-year stint as a Teach For America educator, but even the New York Times is poking holes in it.
“'When I entered the classroom, the Texas Legislature had just gutted the public education budget by $5 billion — so I had 45 kids in one classroom,” Talarico claims on his website. “There weren’t enough desks for everyone, so some of my students sat on the air conditioning unit.”
“'In the richest country on the planet, I knew that was unacceptable,” he says.
"It is a compelling claim – Republicans cut public education funding so these students suffer. Talarico certainly thinks it will resonate with voters, which is why he keeps repeating it.
“'At one point, I had 45 students in one classroom,” he said. “There weren’t enough desks for all those kids, so I had students sitting on the air-conditioning unit in the wealthiest country in human history — in the 21st century, children sitting on the air-conditioning unit.”
"But the NY Times says the story may not be true.
"The Times reported:
Documents from the Texas Education Agency indicate that the most students ever assigned to a class period that Mr. Talarico taught was 30, with most of his classes ranging in size from 22 to 27 students. In the interviews with Mr. Talarico’s former students and colleagues, they recalled classrooms where every desk was occupied, but not crowding to the point where students were sitting on air-conditioners" . . ..
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