Update: From The Texas Tribune:
Michael Marder prefers pictures to words. A sentence can be constructed to support any position, but data cannot be so easily dismissed. Lately he's been looking at data about public education in Texas, and his findings have suprised him.
Marder, it should be noted, has a vested interest. In addition to being a professor in the University of Texas' department of physics and a member of their highly regarded Center for Nonlinear Dynamics, he is also the co-director of the university's UTeach program, which focuses on preparing and encouraging university graduates to become secondary math and science teachers — a boost of which the state desperately needs.