Month: <span>January 2025</span>

Greg Abbott lies about “indoctrination” in public schools while promoting tax-paid vouchers for religious schools

Gov. Greg Abbott now wants to ban diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools, as he and his legislative allies did two years ago in state-supported higher education.

“No taxpayer dollars will be used to fund DEI in our schools,” he said in a recent post on the social media platform X. “Schools must focus on fundamentals of education, not indoctrination.”

What he means by indoctrination, of course, is not indoctrination. What he really is attacking is how our public schools address the cultural differences and historical truths that he and his right-wing followers and admirers find uncomfortable.

They want to forget about slavery, segregation and a host of other undesirable facts that mar our state’s and country’s history, leaving scars that still haunt us today. So, he attacks public schools for teaching these truths, something schools were created to do.

Abbott also panders to many in his political crowd who are fearful, even angry that most of the children in our public school classrooms aren’t white, many aren’t citizens and many are of sexual orientations or gender identities that some people love to bully. Our public schools accept and teach all of them because that also is what public schools are supposed to do. But Abbott turns this diversity into an opportunity to attack and weaken public education, the backbone of our democracy. He does so without an ounce of concern over the harmful impact it may have on the lives of the students and their teachers.

DEI is a fact of life in Texas, America and our public schools. It’s a strength that the governor and his allies (including the new president) have turned into a political target for fear and hate. In this case, Abbott is using it to undermine public schools to try to build more support for a taxpayer-paid voucher plan for private schools

Does Abbott really know what the word, indoctrination, means? I am sure he does, which means his use of it against public schools also makes him a hypocrite.

Over the past couple of years, he has visited many Christian schools to promote his voucher campaign. Christian schools, which could receive hundreds of millions of tax dollars next year if Abbott’s voucher plan becomes law, routinely mix indoctrination (in the real sense of the word) with their education offerings. Some of these schools offer more indoctrination than education, but that’s their business, as long as they don’t use tax dollars to do it. Abbott, however, wants to give them big tax giveaways while underfunding the public schools he apparently would rather attack than adequately support.

Gov, Greg Abbott wants to extend Texas’ DEI ban to K-12 schools

Clay Robison

Gov. Abbott’s voucher plan is a form of welfare for millionaires

Gov. Greg Abbott made it clear two years ago that the Legislature must pass a universal voucher program, one that gives taxpayer-funded subsidies to millionaires – as well as people of lesser means — for their children’s private school tuition and related expenses.

So far, he has given no indication that he has changed his mind as the Legislature convenes another session, with vouchers again at the top of the governor’s education priorities list. And political donations from super-wealthy school privatization advocates were instrumental in the governor’s successful campaign to unseat anti-voucher legislators in last year’s Republican primaries.

Nevertheless, there is still talk among voucher advocates of giving priority to students from low-income families. But what would that realistically mean for many of those families?

A few years ago, Arizona enacted a universal voucher program like the one Abbott is advocating for Texas, and soon it blew a multimillion-dollar hole in the state budget. It also is being used at a faster rate by wealthy families than by low-income parents in the Phoenix area, the most populous part of the state, according to an analysis by the ProPublica news site.

This is because many low-income families, even with vouchers, can’t afford tuition and the transportation expenses to send their children to private schools, most of which are outside their neighborhoods and, unlike public schools, don’t have to provide bus service. Meanwhile, wealthy families with children already in private schools are eager to scoop up the welfare payments.

ProPublica’s analysis of Arizona Department of Education data for Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, revealed that “the poorer the ZIP code, the less often vouchers are being used. The richer, the more.”

The story noted: “In one West Phoenix ZIP code where the median household income is $46,700 a year, for example, ProPublica estimates that only a single voucher is being used per 100 school-age children. There are about 12,000 kids in this ZIP code, with only 150 receiving vouchers. Conversely, in a Paradise Valley ZIP code with a median household income of $173,000, there are an estimated 28 vouchers being used per 100 school-age children.”

If you think something similar wouldn’t happen in Texas, think again, even if a Texas voucher program tried to give precedence to low-income families.

The voucher allowance proposed in the bill killed by the Texas House in 2023 was $10,500 per child. That is close but still short of the average tuition — $10,906 for elementary schools and $12,442 for high schools – now charged by private schools in Texas, according to the Private School Review. But many of the more popular private schools charge $20,000, $30,000 or more a year.

As in Arizona, most are not in low-income neighborhoods, and most don’t provide transportation, which adds to a family’s costs. There also are many low-income kids but few private schools in rural Texas.

Some voucher advocates also want to give priority to students with disabilities, but this is even more unrealistic. Public schools must provide special education. Private schools are not required to do so, and most don’t. The private schools that provide those services charge tuition much higher than a voucher payment would cover. Tax money diverted to vouchers, meanwhile, would worsen funding problems for special education programs in public schools.

Had it passed, the final voucher bill offered in 2023 would have cost Texas taxpayers – and public schools — $2.3 billion by 2028, the Legislative Budget Board forecast in a fiscal note. Much of that spending would have amounted to “welfare for the wealthy,” Democratic voucher opponent Rep. James Talarico said at the time.

He was right.

In a state with school vouchers for all, low-income families aren’t choosing to use them

Clay Robison