Grading Texas

Presumably, a basic understanding of the three branches of government – the executive, the legislative and the judicial — will remain in the social studies curriculum standards that the State Board of Education is revising this year. But will the board revise the standards so that Texas students also understand what can happen when the legislative branch fails to do its job of checking and balancing the powers of the executive?

Probably not, and that’s too bad because what can happen is happening.

The legislative branch of the federal government, of course, is Congress, a law-making and policy-setting body with a lot of power under the Constitution. But under Republican control during the second Trump administration, Congress has become little more than a rubberstamp for whatever illegal action Trump wants to take next, moving the U.S. closer and closer to authoritarianism.

While the Democratic minority has fumed, the Republican congressional majority has mostly watched as the Trump administration has cut or rediverted billions of dollars in funds appropriated by Congress, laid off government workers approved by Congress and started dismantling the Department of Education, an agency created by Congress. A host of other outrageous actions, of course, include efforts to stifle free speech, repeal civil rights initiatives and dictator-like immigration-enforcement policies that have terrified school children, disrupted hundreds of peaceful families and resulted so far in the shooting deaths of at least three American citizens by federal officers.

Meanwhile, the judicial branch’s record on the president’s power grab has been mixed. Many lower court federal judges have tried to shut down many illegal Trump policies, from education to immigration enforcement and the hiring and firing of federal workers. These judges often have been ignored by Trump functionaries or later reversed – at least temporarily – by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 ruling that struck down Trump’s tariffs program was the high court’s first decision blocking a major Trump policy imposed during the president’s current term. And Trump quickly tried to circumvent the court’s decision by issuing new tariffs under a different law.

Interestingly, Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote a concurring opinion in the tariffs case, in which he scolded the Republican Congress’ subservience to Trump.

“Yes, legislating can be hard and take time,” Gorsuch wrote. “And yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.”

That is what the writers of the Constitution had in mind when they created the three separate, independent branches of government. At present, though (and rewriting Gorsuch a bit), the combined political will and courage (not wisdom) of the people’s elected Republican congressional representatives is just not strong enough to challenge that egomaniac in the White House.

But we won’t see that in Texas’ next set of social studies curriculum standards.

Clay Robison

The gluttonous beast has been unleashed.

Texas parents eager to tap into state tax dollars to help pay their kids’ tuition at private schools or help cover their home-schooling expenses can start applying this week (Feb. 4) for the inaugural year of Texas’ new private school voucher program.

The Legislature set aside $1 billion for the 2026-27 school year, an amount that legislative budget experts have predicted will increase to about $4 billion a year by 2030. Then, fasten your seatbelts because before you know it, the program will be costing Texas taxpayers and our public schools untold billions of dollars a year.

Gov. Greg Abbott and other voucher advocates deny the diversion of billions of tax dollars a year to private schools will hurt school districts and their students. Don’t believe them.

Several states with existing voucher programs already have been documented robbing from their public schools to feed their voucher programs, and if you think our current state leaders won’t do the same thing, you haven’t been paying attention to their school privatization campaign.

According to a report, linked at the end of this post, by Public Funds Public Schools, several states with some of the longer records with vouchers have made substantial increases in state funding for vouchers over the years as they cut per-student funding for public schools.

Public Funds Public Schools is a partnership between the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Examples in the report, released in 2023, include:

• Florida – This state, like some other states, has multiple voucher programs, and spending on three of the oldest programs increased by 313 percent between 2008-2019, while per-pupil funding for public education was cut by 12 percent.
• Arizona –Increased spending on voucher programs by 270 percent between 2008-2019, while cutting per-pupil spending for public education by 5.7 percent.
• Georgia – Increased spending on vouchers by 883 percent between 2009-2019, while cutting per-pupil spending on public schools by 1.9 percent.
• Indiana – Increased voucher spending by 796 percent between 2012-2019 and cut per-pupil spending on public education by 1.5 percent.
• Wisconsin – Increased voucher spending by 119 percent between 2008-2019, while essentially freezing per-student funding for public education.
• Ohio – Increased spending on vouchers by 416 percent, while limiting per-student spending for public education to only 14.2 percent.

As the report noted, “Private school voucher programs are initially proposed as limited in size and scope, then grown as existing programs are expanded and/or additional voucher programs are established. This results in greater and greater amounts of public funding diverted to private educational institutions and private corporations. At the same time, as noted, funding for public schools in these states has largely decreased.”

Meanwhile, most students in these states and in Texas are attending public schools, which are losing money to the privatization monster. Its appetite will also grow in Texas if public education advocates don’t start working to slay it, beginning with this election year.

Read more.

Clay Robison