Grading Texas

Respected education reporter retires

I learned long ago that writers need to be careful about using superlatives, a lesson often ignored in this breathless age of digital, instant communications, where opinions and assessments can change about as often as Apple upgrades its “must have” devices.

But I don’t hesitate in saying that the Texas Capitol press corps lost one of its best and most respected education reporters when Terry Stutz retired last week from The Dallas Morning News. For most of his 30-plus years on the statehouse beat, I was a competitor who didn’t relish chasing some of his stories but nevertheless appreciated his skills and insight.

More recently, as a would-be communicator for the Texas State Teachers Association, I also came to appreciate his even-handedness and institutional memory in covering a crucial, complex subject at a time when public schools were coming under constant attack from budget-cutters and self-styled education “reformers” promoting a privatization agenda at the expense of educators and school children.

Terry covered the privateers – that was his job – and he balanced out their unproven schemes with well-written, factual accounts of the damge those budget cuts were inflicting on our neighborhood classrooms.

One of the last stories Terry wrote for The News was the recent Texas Supreme Court hearing over the latest school finance lawsuit, an issue that Terry covered during his entire Austin career. After a series of lawsuits – Terry could tell you exactly how many – our elected officials still haven’t gotten school funding right.

As Terry wrote in his final blog for the Dallas newspaper, “In most cases, our teachers and schools are doing the best they can, but they need more support from their legislators and the state.”

Terry always got his stories right, and he deserves a great retirement. But I will miss his work.

I also learned as a writer to be careful about singling out people.

Many very capable, dedicated journalists, including personal friends and former colleagues, have left the Capitol press corps in recent years, and the transformation continues. Christy Hoppe, The Dallas Morning News’ Austin bureau chief, also retired last week. I will miss her work, as I miss the work of Wayne Slater, R.G. Ratcliffe and Gary Scharrer, other former statehouse reporters who have moved on in recent years.

They also got their stories right. I wish I could say the same thing about how well some of the politicians they covered at the Capitol have performed their jobs.

Needing real commitments for education

After I posted an article on the TSTA website about the huge expansion of free, full-day pre-kindergarten in New York City, a reader asked, “Why can this not happen here?” The answer is simple. Texas doesn’t have enough state leaders who are truly committed to pre-K or even to public education, for that matter.

New York City has a new, ambitious pre-K program because Mayor Bill de Blasio not only recognized the value of the program but also had the political will to see that it happened for an estimated 65,000 four-year-olds. He stands in stark contrast to the policymakers in the majority at the Texas statehouse, who love to give lip service to education but are more committed to ideological fanatics than they are to school children.

Gov. Greg Abbott made pre-K a so-called “priority” during the legislative session earlier this year. But he signed a very limited pre-K bill that doesn’t come close to meeting the state’s needs. It doesn’t even fully restore the $200 million that the legislative majority cut from pre-kindergarten programs in 2011 when it was slashing $5.4 billion from public schools.

And, even Abbott’s modest proposal had some rough sailing with many legislators after tea party ideologues attacked it as “socialistic” and “godless.” These know-nothing critics, you may recall, were members of an “advisory board” appointed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a self-proclaimed “education evangelist.”

In truth, according to several studies, low-income children (the majority of public school enrollees in Texas) are more likely to graduate from high school if they have been enrolled in pre-school programs.

For every low-income child who gets to enroll in a pre-K program under Texas’ new law, many others will be out of luck, and it doesn’t have to be that way. The Legislature had enough money last session to pay for a broader expansion of pre-K as well as improve overall public education funding. But the governor and the legislative majority chose to leave billions of your tax dollars sitting in the bank because right-wing ideologues demanded it.

Why can’t we increase educational opportunities in Texas?

We can, as soon as we start electing more legislators from both parties who truly want to improve education – beginning with a fair and adequate funding system — and have the political will to do so. That won’t be easy in Texas’ dominant political climate, but the next opportunity begins with the party primaries in March.

Charters – and the truth – suffer a setback

The Wall Street Journal shares an owner with Fox News, and the Journal’s editorial page shares the TV network’s ability to ignore facts in promoting its politicized viewpoint, as it did this week in an editorial rebuking the Washington Supreme Court for striking down a new charter school law in that state.

The court’s 6-3 ruling was pretty straightforward. It held that privately operated charter schools cannot receive public funding because they do not quality as “common schools” under the state’s constitution. The law – which siphons tax dollars from traditional public schools where the vast majority of Washington children are educated – was the result of a ballot initiative backed by billionaire, self-styled education “reformer,” Bill Gates, among others, and approved by voters in 2012.

The Wall Street Journal accused the court of supporting the “public school monopoly,” when, in truth, the court did nothing of the kind. The court did not strike down the ability of entrepreneurs to open and operate charter schools to compete with or supplement public schools. The court simply ruled that private owners didn’t have the right to dip their hands into public tax dollars.

The Journal’s editorial also claimed that charter schools are “far more accountable than traditional public schools.” Hooey. Public schools in Washington operate under elected school boards. Charters do not. They operate under privately appointed boards, and, despite what some promoters claim and parents hope, charters are not miracle workers.

Nationwide, research has shown that charters, on average, do not perform as well as traditional public schools.

The Journal claimed the court’s main concern was “preserving the union monopoly” in Washington. In truth, the lawsuit against the charter school law was brought by a coalition that in addition to a state teachers union also included school administrators and the League of Women Voters. They all shared the same concern – protecting public funding for public school children.

So far, only nine charter schools have been opened under the disputed law and eight of them opened for the first time this year, according to the Tacoma News Tribune, which reported that operators will try to keep them open with donated funds, if necessary.

The timing of the court ruling, at the beginning of a new school year, obviously is bad for the charter students and their families. But if the charters are forced to close their doors, no childen will be left out in the cold. Local school districts will be there to take them in.

Schools need funding, not “pixie dust”

During today’s hearing over the school finance lawsuit, a lawyer for the state told the Texas Supreme Court that “money isn’t pixie dust” that can automatically improve public education. I don’t know how long it took him to come up with that line, but if he is proud of it, he shouldn’t be.

It’s quotable, but meaningless.

The 600 or so school districts that sued the state over funding never claimed money alone can perform academic magic. That is the job of educators.

But here are just a few of the things that better school funding can do:

# Reduce class sizes so that more students – particularly young, disadvantaged children — can get more of the individual attention they need from teachers. Last year, the state granted waivers allowing 5,883 classes from kindergarten through fourth grade to exceed the 22-student limit, mainly because of financial hardships claimed by under-funded school districts.

# Allow districts to hire more teachers and keep the best teachers in the classroom longer. Texas public schools hired 3,700 fewer teachers in the 2014-15 school year than they did in 2011, before the legislative majority cut $5.4 billion from the education budget. Student enrollment grew by more than 220,000 during that period, and some districts are still spending less per student than they did in 2011.

# Purchase more computers and updated instructional materials for students.

Texas ranks 38^th in per-student spending among the states and the District of Columbia, spending more than $2,000 per kid below the national average.

As TSTA President Noel Candelaria pointed out: “The arithmetic is simple. Our students and teachers are being shortchanged, and every day the state fails to invest in our classrooms is another day that students are forced to pay the price.”

School districts, their employees and students will have to wait until at least next year before the Supreme Court rules in the case. They are demanding an adequate, fair and equitable school funding system. They will know what to do with the money, and they won’t need “pixie dust.”

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/09/01/one-year-later-school-finance-appeal-back-court/

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