Grading Texas

Policymakers, not schools, deserve the failing grade

Whenever Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick opens his mouth about education, it’s risky to take his words at face value, but here goes. At a Capitol news conference the other day, when Patrick and other Senate leaders were promoting a package of education “reforms” that would do next-to-nothing to improve learning opportunities, Patrick declared:

“148,000 students, approximately, today are trapped in 297 school campuses across our state that have been failing for more than two years.”

OK, assuming the man didn’t pull the figure out of thin air, let’s compare that to the total public school enrollment in Texas, which, according to the Texas Education Agency, was 5,151,925 during the 2013-14 school year. Simple math indicates that the “trapped” students, as Patrick calls them, account for only about 2.9 percent of the total enrollment, fewer than three out of 100 kids.

Under any valid performance measure, this means the state’s public schools and educators, overall, are doing a very good job, despite the lackluster support they have been receiving in recent years from state leaders such as Patrick.

No one wants any child to be deprived of access to an excellent education. But the parent trigger, achievement school district, private school vouchers and other unproven gimmicks that Patrick and his cohorts are promoting are exercises in futility that wouldn’t help the children they allegedly are trying to help.

Most of the failing schools are in low-income neighborhoods, where poverty – not the schools and not their teachers – is the biggest obstacle to success. Academic studies have consistently shown the negative influence of poverty on education, and Texas has one of the highest poverty rates and the highest percentage of adults without a high school diploma in the country.

Yet, Texas policymakers like Patrick continue to under-fund public education. Low-income children need adequately and fairly funded, neighborhood public schools and community support services, not privatization.

Patrick and several of the senators supporting the privatization package voted to cut $5.4 billion from public school budgets in 2011. And, Patrick, as a state senator, voted against all education funding and all other public services when he voted against the entire state budget in 2013.

One of the bills Patrick is backing would grade all Texas schools from A to F. This is nothing more than an effort to blame and embarrass local educators for the Fs that a bunch of state policymakers, beginning with Patrick, really deserve.

How to cut property taxes and fund schools

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other legislative leaders who insist on reserving several billion dollars of available state revenue to cover tax cuts before addressing education and other needs probably are right about one thing. Many Texans want lower property taxes.

But the same gang chooses to ignore something else that is equally true. They and other state officeholders of like mind are the main reasons property taxes are so high. They caused the problem they allegedly are trying to correct.

During the 2013-14 school year, local property taxes accounted for the largest share – 48.4 percent – of total public education funding in Texas. State government contributed 40.5 percent, and 11.1 percent came from the federal government.

For years the legislative majority has been passing most of the buck for school funding to local taxpayers and then complaining that local property taxes are too high, trying to suggest that local officials are somehow to blame for a problem largely created in Austin. The state’s neglect of school funding reached a low point in 2011, when the legislative majority slashed $5.4 billion from public schools, money that still hasn’t been totally restored.

The state’s neglect is the reason a state judge found the school funding system unconstitutional last year, an order the state is appealing instead of trying to address.

School districts collect the greatest amount of property taxes, and the best way to cut those taxes is for the Legislature to increase state funding for public education. I don’t mean a mere tradeoff for lower property taxes. I mean an increase, an amount that will at least finish restoring the money cut in 2011 and keep up with enrollment growth (about 80,000 kids a year) and inflation.

Because of a strong economy, the Legislature has enough money to do that this session without raising state taxes, but the shortsightedness and misplaced priorities personified by Dan Patrick and his fellow tea drinkers could very well fritter the opportunity away.

Patrick is backing a $4.6 billion tax-cut package that would include reductions in local property taxes and the state franchise, or margins, tax. Even though thousands of Texas’ smallest businesses are exempt from paying the margins tax, business leaders have been whining about it ever since its enactment in 2006.

Some of these same business leaders also purport to support a strong public school system. But it’s not difficult to figure out what their real priority is, and it isn’t adequate education funding.

Will anything be left for schools?

Acknowledging the obvious, state Sen. Robert Nichols told the Austin American-Statesman, “We can delay the construction of a road or bridge a year or two, but kids have to go to school every day.”

But as chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, Nichols’ first priority is roads, not schools. And, that is why he is sponsoring legislation, which may win Senate approval next week, to dedicate a big chunk of revenue from the state’s sales tax on cars and trucks to highway construction and maintenance. At present, all of that money – about $4 billion a year and growing – is available for spending on education and other needs.

Within a few years, Nichols’ proposal would help the state start reducing a large backlog of needed transportation projects, but it also would significantly reduce the amount of tax revenue – by billions of dollars each budget cycle — available for spending on education and other needs.

I appreciate good roads and highways as much as most drivers. But why should Nichols’ plan be put on the fast track while public schools – whose needs are no less critical than highways – are still waiting in line? And, a separate decision to make tax cuts the top budget priority, even ahead of highways, puts even more funding off limits before even considering what is needed for public education.

Almost everybody, from the new governor on down, says they want to improve education, and a state judge has declared the school finance system inadequate, unfair and unconstitutional. But instead of addressing that ruling, the state is appealing that decision, while available revenue that could be used to start building a reliable school funding system for all of Texas’ school children is being committed to other causes.

Kids are still going to school every day, many in overcrowded, under-funded classrooms.

“We have got to deal with the major problems of this state before we commit to tax cuts,” Sen. Kevin Eltife of Tyler said in a recent interview with The Texas Tribune.

But, so far, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s demand for tax cuts — $4.6 billion worth in a Senate proposal – is mostly drowning everyone else out. Patrick also is backing Nichols’ highway funding plan.

“At the end of the day, the Texas economy stays strong if people have more money in their pocket, if businesses have more money to create jobs,” Patrick said.

But what kind of jobs will they be? The quality of those jobs and the future of our economy will depend on the state’s investment in public education, not tax cuts.

When science and education collide with politics

As the prolonged debate over global warming has demonstrated, politics and science often don’t mix well. And, for that matter, neither do politics and education in the highly charged, ideological atmosphere in which we find ourselves today.

The latest example is the bit of political theater that Sid Miller, Texas’ new agriculture commissioner, performed last week for the financial benefit of the Texas cattle industry and the amusement of the political clique that has made Washington-bashing a Lone Star State pastime.

The educated science was compiled and updated by a committee of nutritionists, physicians, and other health care experts from some of the country’s most prestigious universities. In an advisory report to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the panel urged Americans to limit their consumption of red meat and sugar in favor of more vegetables, fruits and whole grains. This is the kind of advice we have been hearing from doctors and nutritionists for years but is worth repeating.

The new report will be sent to the respective Cabinet secretaries, who are scheduled to release national dietary guidelines later this year. The committee also called on state and local officials throughout the country to make policy changes – such as taxes on less-healthy foods — to encourage healthier eating habits.

“This report would take meat off the menu,” Miller retorted, according to the Texas Tribune. “I don’t think it hurts a kid to have a hamburger on Fridays.” He also declared, “We know better how to raise our kids than some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.”

The report won’t force the removal of meat from menus, and it says nothing about outlawing hamburgers. Nor, for that matter, does it dictate how to raise children.

But Miller was responding to scientific evidence with political rhetoric in a transparent effort to defend the Texas beef industry, as well as his own future political support from that industry and, perhaps, his own livelihood as a cattle raiser. Cattle-raising was one of the things he did before he was elected last year.

The cattle industry is a large, important part of the Texas economy, and Texas politicians have been circling the wagons around it for years against threats, both real and perceived, from health experts who believe that too much red meat in most people’s diets is, well, too much.

Miller may know how to raise cattle, but he isn’t qualified to debunk the nutritional science or the alarming increase in recent rates of childhood obesity.

Political posturing, though, doesn’t require much education.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/02/20/agriculture-commissioner-rejects-usda-nutritional-/

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