Grading Texas

Abbott encouraging on education, but…

Gov. Greg Abbott, in his State of the State address, continued to give mixed signals about his commitment to a strong public education system. On the plus side, TSTA was encouraged that the governor supports strong pre-K and early childhood education programs because those are critical to later student success.

But, as we all should know, a meaningful commitment to pre-K and every other step up the public education ladder requires a commitment to resources. And, it was discouraging that the governor called for an end to school finance litigation without saying how he intended to provide public schools with the adequate and equitable funding that all school children need for success.

You may have noticed that the governor gave a specific figure, $4 billion, he wants the Legislature to appropriate for transportation, and he also specified a few billion dollars as his goal for tax cuts.

As TSTA President Noel Candelaria noted, “The governor gave a specific dollar figure for roads and for tax cuts, but, unfortunately, our children’s educational needs did not warrant that level of commitment.”

God, guns and schools

You probably have noticed how some legislators and advocates like to invoke the name of God when they are seeking approval of something controversial. It’s as if they are proclaiming, “If you oppose this, you are opposing God’s will.”

I do not presume to know what God may or may not like when it comes to legislative issues, but I do believe that legislators who invoke God’s name should at least be consistent in their views of His will.

For example, state Sen. Brian Birdwell of Granbury, the main Senate sponsor of the bill to allow permit holders to take handguns inside state university classrooms, was asked why he wouldn’t let university regents decide that issue instead. According to the Austin American-Statesman, Birdwell said that was because the U.S. and Texas constitutions guaranteed gun ownership rights.

“Rights that are granted by God are ours to protect. They are not to be delegated…to boards of regents,” he said.

Now, I am not conceding that it is God’s will that people carry pistols into college classrooms, or even that God influenced the drafting of constitutional gun rights. But if Birdwell believes that God was behind the constitutional provisions on gun rights, I wonder whether the senator also believes that God’s will is reflected in all other constitutional provisions, including Article 7, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution, which requires the Legislature to make “suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of free public schools.”

Birdwell voted to slash $5.4 billion from school budgets in 2011, prompting a state judge to declare the school funding system unconstitutional because it is, among other reasons, inadequate and unfair.

Does Birdwell also feel the need to address the rights that God granted to all of Texas’ school children? Or, is he selective about which parts of the constitution reflect God’s handiwork?

Just wondering.

Ignoring the real obstacle to education

More proof has come our way that the root cause of poor performance in public schools has nothing to do with the schools and everything to do with something beyond the schools’ control – poverty. The problem is slapping us in the face, but it continues to be neglected by the legislative majority in Texas and other states as well as, to a large degree, the White House.

The Southern Education Foundation recently reported that more than half of the children attending public schools in the United States are from low-income families. That is, they qualify for free or reduced-price lunches under the federal program. The national average during the 2012-13 school year, on which the study was based, was 51 percent, with Texas and 17 other states reaching that percentage or higher. In Texas, 60 percent of school children are considered low-income.

This problem has grown quickly since 1989, when about one-third of public school enrollment nationally was in poverty.

As NEA Today Express pointed out in the article linked below, growing up in poverty is “one of the greatest impediments” to a child’s cognitive development and ability to learn. The article cites data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, showing in 2011, for example, that fourth-graders eligible for free lunches scored 29 points lower on reading than students not eligible. Eighth-graders eligible for free lunches scored 25 points lower than their classmates from families with more income.

The problem shouldn’t be that difficult to understand. Children who are undernourished and chronically ill but can’t go to the doctor because their families can’t afford health insurance are not going to perform well in school and, in many cases, are not even going to go to school. Homework isn’t a priority for a child worrying about his or her next meal or bothered by a toothache that won’t go away.

And, low-income parents who have to juggle two or three jobs to provide that next meal – and try to pay the rent and the utility bill – aren’t going to have much time to help their children prepare for their next classes or even to know for sure if their kids are attending school. For that, matter, the kids also may be trying to earn income somewhere, and many get overwhelmed or discouraged and drop out.

Many of these low-income parents, of course, also are under-educated. Many never completed high school. Texas has the highest percentage of adults without a high school diploma in the United States.

Remember, Texas also has the highest percentage of residents without health care in the country and still refuses to accept the Medicaid expansion offered by the federal government on extremely favorable financial terms. And, Texas still spends less on education per student than all but a handful of states.

So what are our state leaders and the pseudo-education reformers (including some of the state’s alleged business leaders) doing about all this? They are wringing their hands over test scores, calling for tax cuts, proposing private school vouchers and professing to care about the best interests of Texas school children.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan remains one of the nation’s biggest boosters of standardized testing, which wastes huge amounts of tax dollars and robs millions of school children of real learning opportunities.

President Obama should either rein in Duncan or replace him.

And then the president and every member of the Texas Legislature should read the new report on education and poverty – and start trying to do something about the problem it so clearly points out.

http://neatoday.org/2015/01/16/shameful-milestone-majority-public-school-students-now-live-poverty/?utm_source=nea_today_express&utm_medium=email&utm_content=students_poverty&utm_campaign=150211neatodayexpress

When legislators are bullied, students can suffer

This legislative session, at least in the early going, is threatening to become the year of the bully. The bullies certainly hope so. And, if members of the majority party at the Capitol don’t start standing up to them – and soon – it is going to become increasingly difficult to have serious debate and discussion over issues, such as public education, that are of critical importance to the 99 percent or so of Texans who aren’t bullies.

Legislative budget writers have held preliminary hearings on education funding, following two strong rulings from a state judge that our school finance system is inadequate, unfair and unconstitutional. But much of the early attention at the Capitol has been focused on guns.

Scheduled for a public hearing later this week is legislation that would allow Texans to strut their stuff wearing holstered pistols on their hips, ala Hollywood cowboys, and carry their firearms into college classrooms. These measures don’t address any emergency, except a pseudo-emergency created by the bullying tactics of a small group of gun rights activists who apparently enjoy trying to frighten people, including lawmakers.

Now, it has been called to my attention, the North Texas Tea Party is flexing its bullying muscles by proposing a “citizen’s trial” of the Legislature at the conclusion of the current regular session and/or special sessions. Legislators found falling short of tea party standards would be assessed a so-called “death penalty,” presumably the opposition of tea party members in the next election cycle. Even though the idea almost conjures up images of the Salem witch trials, the proposal is pretty ludicrous and likely to be ignored by most legislators.

But the tea party is influential in the Republican primary, and it has helped elect a number of lawmakers who might march through the Capitol rotunda every day at noon in their underwear if tea partiers demanded it. These same lawmakers also are ready to slash spending and taxes at the tea party’s behest and at the expense of public schools, educators and students.

So far, the strong-arm antics are mostly a sideshow, but, as the debate over firearms has shown, they can get out of hand. To its credit, the Legislature in years past has taken steps to address bullying in public school classrooms. Now, it’s time for lawmakers to fight back at the bullying on their own turf and focus on what really matters for the vast majority of Texans.

http://northtexasteaparty.org/2015/01/14/future-trial-of-the-84th-tx-legislative-session/