Grading Texas

Guns versus schools

I will give gun rights advocate Kory Watkins credit for one thing. He knows how to get attention in the legislative arena, a not-so-easy accomplishment in a circus-like environment where, believe me, there is plenty of competition, especially this year. But his videotaped diatribe accusing lawmakers of committing “treason” by denying every Tom, Dick and Jane the right to openly carry a handgun reinforces the importance of a strong public education system.

“Going against the Constitution is treason,” Watkins said in his video, before setting off a media frenzy by adding that such an act is “punishable by death.” I suspect the death penalty reference was strictly theatrical, although it may have produced some heart palpitations among legislators, including those who are constantly pandering to the gun crowd.

I am not going to debate the Second Amendment. But even if legislators are violating the Constitution by regulating gun rights – and I am not conceding that they are – they are not committing treason. Any social studies teacher could have told Kory that.

Treason is not simply the act of violating the U.S. Constitution. Treason is the crime of betraying our country, attempting to overthrow the government or aiding and abetting our country’s enemies. You could argue that openly discussing secession – sound familiar? — comes closer to a treasonous act than regulating firearms.

If simply violating the Constitution were treason, many legislators already would be in deep trouble, including, in my opinion, those who voted a few years ago for the voter photo ID law, which has no purpose other than to discourage minority citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

Violating the Texas Constitution isn’t treasonous either, but it certainly can be wrong. As a state district judge has ruled twice in the past two years, this legislative majority is violating the Texas Constitution by inadequately and unfairly funding public education.

Are most legislators attempting to do anything about it? No.

They are spending some time talking about private school vouchers, which also would violate the state constitution and make the funding system worse. And, they are spending a preposterous amount of time worrying about guns and their political standing with gun rights advocates.

If this legislative majority spent half the time trying to draft a real solution to school funding as it does on guns, it might actually accomplish something to benefit – rather than simply enrage or amuse — thousands of Texas families.

Vouchers: A tuition break at your expense

Here’s more proof that the main push behind private school vouchers is not low-income children, despite advocates’ public declarations, but middle-class and upper-middle-class families who are seeking tuition help from fellow taxpayers.

Asked about his position on vouchers this week, one pro-voucher legislator (not low-income and not inner-city) said he sent his child to private school and wished that he had had some help with tuition. Now, he said, he is ready to help other middle-class families like his send their children to private school – with your tax dollars. And this pro-voucher lawmaker is not alone.

The chief voucher advocate, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, repeatedly has said his goal for vouchers is to help low-income children escape failing public schools. In his inaugural address, he grieved over that “poor working mom” in the inner city who didn’t have a “choice” about where to send her children to school.

Hooey. With vouchers, she still wouldn’t have a choice.

With vouchers at the level being proposed – about $5,400 per child – that inner-city mom and thousands of other low-income families still couldn’t afford most private schools. The average tuition for a private elementary school in Texas is $6,800 and for a high school, $8,900. Some of the better private schools charge $26,000 or more a year.

Low-income families couldn’t afford to pay the tuition difference for most private schools, and many wouldn’t be able to get their children to school anyway, because most private schools aren’t located in low-income neighborhoods and don’t provide transportation.

In truth, middle-income and upper-middle-income families, many of whom already send their children to private schools, would gobble up the vouchers. Meanwhile, low-income kids would remain in neighborhood public schools that would continue to suffer budget cuts.

The voucher scheme has nothing to do with helping inner-city kids. It simply is a way to transfer your tax dollars from public schools to privatization schemes that would hurt the vast majority of low-income school children.

Texas students don’t need another test

Although state Rep. Bill Zedler seems to be trying to swim upstream against a pretty strong current of public opinion, he has filed a bill to require Texas students to pass a civics test in order to receive a high school diploma. I know. Another test. Just what we don’t want, right?

Remember, two years ago the Legislature, rather than be stampeded out of town by outraged parents, reduced from 15 to five the number of end-of-course exams high school students already have to pass to graduate. And, many of those same parents wouldn’t take kindly to seeing the number begin to creep back up. They prefer, instead, more reductions in testing, beginning with grade school.

So, what does Zedler, an ultraconservative from Arlington, have in mind? Maybe he thinks a new civics test would encourage more students to participate in politics or, at least, vote. I doubt that. Another test would just annoy more kids and their parents, encourage more teaching to the test and steal even more valuable learning time from classrooms. Besides, students in Texas public schools already have completed many lessons and tests in U.S. and Texas government and history, from elementary school through high school.

Zedler’s bill (HB829) would require the civics test to be “composed of all or a portion of the questions on the civics test administered by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of the naturalization process under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.”

By copying the federal citizenship naturalization test, Zedler’s proposal could save taxpayers the multi-million-dollar cost of hiring a private contractor to develop a new test. Many students who would be tested, of course, would be immigrants.

Interestingly, according to a recent article in the Washington Post, more than 97 percent of immigrants applying for citizenship pass the Naturalization Civics Test. That suggests many immigrants know more about how our government is supposed to work than many native-born Texans do. But that, still, is no reason to increase an already excessive test burden on Texas students.

“School choice” is not a choice for many families

For a long time, “reform” has been the most abused word in the political arena surrounding education, and now it has a strong competitor – “choice,” as in school choice.

In the correct meaning of the word, reform describes an action that improves something. Most of the self-styled education “reformers” who will be pontificating at the state Capitol over the next few months don’t want to improve our public schools. They want to milk money from them for their own privatization schemes, such as private school vouchers , corporate charters or online learning courses, where teachers are an afterthought.

The big privatization push this session will be vouchers, which advocates, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, are trying to deliberately soft-pedal as school choice. They claim falsely that vouchers will give low-income parents in neighborhoods with struggling schools the “choice” to send their children to good private schools. Remember that poor “working mom” in the inner city that Patrick wrung his hands over in his inaugural address last week?

The reality is that vouchers wouldn’t do that mom or thousands of other working parents just like her any good. Vouchers wouldn’t give them a choice in schools. That’s because vouchers wouldn’t come close to covering the full cost of tuition at most private schools, particularly the better facilities, and low-income families wouldn’t be able to afford the difference. Nor would vouchers cover the transportation costs of getting kids to school.

A voucher bill filed by state Sen. Donna Campbell would cap each voucher at 60 percent of what the state is spending now on each public school student. During the 2013-14 school year, the state spent an average of $8,998 per student, based on average daily attendance. Sixty percent of that is about $5,400.Compare that with private school tuition rates in Texas as high as $26,000 a year, or more, for many schools.

The only real choice would reside with parents who make a lot more money than that inner-city mom. And many of them already can afford their own private school tuition without state assistance. Choice also would rest with the private schools, who would have their pick of students bearing tax dollars. In a private education system, the students don’t choose the schools. The schools choose the students.

Texas cannot afford to pay for two separate school systems: a private system for its more affluent families and a public system, weakened by the diversion of tax dollars from already underfunded schools, for everyone else.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31