Grading Texas

Patrick: A huge problem for education

True to form, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick used his inaugural address to mislead Texans about private school vouchers and “school choice” and then shamelessly abused the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“When it comes to school choice, remember, we already have it,” he said. “If you’re rich enough, you send your kids to private school. You have choice. If you’re mobile enough, you move to the suburbs. You have choice. But if you’re a poor working mom in the inner city…that parent, that grandparent, that guardian does not have choice.”

And the crocodile tears kept flowing.

Patrick refuses to admit that, even with a tax-paid voucher of several thousand dollars, most poor working moms in the inner city still wouldn’t have a choice. They still wouldn’t be able to afford the tuition to send their children to most private schools, where tuition in Texas can be as high as $26,000 or more a year. Since most private schools aren’t in poor, working class neighborhoods and many low-income families don’t have autos, vouchers wouldn’t help them transport their kids to private schools either. Unlike public schools, most private schools don’t have buses.

Vouchers primarily would benefit private school owners and the middle-class and upper-middle-class families who already can afford private schools. Meanwhile, the public schools where the vast majority of Texas school children, including most inner city kids, would continue to be educated would lose even more tax revenue from their already strapped budgets.

In his inaugural address, Patrick also had the gall to invoke the memory of the late Dr. King and his “I Have a Dream” speech, suggesting, wrongly, that vouchers are a new civil rights initiative.

“I don’t think he (King) could have dreamed that 52 years later, that many of our inner city schools would still be failing our children,” Patrick said.

For education, Patrick is the problem, not the solution. Patrick and those of similar mind in the Legislature are the main obstacles between inner city schools and success. As a state senator, Patrick joined the legislative majority in 2011 to slash $5.4 billion from public school budgets, and he voted in 2013 against the entire state budget, including ALL education funding – inner city schools, suburban schools, universities, every public educational institution in Texas.

Patrick also was heavily involved in weakening another MLK priority, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was designed to encourage and protect voting by minority Americans, including that inner city mom Patrick bemoaned at his inauguration. Patrick voted for and remains a strong advocate for Texas’ voter identification law, enacted in 2011 and designed to make it more difficult for people like that mom and other members of her family to turn out and vote against candidates like Patrick.

“It’s a new day in Texas,” Patrick declared.

There is nothing new about his bad old ideas, though.

Abbott: A cookie-cutter education?

An inaugural speech is not the place for a new governor to lay out policy details, and Governor Greg Abbott didn’t do that. But, in his prepared remarks, as he continued to talk generally about making Texas the “leader” in education, he did strike out against what he called a “cookie-cutter approach to teaching.”

I am not sure what he meant by that because Texas doesn’t have cookie-cutter teachers any more than it has cookie-cutter, or standardized, students. But in addition to having one of the most underfunded public education systems – per student – in the country, we also have an official state policy that encourages excessive “cookie-cutter” testing.

Maybe that’s what the new governor means. Teachers are increasingly feeling pressure to teach to the test – to follow a rote pattern — instead of using their knowledge and skills to teach children how to learn, to encourage their creativity and imaginations, to show them how to enjoy learning and not fear to be different from anyone else.

If that is what Abbott means, and if he intends to sharply curtail standardized testing, then he can be an advocate for positive change in our educational system. If he was simply being rhetorical, Texas school children will continue to suffer the consequences of unfair standardization.

Abbott, in his address, indicated a recognition of the “value and uniqueness of each student.” Now, he needs to also recognize that state government not only has been stifling those students with excessive tests and test preparation but also short-changing them with an inadequate and unfair school finance system.

$18 billion is a lot of money, but…

Now we know, officially, following the comptroller’s revenue estimate, that the Legislature will have $18 billion in new money to spend on public needs during this session. Wow, that’s a lot of money, you might say, more than enough to improve school funding, particularly since both the incoming governor and lieutenant governor are talking about putting priorities on education.

Yes, $18 billion is a lot of money, enough for the Legislature to provide a significant increase for education funding without raising anyone’s taxes. But getting a decent share of it for public schools, health care and other critical public needs will remain a tough fight, given the tea party’s tightened hold on the state Capitol.

For starters, ultra-conservatives may insist that the Legislature keep about one-third, maybe as much as $8 billion, of the extra money in the bank to comply with a constitutional spending cap that has become a political rallying standard for legislators intent on shrinking state government rather than adequately funding public services.

Further, despite their talk about education, both Gov.-elect Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick – backed by such influential groups as the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Texas Association of Business — have made it clear they want to use a big chunk of what’s left of the $18 billion to lower business and property taxes.

Throw in demands for improving highway funding and increasing appropriations for higher education and other programs, and the political realities of the revenue picture worsen even more. Remember, the legislative majority cut $5.4 billion from public education in 2011 and restored only about $3.4 billion two years ago. It will require $2 billion to finish restoring the school money cut in 2011 and additional billions to meet the growing needs of an enrollment increasing by 80,000 to 85,000 students per year.

As reported by the Austin American-Statesman, Patrick said the comptroller’s revenue estimate was enough “to secure our border, provide property and business tax relief while focusing on education and infrastructure.”

That comment reinforces Patrick’s priorities of border security and tax cuts. Based on his legislative record and his 2014 election campaign, Patrick’s primary interest in education is not adequate and fair funding for public schools but diverting tax dollars from public schools for vouchers and other unproven privatization schemes.

The new comptroller, Glenn Hegar, also predicted the state’s Rainy Day Fund will swell to $11.1 billion by August 2017, but tea party legislators will likely fight any effort to tap into that savings account for public education.

Public education advocates are prepared to fight to squeeze every possible dollar for Texas neighborhood schools and school children, and you can help. Contact your legislators and make them know, in no uncertain terms, how important your public schools are to you and demand adequate funding. If you don’t know who your state senator or state representative is, click on the link below to learn who they are and how to contact them.

We all know $18 billion is a lot of money, and it offers an opportunity for education that shouldn’t be wasted.

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx

Legislature has obligation to public, not private, schools

For many years now, accountability has been the favorite buzz word used by groups and legislators opposed to adequately funding our under-funded public schools. Now, in the curtain-raiser on the latest effort to divert tax dollars from public schools for private school vouchers, accountability has been replaced with “competition.”

Some of the usual suspects – the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Texas Association of Business – were lined up in support as state Sen. Donna Campbell unveiled her voucher bill yesterday. The measure would provide state funding to students to attend accredited private schools of their families’ choice.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Campbell and researcher Arthur Laffer brushed aside questions about whether the state’s low investment in public education contributed to under-achievement problems they allegedly are trying to address with vouchers. The Legislature still hasn’t fully restored all of the $5.4 billion cut from public school budgets four years ago, thousands of classrooms are still overcrowded and Texas spends, on average, less per student than all but a few other states. Plus, a state district judge has declared the school funding system inadequate, unfair and unconstitutional.

Never mind all that, the pro-voucher crowd claims. All public schools need in order to perform better, Laffer claimed, was more “competition” from private schools – private schools that, under Campbell’s bill, wouldn’t even be held to the same academic and financial standards as public schools. And, the voucher advocates want to take even more money from those public schools, which is where the vast majority of Texas school children will continue to be educated.

Campbell said the Legislature has a “moral obligation” to help children trapped in poor or under-performing public schools.

What the Legislature really has is a moral obligation to uphold the Texas Constitution. And a major constitutional obligation of legislators is to adequately and fairly fund the public schools, not weaken them by diverting public tax dollars to private school coffers.

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