Grading Texas

A valuable teaching moment for democracy

Even if the dinosaurs on the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturn her order – and that may happen before you read this – U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos provided a valuable teaching moment when she struck down Texas’ voter identification law yesterday. The lesson, of course, is that democracy is fragile and easily abused by people in power who don’t think democracy necessarily should apply to them.

Whether this judge’s order is upheld or overturned by higher courts within the next couple of weeks could have a significant effect on the outcome of key elections in Texas, including those for governor, lieutenant governor and several legislative seats, and how public education and other important public services are affected during next year’s legislative session.

The legislative majority enacted the voter ID law in 2011, during the same session in which the same legislators slashed $5.4 billion from public school budgets in Texas. The law requires voters to produce one of seven forms of photo identification (in addition to voter registration cards) to be allowed to cast ballots in Texas elections.

The legislative majority tried to damage educational opportunities for a public school population that is growing increasingly minority. And it tried to discourage many of those kids’ parents and grandparents from exercising their constitutional right to vote and turning the education-cutters out of office. More than 600,000 registered Texas voters don’t have a driver’s license or other valid form of photo ID, and most of those are Hispanic or black. The potentially expensive, bureaucratic hurdles to get an acceptable ID are an unconstitutional burden, Judge Gonzales Ramos ruled.

She likened the law to the poll taxes imposed by Texas and other southern states during the Jim Crow-era to discourage black Americans from voting. Poll taxes were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court years ago.

The alleged voter fraud that Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and other supporters use as an excuse for the law is, in itself, a fraud. Voter fraud, from a statistical standpoint, is practically non-existent in Texas. Abbott, the attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate, immediately announced he will appeal Judge Gonzales Ramos’ ruling. He has the support of Patrick, the Republican lieutenant governor nominee, who not only wants to close the border to immigrants, but also wants to keep Texas citizens who don’t look like him or agree with him from voting.

Abbott, Patrick and other supporters of voter ID are trying to use it to keep minority voter turnout low because minority voters cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. They do so because they value public education, health care and other critical services that most Democrats continue to champion.

Supporters of the voter ID law have something in common with the segregationists who tried to block schoolhouse and college doors to black students back in the 1960s. To varying degrees, both groups were and are abusing democracy.

The segregationists ended up on the wrong side of history. And so will the voter ID defenders, who will be the real losers in the civics lessons that Texas students will be taught in the not-too-distant future.

Another education-cutter trying to sneak back into office

Rodney Anderson, a former legislator and former tormentor of public schools, is trying to make a comeback this November, so he can pick up where he left off three years ago, making deep cuts into educators’ jobs and children’s opportunities.

Anderson is trying to sneak back into office by claiming falsely to be an education champion, and I am sure he isn’t the only education-cutter out there using the same act. His, however, recently was called to my attention. So voters in Texas House District 105 in Dallas County, you have been warned.

Anderson, the Republican nominee in that race, voted for the $5.4 billion in school budget cuts in 2011, before falling victim to redistricting and losing a reelection race in 2012. Now, he is running again.

In a recent campaign flyer, Anderson made several education promises, including pledges to put students and teachers first, spend more money in the classroom and allow schools to “keep their best and brightest teachers.”

Each one is a hollow promise that Anderson cannot be counted upon to even try to deliver.

The budget cuts he voted for the last time he was in the Texas House cost 11,000 teacher jobs, including almost 200 in Irving and Grand Prairie, which are within District 105. Many of those lost jobs had belonged to some of our best teachers. And, thousands of children were crammed into overcrowded classrooms.

He voted for the cuts while leaving several billion dollars of taxpayer money unspent in the state’s Rainy Day Fund. So, if he tells you he had to make the cuts, don’t believe him.

Anderson’s opponent, Susan Motley, also promises to give a high priority to students and teachers, and, unlike Anderson, she is telling the truth, and she will deliver for education.

Anderson and his fellow budget-cutters – candidates and officeholders up and down the ballot — will continue to cloud the air during the remainder of the election season by giving lip service to education and rewriting their political histories. It is easy for voters to get lost in the smoke. So, to be on the safe side, click on the link below and check out TSTA’s endorsements in contested state races. TSTA endorses candidates and officeholders who truly are advocates for public schools, people who can be counted upon to deliver for students and educators, not spin fairy tales.

http://tsta.org/sites/default/files/EndorsedCandidates14_0.pdf

A strong school system needs more than more of the same

This analogy may be an overextended stretch into the dramatic, but Texas’ growing public education system reminds me a little of the Titanic. It is an ambitious, enormous venture with serious, basic flaws. The Titanic sank too easily and didn’t have enough lifeboats. Our education system is not adequately or fairly funded and, like the Titanic, is on a collision course with trouble.

As attorney general, Greg Abbott continues to defend the indefensible school finance system, including $5.4 billion in budget cuts, despite a judge’s strongly worded ruling that school funding is inadequate, unconstitutional and overdue for a real remedy. As a candidate for governor, Abbott issues little more than hollow statements about making Texas education No. 1 in the country without offering anything that would realistically bring that about.

Abbott represents “status quo-plus,” as The Dallas Morning News noted in an editorial this week, and for Texas school kids and educators that means more crowded classrooms, more standardized tests and more experimentation with school privatization for a select few students, while a growing number of parents fume and worry.

If Abbott were captain of the Titanic, as the old cliché suggests, he would be busily rearranging the deck chairs, oblivious to the iceberg looming ever closer.

Wendy Davis wants to avoid the iceberg, and, as governor, would set a new course for Texas schools, beginning with a realistic school funding plan to meet the challenges of a public education system growing by 80,000 students a year. She will work to expand crucial pre-kindergarten programs that will determine classroom success for thousands of children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

She will cut back on standardized tests, promote college readiness and treat teachers and other school employees as the professionals they are, including efforts to begin moving teacher pay toward the national average.

Davis has been accused by some, including The Dallas Morning News, of not knowing – or avoiding – how she would pay for these needed educational improvements. Some have suggested that, as governor, she would promote a major tax increase. In truth, she won’t because, one, the conservative Legislature won’t pass a major tax increase, and, two, higher taxes aren’t necessary to begin accomplishing what Davis wants to do.

Billions of additional dollars will be available from existing taxes, the comptroller’s office told the House Ways and Means Committee a couple of weeks ago. Sales tax revenue has been increasing by about 5.5 percent a year, thanks to the strong economy, and the Rainy Day Fund balance is sitting at $8.4 billion and will soon grow to double digits.

“I will set a vision,” Davis said during her second debate with Abbott. A vision that is strong enough to see the iceberg coming – and do something about it.

Patrick outlines plan to gut schools, local governments

I doubt that Dan Patrick has ever had a bad idea that he didn’t try to make worse. First, he was trying to fool voters into thinking that he would lower school property taxes in a “swap” for higher sales taxes, an idea that would have been bad enough for public education. But during last night’s debate of lieutenant governor candidates, he dropped even the pretense of a tax trade.

Now, he has made it clear that he wants to lower school and other local property taxes and abolish or significantly reduce the state’s main business tax (the margins tax) while raising the sales tax only a “penny or two.” In other words, Patrick wants to complete the job of gutting school funding AND cripple budgets for cities, counties and hospital districts, which also rely on the property tax as a major source of revenue. That is what Leticia Van de Putte, Patrick’s opponent, pointed out during the debate, and she was absolutely correct.

A modest increase in the sales tax, which Patrick suggested, wouldn’t come close to closing the huge revenue shortfall that would be left by lowering property taxes and cutting revenue from the margins tax. But it would force Texans to pay more every time they went out to eat or needed to buy new clothes, new furniture, another computer or thousands of other items.

Meanwhile, many teachers would lose their jobs, as would police officers, firefighters and other critical employees we have come to take for granted. Taking Patrick at his word, many neighborhood schools would be forced to close, and thousands of children would be forced into overcrowded classes on unfamiliar campuses farther from home – and with less police and fire protection.

Patrick is an opportunist who would – and does – promise right-wing, anti-government ideologues anything he thinks will help him advance up the public payroll ladder. Wipe out public schools? Sure, no problem, Patrick says, just so we save enough tax dollars to pay for private school vouchers.

Even before entering the lieutenant governor’s race, Patrick was well on the way to torching public education. He voted for the $5.4 billion in school budget cuts in 2011 and voted against the entire state budget, including ALL funding for education, in 2013 – and later lied about “leading” an effort for education funding. That whopper was so bad the Austin American-Statesman, in its PolitiFact column, gave Patrick a “Pants on Fire!” rating.

The only thing Patrick wants to lead is the continuing effort to throw Texas over the cliff, aided and abetted not only by Tea Partiers, but also by people who should know better, including some of the state’s insider business organizations.

Most business people understand the importance of a strong public education system to the state’s economy and business prosperity. But some Austin-based groups, notably the Texas Association of Business (TAB), continue to moan and groan about low test scores while supporting Patrick and questioning the need for additional school revenue, even though thousands of grade school classes exceed the state limit on capacity.

TAB and other Austin insider groups have been supporting education budget-cutters for years because, truth be told, they are more interested in currying favors – low taxes, lax government regulations and protections from consumer lawsuits — than they are in promoting quality classrooms. In that regard, they have found a champion in Dan Patrick. But too bad for the rest of us.

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