Grading Texas

Abbott’s and the GOP’s anti-education platform

If Greg Abbott and the Republicans who made him their gubernatorial nominee have their way, the war on public education in Texas will be renewed, beginning with further cuts in funding for both public schools and higher education.

Abbott, you will recall, continues to defend an inadequate school funding system, including $5.4 billion in budget cuts imposed by the legislative majority three years ago. Now, like-minded delegates to the recent Republican State Convention adopted a party platform that includes the following plank: “Since data is clear that additional money does not translate into educational achievement, and higher education costs are out of control, we support reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of educational institutions.”

The only “data” these backward-thinking ideologues are talking about is something they pulled out of their ears. You cannot have sustained educational achievement without paying for it. Whether Abbott and the platform writers like it or not, public school enrollment in Texas is growing by about 80,000 students a year. Additional money is needed to meet the demand for enough teachers to keep class sizes from getting out-of-hand and to equip those teachers with the resources their students need for success.

Republicans who can do the math realize that and will choose to ignore the platform, but it won’t go away. And, it does represent Abbott’s thinking. Not only does he continue to defend the earlier school budget cuts, he also has dismissed pre-kindergarten expenditures as a “waste” of money when, in fact, research – real research—has shown the importance of early childhood education programs.

Based on other language in the GOP platform, the party’s official solution to the growth of Texas public schools is to seal the border with Mexico. But that isn’t going to happen, folks, nor should it. Another platform plank calls on the Legislature to enact a law prohibiting undocumented children from receiving free educations in public schools, although the U.S. Supreme Court declared such laws unconstitutional years ago.

Abbott supports the school privatization advocates whose methodology is to underfund the public schools, declare them a failure and then privatize them by diverting tax dollars to unproven schemes such as private school vouchers and virtual or corporate-operated charters.

Here is the school privatization plank in the new Republican Party platform: “We encourage the Governor and the Texas Legislature to enact child-centered school funding options which fund the student, not schools or districts, to allow for maximum freedom of choice in public, private or parochial education for all children.”

Freedom of choice? Baloney. It’s a license to milk private profit from public tax dollars.

The platform also includes language seeking to undermine those long-time conservative targets – the teaching of evolution and sex education in public schools.

The platform also states: “We support school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded and which form the basis of America’s legal, political and economic systems.”

Nothing was said, however, about the growing presence of Muslims in Texas and the public school system.

My thanks to the Burnt Orange Report for scoring a platform draft. Last time I checked, the Republican Party had not posted the platform on its website. Wonder why.

Bad news for a North Texas school district

Watching bigots in public places fall all over themselves with apologies has become something of a spectator sport in this day of social media. But it is far from entertaining.

The latest example comes from the Keller ISD in suburban Fort Worth, where newly elected school board member Jo Lynn Haussmann went on Facebook to berate voters in the community of Southlake for electing a Muslim to their city council. “What a SHAME!!!!!” she lamented.

The comments quickly blew up in her face. There were messages against her comments on social media, critical emails to the news media and a repudiation from other board members, who now will decide if the new trustee violated the board’s code of conduct.

Haussmann has apologized, both publicly and in a personal phone call to the Muslim surgeon who was the target of her comments. And she told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “I can’t believe I did anything so stupid.”

It may be easier to believe than she wants to admit, however, because she has made anti-Muslim comments before. According to the Star-Telegram, she posted this comment on a YouTube video during the 2012 presidential campaign: “DON’T SELL OUT YOUR COUNTRY TO BE A SOCIALIST/COMMUNIST NATION BY NOT VOTING ROMNEY!…I’d rather have a Mormon with HIGH MORALS than a muslim!” (Mormons may consider that a back-handed endorsement, at best.)

Of course, neither President Obama nor Vice President Joe Biden, his running mate, is a Socialist, a Communist or a Muslim. But Haussmann has given a strong indication, at least twice now, of being a bigot.

Even without her bigoted comments, she may be bad news for educators, students and parents in Keller ISD, a fast-growing, suburban school district that needs strong support from state government as well as local taxpayers. Her supporters included the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party and Empower Texans, groups intent on starving public schools and other critical public services.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/06/02/5866678/keller-board-member-says-muslim.html?rh=1

Patrick’s record on education speaks for itself

Not too many years ago, Dan Patrick was simply a publicity stunt. Now, he could become the next lieutenant governor of Texas, in a prime position to wreak havoc on public schools and a host of other important public services. The mainstream media has all but inaugurated him to the state’s No. 2 office, assuming that people who purport to care about Texas’ future will vote nevertheless in November for the “inevitable” because he has an R behind his name.

Patrick won the Republican nomination by appealing to Texas’ right-wing political fringe, largely at the expense of the state’s emerging majority population. He likened the growth of the Hispanic population, including immigration from Mexico, as an “illegal invasion” that must be stopped by sealing off the border. And, he accused immigrants of bringing leprosy and other “third-world diseases” into the United States.

The rhetoric – which, for all we know, Patrick truly believes – worked because people who know better, the traditional Republicans who have turned their primary over to flat-earth ideologues, stayed home or held their noses.

No sooner, though, had Patrick won a low-turnout runoff – he won the votes of only 3.5 percent of registered Texas voters — than he already was trying to backpedal on his anti-Hispanic remarks in an effort to appear more “moderate” for a wider general election audience. Because of Republicans like Patrick, Hispanics have traditionally voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates, and Patrick’s Democratic opponent, Leticia Van de Putte, is Hispanic. Both are state senators.

It is unknown how heavy the Hispanic voting turnout will be in November because that voting bloc has not yet lived up to its potential, but it could be crucial not only to Van de Putte’s chances but also to the election prospects of gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis and other Democratic candidates. That is why Patrick and other Republicans enacted the photo identification law as a potential barrier to discourage many Hispanics from going to the polls, and this is the first general election in which it will be in play.

Texans who care about the future of public education have a lot at stake in the November election because the differences between Patrick and Republican gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott, on one hand, and Van de Putte and Davis, on the other, are crystal clear.

Three years ago, Patrick voted for the $5.4 billion in school budget cuts that hurt all the state’s school districts and struck particularly hard at property poor districts with large numbers of low-income, primarily Hispanic, students. And, he has been a long-time champion of diverting tax dollars from these schools — and the vast majority of Texas children — to corporate-run charters or to private schools in the form of tax-paid vouchers, which would benefit only a select few Texas students.

Abbott continues to defend the school budget cuts and the rest of the state’s inadequate, unfair school funding system. He also is an advocate of selective educational opportunities, including a pre-kindergarten proposal that could require 4-year-olds to take standardized tests.

Davis and Van de Putte fought against the budget cuts and, last year, led the fight in the Senate to restore much of the funding. They also are strong advocates for improving educational opportunities for all Texas kids.

While he was trying to reverse course on his anti-Hispanic rhetoric this week, Patrick was quoted in The Texas Tribune, “Before you can get someone’s vote, you have to respect them enough to go talk with them and explain who you are.”

I think his Republican primary campaign and record as a state senator have been explanation enough.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/05/29/lt-gov-race-hispanic-voters-become-focus/

Bipartisan legislative trouble looming for public schools

The attack on public schools in Texas is likely to escalate during next year’s legislative session, and it will come from both Republicans and Democrats calling themselves “reformers.” The Texas Observer has a good overview, linked below, about two high-dollar, deliberately misnamed groups that have been preparing for the session by spreading cash in this year’s political races.

One is Texans for Education Reform, about which I have written before. This is an offshoot of Texans for Lawsuit Reform, a conservative, business group that has successfully lobbied for laws giving its members protection from lawsuits by aggrieved customers and other consumers. Technically, Texans for Lawsuit Reform hasn’t completely banned consumers from Texas courtrooms, but not for a lack of trying.

The group’s new incarnation, Texans for Education Reform, will be pushing for school privatization schemes, including expansion of corporate-run charter schools and online learning, to further enrich some of its contributors.

Now, another group with a similar agenda, Democrats for Education Reform, is moving into Texas. This comes just as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a Democratic appointee, is putting the squeeze on Texas to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores. Research has consistently found that standardized testing is neither a fair nor effective way to educate children or evaluate teacher performances, but it is a sure-fire way to enrich companies with test preparation contracts. And, the so-called education “reform” groups likely will be advocating for this as well.

According to the Observer, a spokeswoman for Texans for Education Reform declined to discuss the group’s specific legislative goals for next year. She did say the group would lobby for “research-proven reforms that empower parents, reinforce local control and provide pathways for intervention in chronically failing schools within a morally responsible timeline.”

But research contradicts the “reformers.” Charter schools are no better or worse, on average, than traditional public schools, and they take money from neighborhood schools, where most children will continue to be educated. And, studies have shown that test scores don’t accurately measure teacher effectiveness.

So, how morally responsible is it to use unproven privatization programs to undermine neighborhood public schools?

http://www.texasobserver.org/meet-new-money-behind-school-reform-texas/

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