Grading Texas

Voucher advocates – those who would siphon state tax dollars for tuition to be paid to private schools – haven’t made many headlines in Texas in recent years, but they haven’t given up. One of their latest ideas calls for the Legislature to create a franchise tax credit to fund scholarships enabling parents, who are unhappy with their kids’ current public schools, to transfer them to other schools, public or private.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, has an article promoting the idea on its webpage. The article says 10 other states already have similar programs.

As envisioned for Texas, a “tax credit scholarship program” would be funded with donations from businesses. Businesses could make donations directly to any nonprofit, scholarshipgranting organization they chose and receive a credit against the franchise tax. The organizations would then provide scholarships to public school students for private school tuition, transportation costs to attend a different public school or even for home school instruction.

Call it what they want, folks, this is a first cousin (or closer) to a private school voucher program. The franchise tax already falls about $4.5 billion a year short of paying for the school property tax cuts that Gov. Perry and the Legislature ordered in 2006. Lawmakers have no business diverting more money from that already insufficient revenue source to boost the profits of private school owners.

We need to increase resources for the public schools, not steal from them. The public schools – not private schools or home schools – educate the vast majority of Texas’ children, and no voucher program (including one in disguise) is going to change that. Such diversions will only make the jobs of the public schools even more difficult.

Chairman emeritus of the Texas Public Policy Foundation is none other than James Leininger, the wealthy San Antonio businessman who already has spent millions of dollars trying to purchase a voucher friendly state government.

Here is a link to the TPPF article:

http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=3071

The Texas Association of Business (TAB) released a report this week pointing out how Texas has fallen way behind the curve in educating its future workforce and remaining competitive in the high stakes global competition for jobs. There were no big revelations in the report. But it was interesting that TAB went to the trouble of compiling it, since TAB for many years now has been part of the basic problem.

The report lists the following serious deficiencies, among others:

* At all age levels, Texans are educated at lower levels than their peers nationally, and we’re losing ground.
* Only seven states have done a worse job than Texas in developing a welleducated work force among workers who are farthest from retirement age.
* The growing minority population fares the worst in Texas’ educational system. More than twothirds of the Hispanic population has no education beyond high school.
* At least onethird of Texas ninth graders drop out of school before earning a high school diploma.
* And, nearly onethird of students who enroll in college immediately after graduating from high school are deemed not ready for collegelevel work.

You can read the full report, entitled “Dream Big Texas,” by clicking on the link below. The report also recommends some limited solutions, including more collaboration between businesses and local school districts and some changes in the funding formulas for higher education.

Much of what the report proposes, however, is simply more rearrangement of the deck chairs on an education system that is sinking through no fault of educators. The overriding problem is a lack of political commitment to the public schools on the part of state leaders, a point the report fails to address. The report avoids any discussion of how the public school system is woefully underfunded and inequitablyfunded. And it dares not propose the essential, but politically distasteful solution – a reliable, fair tax system that grows with the state’s educational and other needs.

Moreover, TAB has been a major supporter and enabler of the current power structure in Austin, the state leaders who have persisted in giving the public schools a succession of “accountability” hoops while denying them sufficient funding.

TAB is a longtime supporter of Gov. Rick Perry, who has all but turned his back on the public schools and even denies the seriousness of the dropout problem cited in the TAB report. TAB also is backing Perry for another term. And in 2002, TAB was instrumental in the Republican takeover of the Texas House, which enabled the election of slashandburn Tom Craddick as speaker.

Dream big? Unless the leadership in Austin is changed, TAB can dream on.

Here is a link to the group’s report:

http://www.txbiz.org/uploads/dreambigedu.pdf

Since TSTA was the first group to call public attention to this issue, and I have written about it a couple of times before, I will note for the record that the State Board of Education has approved an amendment to the social studies curriculum standards to include President Barack Obama’s name. Earlier, the curriculum only referred to the election of the first black president without saying who he was. The change, though, came after Republican board member David Bradley tried to take a backhanded swipe at the president.

Obama’s missing name first received public attention when TSTA President Rita Haecker testified about it during a public hearing of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus a few weeks ago. Then several black legislators pressed the issue.

Click the following link to read the Fort Worth StarTelegram’s story on how the SBOE reacted:

http://www.startelegram.com/2010/05/20/2206066/texaseducationboardworksthrough.html

Inviting a rebuke from Democratic legislators, State Education Commissioner Robert Scott addressed the State Board of Education this morning and urged members to ignore the “tantrums” of detractors and proceed with a final vote, as planned, on social studies curriculum standards on Friday.

Time is critical, Scott insisted, despite the fact that several Hispanic and black legislators, all Democrats, urged the board yesterday to delay a final vote. The lawmakers said more time is needed to correct curriculum standards that the lawmakers and other board critics say are compromised by the board members’ political and religious beliefs.

Also among many other people and groups seeking a delay is former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige. He told board members yesterday that they needed to take more time to revise the standards to more adequately treat the roles of slavery and civil rights in Texas and American history.

But Scott, an appointee of Gov. Rick Perry, said it was important for the board to stick to their current schedule for purposes of updating endofcourse and college readiness assessments.

“Steel yourself against their criticisms and…the tantrums that will be thrown, and let’s get this process done,” the commissioner said.

Scott already has caught flak from Democrats for using the word “payback” at a hearing of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus last month. He used the term in relation to the effect of changing political winds over curriculum standards but insisted the remark was mischaracterized by critics.

Scott didn’t say who he was specifically talking about today, but I wonder how the legislators or Rod Paige – among others will like his choice of the word, “tantrums.”

Board member Geraldine Miller, who was unseated in the March Republican primary, made it clear she was annoyed by some of the legislators’ comments. She said she thought the board was “getting indirect threats (from the lawmakers), and that really rubbed us wrong.”