Grading Texas

Attorney General Greg Abbott today released an opinion prohibiting school districts from deducting contributions to political action committees from employees’ paychecks. TSTA views the ruling as an assault on teachers’ constitutional rights to political participation.

The opinion halts a practice that has been going on for years without any noticeable problems. All the deductions have been voluntary, and the TSTAPAC contributes to both Democratic and Republican candidates. The only criteria are strong support for the public schools, teachers and school kids.

Here is TSTA’s official response:

TSTA Public Affairs Director Richard Kouri strongly objected today (May 14) to a ruling by Attorney General Greg Abbott prohibiting school districts from deducting contributions to political action committees from school employees’ paychecks.

The opinion was in response to a legislative inquiry about the legality of paycheck deductions for the TSTAPAC and the National Education Association Fund for Children and Public Education. TSTA is a state affiliate of NEA. The deductions are strictly voluntary.

“This practice, which promotes a school employee’s constitutional right to political participation, has been going on for 20 years without any problem,” Kouri said. “We can only conclude that Attorney General Abbott is playing politics in an election year by impeding teachers’ First Amendment rights. But why?”

School districts make deductions from employees’ salaries for a wide range of purposes, including health care and professional memberships. But a strict reading of Abbott’s opinion indicates that no deduction is legal unless it is expressly authorized by the Legislature.

“Has the Legislature specifically authorized every deduction that every school district makes from a worker’s check? I doubt it,” Kouri said. “TSTA will explore every option available to allow educational employees to continue participating in the political process.”

Whenever right wingers find themselves short of facts to support an argument (and that happens a lot), their favorite, wornout alternative is simply to bash the American Civil Liberties Union, a group that they like to blame for almost every problem – real and imagined – that has ever befallen this country. Nothing apparently gets the conservative juices flowing like some antiACLU redmeat rhetoric.

Predictably, the ACLUbashing has erupted in the continuing debate over the State Board of Education’s attempted rewrite of history. (And that was before the ACLU today released a report urging the Legislature to limit the ability of SBOE members to insert their personal ideologies into curriculum content. Now, the rhetoric will go into overdrive.)

Yesterday, a spokesman for the conservative Liberty Institute, which has frequently squared off against the ACLU – both in the courtroom and in the media – was quick to criticize a group of religious leaders for urging the SBOE to reconsider its efforts to downplay the separation of church and state when it takes a final vote on new history curriculum standards next week.

These religious leaders – the ecumenical Texas Faith Network – agree with most historians that the nation’s founding fathers did, indeed, want a “wall of separation” between religion and government in this country. They value their religious freedom and want the SBOE to require high school students to be taught the reasons behind the prohibition of a state religion in the Bill of Rights.

The SBOE’s rightwing bloc rejected that requirement in March. It also attempted to demote Thomas Jefferson’s role in history because of his strong advocacy for a separation of church and state. The board’s conservatives want to promote their view that America was founded as a fundamentalist Christian nation.

As quoted in the Austin AmericanStatesman, Jonathan Saenz, an attorney and spokesman for the Liberty Institute, criticized the moremoderate religious leaders for trying to “pressure the SBOE to adopt an ACLUendorsed strict concept of separation of church and state language in the social studies standards.”

The Liberty Institute also has an ACLUbashing section on its website, complaining primarily about the ACLU’s recent involvement in samesex marriage and other gay rights issues.

More often than not – and often to the chagrin of rightwingers the ACLU, during its 90 years in the legal and political arena, has been on the right (as in correct) side of history, as determined by court decisions in a string of important civil rights decisions. Several of those have had a direct impact on education.

In 1925, in the Scopes “monkey” trial, the ACLU secured the services of famed attorney Clarence Darrow to defend a Tennessee schoolteacher for teaching evolution. And it continues to fight efforts to require the teaching of “creationism” or “intelligent design” as alternatives to evolution. Now, I am pretty sure we know what the Liberty Institute thinks of those cases.

But what does the Liberty Institute – and, for that matter, the State Board of Education’s rightwing bloc – think about desegregated public schools?

Surely, they support them. But perhaps they didn’t know – or have just forgotten – that the ACLU joined the NAACP in the lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation decision in 1954 –Brown v. Board of Education.

The ACLU’s work, though, is never done. Now, it is contending with the State Board of Education’s hijacking of history and the democratic process. Here is a link to the new ACLU report criticizing the SBOE for a “systemic abuse” of power and asking the Legislature to clip its wings:

http://www.aclutx.org/files/051310ACLUofTexasSBOEReport.pdf

The Dallas Morning News, which broke the story the other day about a likely legislative effort to repeal the 221 studentteacher ratio for kindergarten through the fourth grade, also has published a strong editorial explaining why the 26yearold cap is so important and must be preserved.

“Here’s something that makes you cringe: Lawmakers in Austin are kicking around the idea of lifting the classsize cap for primary grades,” the newspaper wrote, noting that the 221 standard has “stood as a bulwark against reverting to the days when Texas was an educational backwater.”

The proposed repeal or loosening of the cap should make every educator and every parent cringe too. Check out the full editorial here for more strong arguments for keeping the limit:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DNclasses_12edi.State.Edition1.2c11be8.html

This is no time to retreat from (or whine about) timehonored educational reforms, but watch out for a lot of whining and proposed retreating when the Legislature convenes in January in the face of a huge revenue shortfall. Already being targeted in some legislative discussions is the important 22pupil limit on class sizes for kindergarten through the fourth grade.

Leading the charge against the 221 studentteacher ratio is state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston, one of the Legislature’s most outspoken advocates of slashing and burning public services. Unfortunately, he will be aided and abetted by a number of budgetstrapped school superintendents, who should know better but have long considered 221 – despite its educational value – a pain in their administrative…uh, necks.

As reported by Terry Stutz in The Dallas Morning News today, Patrick contends that the 221 limit, enacted in 1984, is costing school districts “millions and millions of dollars” each year without any evidence that it boosts student achievement. Patrick, however, is wrong.

Districts that are too financially strapped to comply with 221 can apply to the Texas Education Agency for waivers, which are almost always automatically granted. Some 144 districts received waivers this year, allowing larger classes at 544 elementary schools, according to the newspaper.

And, there is a pretty large body of national – even international – research concluding that smaller class sizes are important to improving student achievement. And closer to home, the Texas Elementary Principals & Supervisors Association (TEPSA) has done research strongly indicating that 221 has been a positive factor in student and school performances in Texas.

According to TEPSA, the number of class size waivers granted in 20072008 per campus was in direct inverse proportion to the state accountability rating of that campus. In other words, the higher rated campuses received fewer waivers to the class size requirement. TEPSA derived its findings from the TEA Regional and District Level Report to the 2009 Legislature.

Only about 10 percent of “exemplary” campuses asked for and received waivers allowing larger class sizes, compared to 40 percent of lowerranked “recognized” campuses and 50 percent of the even lowerranked “academically acceptable” campuses. Those figures are sending a pretty loud message that legislators – and superintendents – should be listening to.

Superintendents and school board members who feel that 221 is an unrealistic financial burden for local taxpayers can gut up and continue to ask for waivers. That is what they are paid and/or elected to do. Unfortunately, they would rather let the Legislature take the heat from parents, who like the smaller class sizes.

Patrick is proposing that 221 be replaced with an asyetundetermined average class size limit for elementary schools, a proposal that has been supported by superintendent and school board lobby groups in the past. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R Plano, and Rep. Rob Eissler, RThe Woodlands, the Legislature’s education chairs, also seem open to the change. All three lawmakers are members of an interim HouseSenate committee studying school finance.

Here is a link to The Dallas Morning News story:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/051010dntswclasssize.3f89c03.html