Grading Texas

Science versus politics is a familiar war in Texas and the rest of the country. Some obvious examples: Evolution versus the State Board of Education, climate change versus much of the political establishment and the anti-vaxxers who have helped measles make a comeback in the classroom.

More recently, as the coronavirus pandemic has raged, we have had the infectious disease expert versus the denier-in-chief. Politely, but persistently, Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly corrected President Trump’s optimistic and misleading statements about the health emergency, using scientific facts and projections to counter the president’s desperate attempt to rescue a reelection campaign while COVID-19 cases are beginning to soar and the economy is tanking.

And now we have Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Trump’s chief point man in Texas, chiming in on the side of absurdity, urging a resumption of life-as-normal when life for most people right now is anything but normal. Let’s defy the pandemic and the warnings of scientists and put everybody back to work and rescue the economy, he says.

What he really means is let’s reopen schools, restaurants, bars and other businesses, boost the stock market and help Donald Trump get reelected. Like the president, Patrick is dangerously putting politics over science and, most importantly, over countless lives.

“Let’s get back to living. Let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves, but don’t sacrifice the country. Don’t do that. Don’t ruin this great American dream,” he said on Fox News the other night, echoing similar comments by Trump.

We all wish Patrick were correct, but most of us know better. We all would like people to be able to go back to work today. But we also know that would lead to an even greater health and economic disaster, assuming the scientists and health experts are correct. And I will trust the scientists and health experts any day over opportunist political ideologues like Patrick and Trump.

“We’ll take care of ourselves,” Patrick said, knowing full well that, as lieutenant governor, he will have no difficulty getting the best medical treatment available should he contract the virus. Millions of his constituents are not so fortunate. Five million Texans don’t even have health insurance, in part because of the inadequate health care Patrick hasn’t lifted a finger to improve.

He and Trump are playing a very dangerous political game with Americans’ health.

—Clay Robison

Gov. Greg Abbott this week released his “2020 Report to the People of Texas,” in which he boasts – as countless Texas politicians of both parties before him have boasted — about the myth of “Texas exceptionalism.”

Go ahead. Call me a heretic for debunking the idea that my native state is exceptional. Yes, it is a nice place to live, maybe even a great place to live — for many people. Texas offers a lot for which we can be grateful.

But no state that has five million residents without health insurance is exceptional. No state whose leaders refuse to expand Medicaid services that could provide health care for many of these individuals, including school children and their families, is exceptional. The leaders, though, are exceptionally short-sighted, and health care was mostly missing from the governor’s report.

No state whose leaders care more about “state sovereignty” and its budget than they do about the care and safety of thousands of foster children is exceptional. Texas spent years fighting a federal judge’s demands that conditions for these vulnerable children be improved, and it remains to be seen what the future holds for these kids.

No state that ranks 39th in per-pupil spending and 27th in average teacher pay, as Texas did during the 2018-19 school year, is exceptional. Those figures may improve slightly for the current school year because, yielding to pressure from educators and other advocates, the governor and the Legislature last year appropriated an additional $6.5 billion for public education, including teacher pay raises, during this two-year budget cycle.

Abbott proudly pointed out that extra funding in his report. But the additional state money amounts to only a down payment on the resources that will be necessary to meet the needs of a growing student population in the years to come, and so far we have heard no commitment from the governor and legislative leaders that education will be a top priority again when the Legislature meets next year.

As a trade-off for the increased education funding, Abbott and legislators put tight restrictions on the ability of school districts and other local governments to raise property tax revenue for important public services in the future, including additional school funding and things like fire and police protection.

Abbott recently provoked a dispute with the city of Austin, complaining publicly on Twitter about homeless people camping in public places and wandering city streets. It was easier for the governor to complain than provide the adequate mental health care that many of these people need. And the tight tax restraints that the governor and his legislative allies placed on local governments will make it even more difficult for Austin and other cities to deal with homelessness. There is nothing exceptional about Abbott’s tweets and the mostly absent role of state leaders in addressing this issue.

In his report, Abbott boasts a lot about Texas’ friendly business climate and strong economic development record. But if Texas doesn’t continue to improve its school finance system and significantly improve its support structure for Texans in need, future governors will have to find something else to brag about.

“Texas is more than just a place on a map,” the governor’s report states. “It is a state of boundless opportunity – where the compass points north, south, east, west and up.”

Up for some people, anyway.

—Clay Robison

TSTA’s opposition to President Trump’s proposed $5 billion-a-year voucher giveaway to private and religious schools prompted an email from a teacher, who wrote, “Thumbs down to TSTA’s constant bashing of Trump…your constant bashing of our conservative moral values.”

Wonder which one of these “conservative moral values” the teacher meant. Trump’s decision to tear apart immigrant families at the southern border? The kiss-and-don’t-tell hush money that landed his former lawyer in prison? His almost constant stream of exaggerations, misrepresentations, lies and lack of respect for the Constitution? Or maybe she means the “moral values” he so eloquently expressed in the Access Hollywood tape….Surely not.

Yep, someone has been bashing our conservative moral values, and it hasn’t been the Texas State Teachers Association.

More to the current point, adequately and equitably funding public schools IS a conservative moral value because public schools are where the vast majority of the children in this state and country will continue to be educated. Improvements in public school funding are essential to the future of this country, and TSTA is committed to fighting for those improvements.

Taking $5 billion a year in taxpayer money from those public schools, including the one in which this complaining teacher teaches, and using that money to enrich private school owners is not a conservative moral value, regardless of who proposes it.

Clay Robison

The Austin ISD school board took a lot of heat from parents and other members of the public when it recently voted to close four elementary schools – Brooke, Metz, Pease and Sims – in East and Central Austin.

Much of the anger centered around the fact that the minority community in East Austin, which has suffered through a history of racial discrimination, was being targeted again. But William J. Gumbert writes that another factor was at play in the district’s decision – raids by charter schools that have taken millions of taxpayer dollars from AISD while giving minority parents dreams of academic success for their children that don’t always come true.

Gumbert, a former school financial adviser, decries the damage that privately operated charters are doing to the Texas public school system, and he has zeroed in on the damage to Austin ISD alone in an article published on Texasisd.com. Last year, he wrote, state-approved charters took about $110 million in tax funds from an underfunded AISD and are expected to take more than $1 billion from the district over the next 10 years.

A full copy of his article is linked at the bottom of this post, but here are some highlights, which the author said he cleaned from the Texas Education Agency’s website:

• With little or no input from parents and other taxpayers, the state has approved more than 50 charter campuses that intend to recruit students (some already are) from existing AISD schools. The more students they recruit, the more tax dollars they take from AISD. These are not district-operated charters. These charters are run by privately operated charter companies and private boards of directors.
• Thirty-one of these campuses are within a five-mile radius of Sims Elementary, one of the East Austin schools scheduled for closure.
• Despite promises to improve student outcomes, only two of the 16 charter holders (some have multi-campuses) that operate in AISD have a higher academic rating on the state’s accountability system than the school district.
• Three of the 16 have the same rating as AISD.
• Eleven have a LOWER rating than AISD.
• The average academic rating of the 16 charters is 80.3, or almost 10 percent LOWER than AISD’s rating of 89.

The quality of teachers and stability of the teaching force obviously have something to do with this, and here are some reasons why:

• AISD employs more experienced teachers, with an average experience of 10.5 years. Average teacher experience at the charter schools in AISD is 4.4 years.
• AISD’s teacher turnover rate is 15.6 percent. The charter teacher turnover rate is 35.8 percent.
• AISD employs certified teachers. The charters in Austin have, on average, 58.5 percent certified teachers in their schools.

Gumbert also writes that Austin ISD spends more per-student on instruction and less per-student on administration than the charters.

“The state’s unilateral efforts to deploy a separate system of privately operated charter schools is to blame for AISD’s school closures. AISD is only delivering the consequences of the Legislature’s orchestrated efforts to privatize and take over the public education system in local communities,” he says.

“The frustrations and concerns regarding AISD’s school closures are valid, but the root cause is in the Capitol, not in AISD.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GrdHl8Y872NgHz502W40hFa0-_MGOZuX/view

—Clay Robison