Grading Texas

You probably have heard by now that President Trump has created a Religious Liberty Commission and appointed Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to chair it. Trump said Patrick gave him the idea for the panel, which will study, among other things, the issue of “permitting time for voluntary prayer and religious instruction at public schools.” Sound familiar?

The commission also is charged with reporting on programs “to increase awareness of and celebrate America’s peaceful religious pluralism.”

Although phrases like “religious liberty” and “religious pluralism” may sound like equal treatment for all religions, don’t be so sure that is what Trump and Patrick have in mind, even though Patrick, at a White House ceremony announcing the commission, praised the president for “restoring the hopes and prayers of millions upon millions of believers of all faiths.”

Patrick has repeatedly made it clear that he believes, contrary to the historical record, that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation” and is doing all he can to promote the Christian nationalism movement by forcing Christian teachings and influence into Texas public schools.

He supported the State Board of Education’s approval of the Bible-infused curriculum now being offered to school districts for kindergarten through fifth grade. His legislative priorities this year include bills allowing prayer in public schools and posting copies of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. And, of course, he was a driving force behind the new voucher law that will give families tax-paid vouchers to send their children to religious schools, most of which in Texas are Christian.

Patrick denies the separation of church and state principle, which for years guided public schools in Texas. Contrary to the claims of Patrick and other right-wing revisionists of history, our country’s founders established a government that was supposed to stay out of religion, leaving people to worship any religion or no religion and be able to send their children to schools that didn’t promote one religion over another.

Although Patrick and Trump both loudly promote the Christian label, both also promote public policies that ignore many of Christ’s teachings about caring for the sick and the poor and offering a helping hand to strangers, not dictator-style deportation. But obviously hypocrisy is at worst a very minor sin in MAGA Land.

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the new Trump/Patrick commission was “not about religious liberty, but about advancing Christian nationalism.”

“True religious freedom requires equality among religions and between religion and nonreligion in the eyes of the law and at every level of our government,” Laser added. “Trump clearly designed this commission to favor conservative Christians, especially those who want to use the power of our government to impose their religion on others.”

You probably have noticed that Patrick isn’t promoting legislation to have passages from the Koran posted in Texas classrooms.

Patrick was a first-year state senator in 2007, when the Texas Senate for the first time had a Muslim cleric deliver the day’s opening prayer. I was there for the historic occasion, in my previous life as a newspaper reporter, but Patrick wasn’t. He boycotted the prayer.

After returning to the Senate chamber later, Patrick delivered a speech praising religious tolerance and freedom of speech.

“I think that it’s important that we are tolerant as a people of all faiths, but that doesn’t mean we have to endorse all faiths, and that was my decision,” he said. “I surely believe that everyone should have the right to speak, but I didn’t want my attendance on the floor to appear that I was endorsing that.”

Yes, actions often speak louder than words. At least they did that day.

Trump’s executive order.

Patrick boycotts Senate’s first Muslim prayer.

Clay Robison

This year’s version of the voucher bill – the big tax giveaway for private schools– will soon hit the Texas House floor, where the fight will be intense. One thing is certain: Voucher advocates will keep lying about their bill right up until a vote is taken.

Their most common lie – and it is utterly absurd — is that the diversion of $1 billion in tax funds to private schools over the next budget cycle will not hurt public schools or harm the educational opportunities for the vast majority of Texas students who will remain in public schools.

Voucher advocates claim falsely that funds spent on vouchers won’t take any money from public schools because the two programs will be funded from different revenue streams. But the truth is that the Legislature, when all is said and done, has only one pot of money to draw from, and that is the state budget. Our underfunded public schools need all the tax dollars that lawmakers spend on K-12 education. Public, not private, schools are state leaders’ responsibility under the state constitution, and our leaders are failing that responsibility.

Gov. Abbott often claims that Texas can adequately fund public schools and maintain a tax-paid voucher system for private schools too. That’s a lie because Abbott and other state leaders aren’t adequately funding public schools now. Texas teachers, on average, are paid more than $9,000 less than their national peers, and Texas spends more than $5,000 less per student than the national average, ranking our state 46th, near the bottom of the barrel, in that important measure of financial commitment to public education.

The state hasn’t raised the basic per student funding allotment in six years. Consequently, scores of public school districts are cutting programs and increasing class sizes to address budget shortfalls. Texas also is suffering from a teacher shortage.

It is obvious that diverting $1 billion to private schools will worsen public schools’ financial plight, and that $1 billion will grow to $3 billion by 2028 and more than $4 billion by 2030 if the voucher bill passes, legislative budget experts predict.

The House school finance bill, which leaders claim will help public schools, is insufficient. It will raise the basic per student allotment by only $395, only about one-third of what school finance experts say is necessary to simply help school districts recover from six years of inflationary erosion of their budgets.

Now, how about the argument that this voucher bill will help children from low-income families? The truth is a $10,000 voucher (the approximate amount most recipients would receive each year) is not going to help most low-income parents pay the higher tuition and fees that many private schools charge. Nor will it help them pay for the transportation costs it will take to get their kids to school. Most private schools aren’t located in low-income neighborhoods and, unlike public schools, don’t provide free bus service.

At Abbott’s insistence, legislators are considering a universal voucher plan, which, if enacted, will end up providing tax subsidies to many upper-income families who already are sending their children to private schools. Meanwhile, most low-income kids will remain in public schools that will increasingly become under-funded. This is what happened with a universal voucher plan enacted in Arizona a few years ago. It also quickly became a budget-buster.

Advocates still call vouchers a “school choice” program. That also is a lie. Texas parents already have the choice to send their children to traditional public schools or charters, which are tuition-free, or to private schools, if they can afford them.

But if they choose private schools, even with a voucher, the choice of admission is not with the parents. It is with the school. Unlike public schools, which accept every school-age child in the district, private schools can pick and choose, and vouchers won’t change that.

Clay Robison

When U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was at the state Capitol recently to promote the school voucher bill, he repeated a lie that other voucher – or “school choice” — advocates, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have used to persuade legislators to give tax dollars to private schools.

“School choice, I believe, is the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” Cruz said.

Not only was the statement a lie, it also was an insult to the millions of Americans who fought, bled and died for basic civil rights during the Jim Crow era — like the right to vote, use public restrooms, eat and sleep where they wanted, sit anywhere on a bus and not be discriminated against in the workplace, housing or public educational opportunities.

The only K-12 educational civil right is the right of all children of school age to attend a public school, and it is the state’s responsibility under the state constitution to adequately and equitably fund those public schools, responsibilities this state’s current leadership continues to fail to do.

There is no “civil right” for Texas families to receive tax dollars to send their children to private schools. The idea that it is a “civil right” is made even more absurd by the fact that the universal voucher plan the Legislature is considering would give taxpayer-paid subsidies to many families who already have children in private schools.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Texas students would remain in public schools that would become even more underfunded.

The “civil rights” claim is made even more offensive by the historic origins of school vouchers.

The first school vouchers were used by southern leaders to avoid complying with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education desegregation order of 1954. For many years after that landmark ruling, some southern communities created and funded voucher-like programs for private segregation academies reserved for white children. Black children either went to poorly funded public schools or dropped out.

By 1969, according to the Center for American Progress, more than 200 private segregation academies had been established across the South. In the 1969-70 and 1970-71 school years alone, tens of thousands of white students were enrolled in these schools before the federal courts ended the segregation programs.

Read more about this report: The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers.

Clay Robison

I don’t know if Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick thinks he sees a communist in every public school, but one of the bills on his list of top 40 issues is Senate Bill 24, which would require Texas schools to teach students in fourth through 12th grade about communism and its evils.

Some of Patrick’s supporters apparently see a communist in every classroom, as well as behind every tree on the playground. That’s because many right-wingers like to characterize anything they dislike or fear about public institutions – including public schools – as that old bugaboo, “communism.”

This would include the diversity, equity and inclusion programs that public schools and universities established to make all their students feel welcome and achieve success. Playing to ignorance, racism and fear among their political base, Patrick, Gov. Greg Abbott and President Trump have declared war on DEI programs – as well as teaching the often painful truth about our history and culture — to undermine public education and promote privatization.

I suspect DEI was part of what U.S. Sen Ted Cruz’s father –Rafael Cruz – was talking about last week when he appeared as a witness for Senate Bill 24 before the Senate Education K-16 Committee.

“In many instances our classrooms are failing us because they’re following an agenda,” the elder Cruz testified. “It is not our agenda. It is a communist agenda that has, like tentacles, immersed itself into our education system. So, we need to retrieve our educational system from that evil agenda.”

Dictatorial practitioners of communism have hurt a lot of people, including Rafael Cruz, but DEI isn’t communism, nor is it evil. Neither is public education, the backbone of our democracy, which is now under serious attack by President Trump, aided and abetted by the likes of Abbott and Patrick.

Rafael Cruz, who is a minister, also spreads the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. It wasn’t. The founders believed in the separation of church and state and the freedom to practice any religion or no religion.

Texas students should learn about communism, although the biggest threat to democracy in the United States right now is not communism, but authoritarianism. They can be practiced together, but they are not the same thing.

Trump, whom Patrick adores, is not a communist, but he gives strong indications of yearning to be an authoritarian, someone eager to ignore the constitutional restraints on his office if necessary to enact his agenda. “Long live the king,” he recently posted on social media.

Trump has issued many illegal executive orders that the Republican majority in Congress has ignored, but federal judges have blocked some of them. Trump is trying to see what he can get away with, how far he can go toward an authoritarian state, and the big test will come when and if the Supreme Court issues an order that he ignores, creating a constitutional crisis. He already has ignored or not fully complied with some lower court orders.

Adolf Hitler was an extreme authoritarian, a totalitarian, who led a Nazi regime that started World War II, causing the deaths of many millions, including in the Holocaust.

Trump is no Hitler, but he is a nationalist, alienating long-time free world allies, exacerbating political differences in our country and stirring up some of the same passions that brought Hitler to power – racism, fear, hatred, bigotry against people who are perceived as “different.” That’s what Trump’s campaigns against immigration and DEI programs are largely about, bolstered by a steady stream of lies and misrepresentations.

His political attacks on education, which are threatening to spread, are attacks on democracy. Abbott, Patrick and their allies are operating from a similar political playbook in Texas, and, until there is a change in power, who knows where it may end.

No, communism isn’t the biggest threat to our country now. That distinction belongs to the man in the White House. Texas students also should be taught about all authoritarians and how they come to power.

Clay Robison