Grading Texas

Campus carry means guns in classrooms, legislator says

This should not be a surprise to anyone, but the main legislative sponsor of the new “campus carry” law believes it will be safe for college students with concealed handgun licenses to keep their firearms in their campus dormitories and bring them to class.

This is the same individual – state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury — who also has been quoted as declaring that the right to carry a gun is God-given. So, he obviously is a man on a mission, and he has served notice he will fight any effort to keep licensed handguns out of residence halls or classrooms, despite strong opposition from some university professors who believe that guns would be unsafe and potentially dampen academic debate.

Birdwell commented this week after the Faculty Council of the University of Texas at Austin approved a resolution urging UT officials to ban guns in classrooms, laboratories, dormitories, offices and “other spaces of education.”

Although Birdwell succeeded in winning legislative approval of the new law, which will go into effect at state-supported universities next Aug. 1, he still has some unfinished business, namely the debate over a provision in the law allowing individual universities to create some gun-free zones.

Such zones can’t have the effect of banning guns from an entire campus. Birdwell believes those zones should be very narrowly drawn and wants Attorney General Ken Paxton to help him make that point.

According to The Texas Tribune, Birdwell has asked Paxton to clarify where universities can ban handguns. Birdwell believes neither classrooms nor dormitories should be off-limits.

A classroom ban, he said in a letter to the attorney general, “would effectively force students to leave their handguns in their personal motor vehicles, or in their dormitories or other residential housing. Since students go to college to attend class, this would effectively prohibit a student/licensee from carrying their handgun on campus.”

Considering Paxton’s political history, I would be surprised if he disagrees with Birdwell. Ultimately, the dispute is headed for the courts.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/11/18/birdwell-asks-ag-clarify-where-colleges-can-ban-ha/

Let’s keep private schools private

TSTA and other public education advocates were successful once again last spring in defeating proposals to take tax dollars from public schools and spend them on private school vouchers. But vouchers are a bad idea that won’t go away, particularly while Dan Patrick remains lieutenant governor, and the fight will be renewed the next time the Legislature meets.

With that in mind, take a look at the TV news report, linked below, about an unaccredited private school in Lubbock, Springboard Academics, which meets behind a Biodiesel lab and offers a “private education with homeschool freedom.” Tuition is low — $350 a semester, plus a $30 registration fee.

The school may offer what some students need, but the issue is vouchers. Do we want our tax dollars spent on an unaccredited, private school that may be gone next year?

This school doesn’t accept federal funding, so it may refuse to accept vouchers. But under some voucher proposals, this is the type of tight-budget facility – and who knows how many there are in Texas — where tax dollars could be headed if vouchers became law. Many voucher advocates would rather roll the dice – with our money — on little-known institutions than adequately fund public schools, where the vast majority of Texas school children will continue to be educated. And, for every private school operator refusing vouchers, a dozen others would eagerly grab them.

“Springboard Academics is a great place for someone who thinks outside the box and wants to steer clear of what regular curriculum does,” one of the school’s teachers is quoted in the story.

I hope the school is teaching enough of the basic curriculum to provide a sound education for its students, but I want it to keep doing so without any public funding.

http://www.everythinglubbock.com/news/klbk-news/diplomas-in-question-a-lubbock-school-under-questioning

Needing an education in education

Ben Carson was a brilliant neurosurgeon. But as a presidential candidate he has indicated an acute need for more education, including but not limited to more education in ancient Egyptian history and an education in education itself, specifically the importance of public schools.

While they were in Milwaukee for the Republican debate earlier this week, Carson and Sen. Marco Rubio sat down for separate interviews with public school-basher Campbell Brown, a former TV newswoman who now heads “The Seventy Four,” an online “news” organization dedicated to expanding charter schools and privatization and blaming teachers unions for most of the world’s problems. That is not exactly how Brown characterizes the organization, but that is certainly the reputation it has earned.

In his interview, Carson endorsed vouchers for low-income kids and rated various education options.

“We know that the very best education is home school,” he said. “The next is private school. The next is charter schools, and the last is public schools. If we want to change that dynamic, we have to offer some real competition to the public schools.”

That makes about as much sense as Carson’s much-publicized historical “insight” that the biblical Joseph had the Egyptian pyramids built to store grain.

Granted, the public schools that Carson attended in Detroit had serious deficiencies, and he had a strong mother who helped inspire him to succeed. But whether Carson admits it or not, the vast majority of children in this country – particularly in depressed, low-income neighborhoods – are going to be educated in traditional public schools, if they are educated at all. And, the last thing those kids need is to see their neighborhood schools get slammed with more budget cuts so that a handful of children can get tax-paid vouchers to attend private school.

In his interview, meanwhile, Rubio said Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton was “fully owned by teachers unions,” which he portrayed as evil “special interests.”

Members of teacher unions are working every day to deliver a quality education to all their students and advance educational opportunities for every child. Their interest is universal, and their success is crucial to our country’s future – regardless of who the next president is.

No teachers appointed to assessments panel

If you haven’t noticed already, who is missing from the new study commission that will recommend, we hope, a new assessment and accountability system to replace the STAAR regime? Here’s a hint. Besides a parent, who is in the best postion to observe the stressful and counterproductive effect that excessive, high-stakes testing can have on a child?

The child’s teacher or teachers, of course. But Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Joe Straus failed to include a single teacher among the 10 appointments they made to the panel, which has the unweildy title of “Texas Commission on the Next Generation of Assessments and Accountability.”

Abbott had four appointments, and Patrick and Straus each had three. Appointees had to include at least two “educators,” the term specified in the law creating the panel. So, they named two school board members (including the commission chairman), two public school superintendents, two charter school superintendents, a school district’s chief instructional officer and two higher education administrators. The group also includes a physician.

Many of these appointees obviously know about the problems with STARR, and some, I assume, are parents of school children. But why not include a teacher, or at least a principal or someone from the campus level, on the panel?

Since the commission also will include four legislators and a member of the State Board of Education, it will be very top-heavy with high-level administrators and policymakers, not with the education experts who actually work with school children everyday and know firsthand the damage that standardized testing is inflicting on the classroom.

Teachers and their representatives, nevertheless, will remain eager to testify when the panel begins holding hearings.

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