HB 12 would not apply the same accountability procedures for voucher-funded private schools that the legislature applies to public schools. Even though the Corte proposal would require voucher students to take the TAKS test, the private school would face no consequences from the state for low student performance. In addition, private schools receiving public funds under the bill would not face TEA audits to check that the funds are used appropriately or even legally. Nor does the bill require that teachers in the participating private schools be entitled to a minimum salary or health and retirement benefits.
What they don't mention here is that most private schools in Texas provide equal or better pay for their teachers with less administrative harassment and far better working conditions that public schools in the same area, which is why the best teachers go to private schools instead of public schools. At the planned voucher value of $6000 and with the minimal administrative overhead of private schools (no bloated school district bureaucracy to support) teachers could be paid very well indeed.
Representative Corte and other voucher advocates claim that students ought to be given the ability to escape "failing public schools." However, his record indicates that he has voted against efforts to strengthen public schools. For example, in 1997, he voted against a constitutional provision to guarantee equitable education funding for all children statewide.
A horrific bill which would have taken away local school board autonomy, massively increased bureaucratic overhead and reduced the funding and quality of education in many school districts, creating equality by lowering overall standards.
- In 1995, he also opposed class-size limits in elementary schools and supported a proposal to hire uncertified and untrained teachers.
This bill actually passed and is about the best thing ever to come out of the Texas State Legislature. For the first time it allows people who actually have degrees in academic fields to teach those fields in public schools without requiring them to have extensive class time in completely useless education courses. Prior to the passage of this bill retired distinguished professors from major universities who wanted to teach advanced classes in high schools would have to take almost a year of 'education' courses to learn to write lesson plans and fill out paperwork just to get into a classroom. Prior to this bill a professor of pediatrics would not have been considered qualified to teach 7th graders health and hygeine classes and a Supreme Court Justice would have been unacceptable as a teacher of basic civics.
- Teachers, superintendents, and a wide range of organizations that support public schools remain steadfastly united in opposition to private-school vouchers. Public opposition to siphoning taxpayer dollars out of the public schools for private-school vouchers also remains strong.
By this they mean that vouchers are opposed by teachers unions, parasitic school district administrators and legislators they have bought off. The truth is that providing a $6000 voucher per student would actually increase the funding per student who remained in the public schools because the actual revenue from taxes and other sources which schools receive per student is more than $6000, so the leftover would stay with the school to be used for other students or perhaps to fatten up the high six-figure salaries of district superintendents.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - andy marsh
Good post Dave! I agree 100% with school vouchers. The "progressives" should be here any minute now to shoot your idea in the foot though!
2 - bhw
I think I heard someone call my name.
Oh, where to begin....
First, let me say that I agree with you that teacher's unions are out of touch. In particular, I think they're out of touch with the reality of today's workplace. They ask for guarantees and contract provisions that the rest of the workforce has no chance of getting (for the most part). Those provisions, like tenure, have been put in place as incentives and compensation for low teacher pay. But now that teacher pay has risen in many states/towns, the unions need to give a little back. For example, why should a 25-year-old get tenure for the rest of his/her career after three years of work? Makes no sense. I think good teachers should be well paid. The way I look at it is that they have responsibility for my child for 6-7 hours/day, 10 months out of the year. If they take that responsibility seriously, then they should be paid well. But if they don't, the school district should be able to fire them. I wrote more about it here.
That said, a lot of what you've written is not only anti-teacher but plain old anti-education. It's hard to take you seriously with all the sweeping generalizations and party-line talking points. For example, teachers are not morally bankrupt [although schools are, if you ask me, indoctrination camps for the middle class -- everyone must learn the same thing at the same time ... or else!]. As soon as you started with the morally bankrupt teacher thing, I realized that you have some sort of ax to grind.
I think the TFT is correct in that private schools will not, en masse, accept children from these disadvantaged neighborhoods. If they did, the very nature of their schools would change -- they are by design, selective. They discriminate in the application process. That's why parents who can afford to send their kids there DO. That's not to say that no kids would get in to private school, but private schools alone will not solve the public school problem.
Plus, if the "we need standards and accountability" people in TX were truly interested in making sure tax dollars were being spent well in education, then they would indeed hold any private school that accepts public money up to the same standards they hold the public schools. It should be required that private schools demonstrate what kind of job they're doing with taxpayer money. The fact that private schools would be able to take the money without having to be accountable AT ALL to the state for the progress of the children they accept is telling: it's setting up public schools to be shut down. With all the conservative and libertarian talk about letting the market decide, I'm not surprised that they would write laws to stack the deck in favor of private schools. Why is it that public schools would be held to a different standard than private schools if not to give private schools an advantage? Funny how the dedication to standards and accountability goes out the window when private businesses are receiving public dollars, huh?
And education classes are not useless. If you think that any and all content experts can walk into a fifth grade class and understand how to design effective instructional/assessment materials and lesson plans for ten-year-olds, then you're sadly misguided. I'm not saying nobody could do it, I'm just saying that you're underestimating the work that goes into building an effective classroom and the knowledge and skills required to do it.
Look at it this way: if I were to send my kids to a private school, which is free to hire anyone it wants, I would check to make sure the teachers had degrees in their field and at least some schooling in education/child development.
People who want to teach children should have at least a minimum understanding of pedagogy and child development. I don't know what the laws are in TX, but MA and NJ have alternate route programs for people with education and experience in content areas but no teaching experience/education. Those people can get hired by a school district to teach. In their first year, they have a mentor at their school, and they take educational courses on the side to bring them up to speed on educational and developmental issues. That seems like a workable solution.
As for vouchers themselves, I don't think they're the solution to the problem, but they might be part of the solution. I can't see requiring children in socio-economically and educationally poor school districts to stay there while people try to tweak something that needs a huge overhaul. Why should another generation of kids languish? They deserve a good education right now. So I think that a voucher program in those communities would help, but it needs to be part of a broader effort to truly CHANGE the schools that are struggling. Making minor adjustments to something that's very broken won't work.
That said, I don't think vouchers should be able to be used at for-profit or religious private schools. There's no way public money should be spent to teach someone's religion to children.
3 - DJRadiohead
It is commonly believed the teachers' unions across this country are pro-education and pro-kids. And sometimes they actually are. But first and foremost, these unions are pro-teacher. And they should be pro-teacher first and foremost because that is the job of a union.
But there are MANY occasions when the interests and the interests of children are divergent. And it is in these situations the teachers' unions show their true colours. It is time for state legislatures to get the courage to stand up to the teachers' unions in these kinds of situations.
Please understand, I am not blaming teachers as indivuduals. My mommy happens to be a special education teacher, and a cracking good one at that. My gripes are with the politically active unions who have, in certain instances, hijacked the education debate to the detriment of children.
Good post.
4 - Steve S
It's not surprising that the 'progressive' response comes across as non-biased, saying that vouchers can be part of a solution, whereas the original blog has terms like 'enemy of your children', 'parasite', 'keeping the poor oppressed'.
I don't know enough about the Texas school system to comment on the gist of their problems, but just by reading this article, I can't see how anyone can take it seriously as it brings up implications of a group of educators in a smoky room, dim lit bulb overhead, plotting ways to attack 'your' children. It makes one wonder if this is actually just a transcript of a Michael Savage or Alan Keyes rant.
5 - Mark Saleski
more likely'd be savage. "public titty parasites" sits comfortably next to stuff like "turd world nations".
6 - Steve S
There could be some good info in the blog. Who would want to navigate past all the hatred to see it though?
7 - DJRadiohead
Hatred, vitriol, hyperbole and character assasination are too much a part of blogging these days. It's sad.
8 - Eric Olsen
I'll tell you what though, agree with the sentiment or not, this is one hell of a sentence:
It seems that the Texas Federation of Teachers is all stirred up and mobilizing the blue-hairs and public teat parasites to keep minorities oppressed and the poor in eternal servitude so they can make sure that their constituency can continue to fail again and again at communicating any kind of useful knowledge to our kids.
I'm still laughing
9 - Dirtgrain
School Vouchers Suck. Read it. Basically, the school voucher and charter school movement started by the rich is a selfish plan to stratify our society, better demarcate the gradations between the rich and the poor, and secure public funding for the private education of their children. By the way, the No Child Left Behind Act makes our schools more like schools that "indoctrinate our children into a culture of complacent mediocrity." There are many things that should be done to improve education, but Bush's agenda proposes none of them. As for Bush's supposed success with Texas schools, he lied.
10 - Steve S
Regarding comment 7. I agree and things like hatred and character assassination, etc. usually indicate bias as well. Should someone be uninformed about the situation of the Texas School System and come across this blog, I don't see how they can think this is not a piece written with bias from the onset.
11 - Dave Nalle
>>But now that teacher pay has risen in many states/towns, the unions need to give a little back.<<
I can see you have no familiarity with how unions work. 'Giving back' is not part of their working vocabulary.
>>That said, a lot of what you've written is not only anti-teacher but plain old anti-education.<<
I think you misread my anti-TFT comments as anti-teacher. I don't confuse the individual teacher with the impersonal organization. As for anti-education, I doubt that I spent 20 years as a teacher because I was anti-education.
>> It's hard to take you seriously with all the sweeping generalizations and party-line talking points.<<
LOL, which party would that be? The activist I reference in the article - Rev. Sterling Lands - is a black Democrat and active in the local Democratic party. The education reform website I reference in the end of the article is non-partisan and certainly not Republican.
>> For example, teachers are not morally bankrupt [although schools are, if you ask me, indoctrination camps for the middle class -- everyone must learn the same thing at the same time ... or else!]. As soon as you started with the morally bankrupt teacher thing, I realized that you have some sort of ax to grind.<<
I never said teachers were morally bankrupt. That phrase clearly refers to the TFT not actual teachers. The TFT have long ago left behind any relationship with actual educatiion.
>>I think the TFT is correct in that private schools will not, en masse, accept children from these disadvantaged neighborhoods. <<
Which I didn't dispute. I pointed out that a large enough voucher would make it practical to start private schools specifically tailored to the needs of those kids.
>>If they did, the very nature of their schools would change -- they are by design, selective. They discriminate in the application process. That's why parents who can afford to send their kids there DO. That's not to say that no kids would get in to private school, but private schools alone will not solve the public school problem.<<
I think that what parents here in Austin want is a solution to the problems their kids have to deal with. I think that getting rid of the school district administrative structure and essentially privatizing the public schools themselves is the real answer to a system wide problem.
>>Plus, if the "we need standards and accountability" people in TX were truly interested in making sure tax dollars were being spent well in education, then they would indeed hold any private school that accepts public money up to the same standards they hold the public schools. It should be required that private schools demonstrate what kind of job they're doing with taxpayer money. <<
This is a common bit of misinformation which groups like the TFT drag out to deceive people. The truth is that accredited private schools go through a certification process and outcome monitoring which is more rigorous than anything applied to the public schools. Their privately set standards are already substantially higher than anything the state would impose.
>>The fact that private schools would be able to take the money without having to be accountable AT ALL to the state <<
No one has ever suggested that this would be the case. Right now the state delegates that to the various accreditation boards and there's no reason why that wouldn't continue.
>>for the progress of the children they accept is telling: it's setting up public schools to be shut down. <<
We can always hope.
>>With all the conservative and libertarian talk about letting the market decide, I'm not surprised that they would write laws to stack the deck in favor of private schools. Why is it that public schools would be held to a different standard than private schools if not to give private schools an advantage? Funny how the dedication to standards and accountability goes out the window when private businesses are receiving public dollars, huh?<<
Public dollars? Where do you think that money came from? Here in Texas it comes from property taxes. The government doesn't generate money, it takes it from private citizens. There's no such thing as a public dollar.
>>And education classes are not useless. If you think that any and all content experts can walk into a fifth grade class and understand how to design effective instructional/assessment materials and lesson plans for ten-year-olds, then you're sadly misguided. I'm not saying nobody could do it, I'm just saying that you're underestimating the work that goes into building an effective classroom and the knowledge and skills required to do it.<<
Have you TAKEN education classes? I have. Every one I took in college was an absolute waste of time. They're filled with pseudopsychology, ritualistic mumbo jumbo and in-depth explorations of subjects so obvious that anyone bright enough to go to college fully understands the subject within the first minute of an hour long class of repitition and jargon regurgitation. No one who majors in education should be allowed near a classroom. They are by definition not qualified to teach any subject at all.
I suppose I should have included biographical information with my post, but it's on my blog so I didn't put it in the article. I have taken both undergraduate and graduate courses in education in addition to doing Masters in English and History and a Doctorate in History in graduate school. I taught college history for 20 years, have taught classes in both elementary and high school and served several years on an elementary school Advisory Committee. So I know the system and its flaws intimately.
<
You think this is not the case in private schools? Most private school teachers have backgrounds teaching public schools, but left for private schools because of the crushing bureaucratic burden the public schools put on them.
>>People who want to teach children should have at least a minimum understanding of pedagogy and child development. I don't know what the laws are in TX, but MA and NJ have alternate route programs for people with education and experience in content areas but no teaching experience/education. Those people can get hired by a school district to teach. In their first year, they have a mentor at their school, and they take educational courses on the side to bring them up to speed on educational and developmental issues. That seems like a workable solution.<<
That's more or less what we have in Texas now, but it was only implemented fairly recently.
>>As for vouchers themselves, I don't think they're the solution to the problem, but they might be part of the solution. I can't see requiring children in socio-economically and educationally poor school districts to stay there while people try to tweak something that needs a huge overhaul. Why should another generation of kids languish? They deserve a good education right now. So I think that a voucher program in those communities would help, but it needs to be part of a broader effort to truly CHANGE the schools that are struggling. Making minor adjustments to something that's very broken won't work.<<
Can't argue with you there. I think that this is a good place to start with vouchers. The problem is that the way the education bureaucracy works the real reforms are never going to come to the public schools. The system is too entrenched and groups like the TFT and the NEA are too powerful.
>>That said, I don't think vouchers should be able to be used at for-profit or religious private schools. There's no way public money should be spent to teach someone's religion to children.<<
Ridiculous. Again, it's not public money. There's no such thing. By putting that kind of restriction on a voucher system you would be limiting it to schools which are basically private clones of public schools.
Ironically, one of the reasons I eventually took my kids out of public school was that I felt they were getting too much religious indoctrination. As an atheist I didn't approve of the covert ways that teachers and other students were sneaking religious content into the school every day. I'd rather have my kids in a good parochial school of my choosing where I know what kind of religious silliness they're going to be exposed to than in an uncontrolled environment where cults send their children to proselytize their unsuspecting classmates - and by cults I mainly mean fundamentalist christians.
Oh, and for those who think my posting was full of 'hatred and vitriot', please accept my disdain. If people who want to abuse and neglect the minds of our children for their own benefit don't deserve hatred, who does?.
Dave
http://www.elitistpig.com
12 - Dave Nalle
>>School Vouchers Suck. Read it. Basically, the school voucher and charter school movement started by the rich is a selfish plan to stratify our society, better demarcate the gradations between the rich and the poor, and secure public funding for the private education of their children. <<
Did you not READ the article or look at the links? The voucher movement isn't being pushed by the rich. They can already afford to send their kids to private school. It's being promoted by poor inner city parents - mostly black and hispanic - who want to get their kids out of ghettoized, sub-standard education.
>> As for Bush's supposed success with Texas schools, he lied.<<
Actually, it was Bush who signed the bill which finally broke the stranglehold of the schools of education on public schools in Texas and made it possible for people who majored in academic subjects to teach those subjects rather than limiting teaching almost exclusively to people with education degrees and little or no knowledge of the fields they were teaching.
Dave
http://www.elitistpig.com
13 - Steve S
If people who want to abuse and neglect the minds of our children for their own benefit don't deserve hatred, who does?.
I don't understand though, how you know that they WANT to abuse and neglect the minds of children. Perhaps it's gotten too bureaucratic, perhaps it's gotten too organizational and cumbersome with guidelines and agendas, but until someone shows me proof that a large part of people enter the educational system with the intent of abusing children, posts like this just read like rants.
14 - Eric Olsen
it may be a rant but it has yielded an excellent discussion
Steve S, BHW, et al: what IS the answer to substandard public education, especially in low income areas, where education would seem to offer the the most impact of all?
15 - Steve S
Eric, my perception would be that public education needs an overhaul, but not an abandonment. People who live in the inner city and who are poor, might get a nice check to enroll their kids in a private school, but they don't have a family SUV to pack the kids up and drive them across town to attend. My thought is that those who need to pull their kids out of the most failing schools will be the ones most unlikely/unable to do so.
I'm against testing schools to see their performance (NCLB) and for testing kids to see their performance. Two 5th graders for example, take a test, but have different needs (one is disabled perhaps or is struggling to learn English having moved here a few years back) but get the same test. I don't see that as a good way to determine school performance.
Private schools acknowledge that students need individualization. NCLB and all the rants from the Right do not seek to apply this to public school systems, but their 'solution' is to make things more generic on a public school level. That makes things worse, but of course, that is their intent.
Reports say each student can get up to 6k to attend a private school? That's 10's of millions of dollars, possibly more on a national level. Why not take that money and put it into the school system, (and that doesn't have to mean just handing it over to teachers unions that the right so despises) to create a public school that is similiar to the so-highly praised private school?
I believe education should be free. Should people leave public schools and go to private schools, then I see the end of free education, and ultimately a severe corrosion on democracy.
16 - Dave Nalle
>>I don't understand though, how you know that they WANT to abuse and neglect the minds of children. Perhaps it's gotten too bureaucratic, perhaps it's gotten too organizational and cumbersome with guidelines and agendas, but until someone shows me proof that a large part of people enter the educational system with the intent of abusing children, posts like this just read like rants.<<
Ok, change the word 'want' to 'are willing to'. I may have gone too far in suggesting actual evilness as their motivation. Let's call it a callous disregard for human decency instead.
>>Eric, my perception would be that public education needs an overhaul, but not an abandonment. People who live in the inner city and who are poor, might get a nice check to enroll their kids in a private school, but they don't have a family SUV to pack the kids up and drive them across town to attend. My thought is that those who need to pull their kids out of the most failing schools will be the ones most unlikely/unable to do so.<<
Part of the point of this article was that inner city activists are the ones who are spearheading this. I don't think they would be doing so if they didn't think they could get the kids to the private schools. What I think is really most likely to happen is the establishment of new private schools targeting the inner city voucher market in some of the abandonned facilities of inner city school systems. I know that in Austin and San Antonio there are perfectly good schools sitting unused in urban locations, made obsolete and left vacant in the school districts endless quest to spend tax money on bigger, newer and better facilities.
>>Reports say each student can get up to 6k to attend a private school? That's 10's of millions of dollars, possibly more on a national level. Why not take that money and put it into the school system, (and that doesn't have to mean just handing it over to teachers unions that the right so despises) to create a public school that is similiar to the so-highly praised private school?<<
That money is already IN the school system and it's not doing the job. By taking that money out you give a kid a chance at a better education now as opposed to years down the road when they finally figure out a solution for the problems these schools have. In addition, taking $6000 out of the system for each student who uses a voucher will leave behing about $2000-$2500 that would have been spent on that student if he'd stayed in the public school, so that additional money can be spent to improve the public school for those who stick with it and if that money can solve the problem then it will work out better for everyone.
But the truth is that money will NEVER solve the problem. Most private schools provide a superior education on as little as 30% less per student than public schools spend. Radical restructuring of the entire public school system is the only solution and the entrenched interests of teachers unions and administrative bureaucracy will never allow that to happen.
>>I believe education should be free. Should people leave public schools and go to private schools, then I see the end of free education, and ultimately a severe corrosion on democracy.<<
Public education is NOT free. Not only do the parents of the kids in the system pay taxes for it, but so do two other people who don't have kids in the system for each child enrolled. I currently pay about $4500 a year in property taxes and because of where I live (the worst school dristrict in the State of Texas and also the one with the highest funding per student) I pay another $12000 a year to send my two kids to private school, plus the cost of driving them there every day. The majority of the people in this school district cannot afford to do what I do and I'd much rather see the tax money I pay which I don't get to benefit from instead help out my neighbor's kids by sending them to private school than by underwriting a school district which is clearly a disaster.
Dave
http://www.diablog.us
17 - Mark Saleski
one thing that private institutions don't have to deal with (because they can be selective) is the situations that inner city kids come from.
screwed up parents (abusive, drug addiction, you name it), godawful living conditions, gang influence, hunger.
there are many problems in public schools...some of the are external to the building.
18 - Eric Olsen
probably MOST of them are external to the building, but what is the answer to making low income schools work?
19 - DJRadiohead
I'm against testing schools to see their performance (NCLB) and for testing kids to see their performance. Two 5th graders for example, take a test, but have different needs (one is disabled perhaps or is struggling to learn English having moved here a few years back) but get the same test. I don't see that as a good way to determine school performance.
I think individuality is wonderful, but 2+2=4 no matter what your background is. And I don't think it's unreasonable to base a child's promotion from one grade to the next on that child's mastery of certain basic concepts.
We should NOT lower our expectations of a child coming from unique or difficult circumstances. We should increase the resources and our efforts to raise that child up, not expect less from them.
20 - Steve S
Wow, that's some high property taxes for an area with 'the worst school district'. No wonder you're pissed.
Of course public education is paid for via taxes. By free, I mean no enrollment fees, no tuition, etc.
I don't want to dispute/debate the Austin situation, because I'm not there, I don't know it. I can take you at your word that it's a disaster. I would look to former governorship as to reasons why it has gotten to it's current state. Perhaps you all should have voted someone in who calls his opponents girly men like we did.
For me, the bottom line is that public education being free from the cost of entering that private schools have, is instrumental to allowing the poor to be able to climb up the economic ladder into the middle class. Without that we cannot have a democracy. I've probably gone over this line of thought enough to make people sick here.
Education that comes at a cost via tuition, etc. will dramatically affect the balance of poor/middle/upper classes with a negative effect.
Here's some good news for you. Someone is working to double the amount spent on students in the Austin school system, while reducing your property taxes by 50%.
http://news.dallaschamber.org/e_article000332971.cfm?x=b11,0,w
Perhaps there are people out there who think that all you have to go through to put your kids through private school isn't a good solution after all.
21 - Steve S
Regarding comment 19. I'm not talking about lowering expectations. I'm talking about individualization. For some reason, right wingers like the concept of individualization that private schools give, but expect a generic cross-platform analysis on public schools. If a public school were to individualize according to students, it's 'lowering expectations'. If a private school individualizes, it's congratulated and touted as an exemplary model.
22 - DJRadiohead
I don't care how they do it (short of random beatings) --- I just want students of all backgrounds to reach (roughly) the same finish line at the end of each grade.
I am all for innovation and creative approaches but I am concerned primarily with the results. It is not some insidious right-wing plot to homogenize all children if someone gives them a test requiring them to prove they know the alphabet by the time they have been promoted to the 5th grade.
23 - Steve S
It is not some insidious right-wing plot to homogenize all children
(scrolling back up)..yeah, it's the teachers unions who have an insidious plot, according to Dave.
if someone gives them a test requiring them to prove they know the alphabet by the time they have been promoted to the 5th grade.
I don't know what is on the NCLB tests. Does anybody have any sample questions for a specific grade level? One would think that a 5th grader should know the alphabet, but we would be going on the assumption that the kid has been in school all 5 of those years, right? What about kids who came to this country 6 months earlier? ooops. Same test. What about mentally challenged kids? ooops. Same test. Gotta keep up. So sad, too bad, the financing of ALL our kids will be determined on your test results, little one.
Does anybody have any statistics on the educational level of kids today? Example, how many 5th graders don't know the alphabet? I've heard the stories of pro football players who can't read, but what are the actual statistics of failing?
24 - bhw
Eric, I would make public schools smaller, thereby creating a series of small schools within each district. Recent studies have shown that children do better in smaller schools, especially younger kids and middle school kids. For troubled schools in troubled communities, I'd make an extremely small teacher:student ratio [this would obviously cost a lot, but we're already throwing good money after bad], and I'd even extend the school year to twelve months with breaks spaced throughout the year.
BUT for all communities, I would also get rid of the idea of "one size fits all" for not only an entire state, but for individual districts, as well. Each district should, I think, create *different schools* that parents could choose from. I'd pick the one that has mixed-age classrooms, lets kids learn at their own pace and according to what they're interests are, gives individual progress reports and portfolio reviews instead of grades, etc. Others could choose the one that's more "traditional" in its philosophy or the one that specifically integrates arts into the entire curriculum, etc.
I wrote up a better description, I think, on another thread a few weeks ago. I'll see if I can find it later tonight.
25 - Eric Olsen
okay, thanks to you, Steve and Dave in particular