Happy January in an odd numbered year in Texas. Our state Constitution of 1876 requires our
elected representatives to meet every other year for 140 days. Wow.
So, at noon on Tuesday, January 13, 2015 our Legislature convened for
the 84th Legislative Session.
Given the size, the complexity, and the money involved it is very
difficult to picture any group convening for less than half a year to serve
every other year as a governmental body and be effective.
Among the most important things they will do is pass a budget.
They will pass a budget that must be a
balanced budget and must fund state functions for the next two years.
That in and of itself is scary as hell.
I could not project a two year budget for my
family, much less the state.
Could you
do that and not borrow money?
No house
loans, no car loans, no higher education loans, etc.?
Whatever you earn is all you can spend.
How in the world do we know what the state
will generate in terms of income generated mostly from sales tax beginning in
September 2015 and ending in August 2017?
The Comptroller makes a guess and the Legislature is shackled by that
guess.
They then pass a budget that
shackles all of us.
More importantly,
the Legislature’s priorities will be reflected in that budget.
For years we have heard state leaders talk
about education as a very important component of their platforms while they
have consistently voted to either decrease funding for education or to shift
tax dollars from public education to private education experiments.
And this January we have a new governor and a new lieutenant
governor.
Governor Gregg Abbott has
posted his proposed “improvements” to public education and it is one of the
most off-base, outlandish, right-wing lists I have ever seen.
Clearly, Mr. Abbott does not know of what he
speaks.
I suspect he did not talk with
educators.
Like others of his ilk he
talked to wealthy, conservative business people.
Wrong crowd to seek advice from on an
operation that clearly resembles churches and families more than fracking.
Asking Bill Hammond how to improve education
is worse than asking him for marriage counseling.
He is not qualified!
And, OMG, we have heard from Dan Patrick as well.
In what I perceive to be a declaration of war
on Texas public schools, Patrick proposes to cut taxes, rate schools using an A
to F scale and institute vouchers.
What
in the world did public schools ever do to Patrick to earn such enmity?
Does he honestly believe that reducing
funding for public education will somehow magically help public education?
Does he believe the same is true for the
department of public safety, the highway department, and border patrol?
Does he believe that a state funded program
will somehow improve if we reduce funding?
And giving schools a report card grade is so ludicrous it would be funny
if I could stop crying.
It will be as
simple as labeling every family as an “A” family or an “F” family.
Or using the same to label churches.
Schools are highly complex, multi-mission
driven, social organizations that are labor intensive and child focused.
For such complexity there are simple
solutions, and they are all wrong.
Finding another way to shame schools and educators accomplishes no gains
for kids no matter how we measure such gains.
Other states have tried this and failed.
But why in the world would Patrick want to simultaneously decrease
funding and increase accountability?
No
one who can honestly claim to support the education of children would support
either of these notions, much less both.
And all of that falls in line with Patrick’s support of charter schools
and vouchers, both of which take money away from public schools and place it in
the hands of private sector folks.
So, instead of the current political posturing regarding public
education that is based solidly in pro-private sector models and anti-public
school models, I propose some other ideas for the Legislature:
First, let’s increase the funding for public
education.
If we really want to improve
education for all our kids we must pay teachers more and we must reduce class
size and we must put in place support systems for our kids of poverty.
We could accomplish some of that by ending
this charter school experiment which has not shown to be any more effective
than public schools.
And the voucher
idea is worse as it will allow parents of wealth to receive public school
dollars to support their tuition in private schools.
I do not know about you, but I perceive that
to be immoral.
Throw money at it?
You bet.
That is exactly what I do when my kids get sick or my truck breaks
down.
If you feel public schools are in
trouble then surely you must recognize the need for more funding, not less.
Second, we need a hiatus on accountability and high stakes
testing.
There are two main purposes to
administer such tests:
one is to fund
the Pearson oligarchy and the other is to collect data to shame schools.
Neither of these help schools and school
people teach kids.
There is absolutely
no sound instructional reason to give such a test.
The reasons are political, not
educational.
We know that the schools
that serve poor kids tend to do worse than the schools that serve kids of
wealth.
We know that the schools that
spend more money per pupil tend to do better than schools that spend less per
pupil.
Shaming the victims of poverty and those who
serve kids in poverty is not a motivator to somehow improve.
If one really believes that low performing
schools exist due to a lack of motivation or professional competence of the
faculty, then simply require that every low performing school swap teaching staff
with a high performing school and see what happens.
(We know that the low performing school will
perform worse, and the high performing school will perform better.)
The teacher is a large variable when it comes
to student learning, but he or she is not the only variable nor is the teaching
staff the variable of greatest impact.
Student wealth is the variable of greatest impact.
Finding another measure, like A to F, that
confirms the correlation between wealth and outcomes will not help anyone
improve.
Adding another gauge to the dashboard
will not improve car performance without actually spending money on
maintenance.
And, with kudos to Larry
Lezotte, weighing the cow does not help it gain weight.
Third, honestly look at public school finance in Texas.
We know it is unconstitutional, even though
round two of the court case will not be resolved until after the Legislative
session.
We must fix this broken system
now.
I think it will take an amendment
to our 1876 Texas Constitution to do so, but the Legislature should have the
guts to tackle it.
Among many problems
large and small in public school finance is the basic notion that schools with
high property wealth per kid should divest themselves of some of their local
tax revenue to help fund schools with low property wealth per kid.
Sounds noble, but it is not.
Even when the wealthiest districts send money
to the state they still have more money per kid than most school districts in
the state, and the taxpayers in those districts highly resent sending “their”
money to educate someone else’s kids.
No
matter how much money poor districts receive from the state it is not nearly
enough to provide a fair and equitable education, especially when compared to
the high wealth districts even after they have sent money to the state.
In other words, the quality of public schools
appears to be based on wealth, and the available money for schools is based on
property values in a given zip code.
That is neither fair nor equitable.
To fix it I believe we need to fund all schools from the state based on
a state collected tax.
That tax could be
property tax levied and collected at the state level and returned to public
schools based on numbers and needs of kids.
That tax could be a progressive income tax designated solely for the
funding of public schools and returned to local public schools based on numbers
and needs of kids.
Many will scream
about an income tax, which really is the only fair tax, but even collecting the
property tax at the state level will maintain current tax structures and rates
as well as equalizing funding.
Wealthy districts
will scream that they cannot live on the same revenue as the poor districts,
assuming that such a plan would lower funding for public education to an
average level.
It does not have to be that
way.
We could leverage everyone up to
the highest level if the wealthy people in the wealthy districts lobbied to
increase taxes so that the funding pulls everyone up and pushes no one down. I
do not think the Legislature has the guts to address this issue.
There is an array of other issues I wish the Legislature would
address:
review the role of the school
board
vis-à-vis
superintendents, review the rule allowing charter schools to dismiss students
that are hard to teach or slow to learn, review and increase the funding for
the teacher retirement system, review local district athletic expenditures
versus instructional expenditures (funny to me that athletics is not a required
program by the state and that school boards tend to understand that throwing
money at athletics likely will result in improvement even if they do not believe
the same is true for instruction,) review the requirements and the required
training of school board members, remove the authority for approval of curriculum
essential elements and textbook selection from the state board of education, update
the transportation allotment, etc., etc.
Most of these topics will not be addressed, and those that will be will
likely send us in the wrong direction.
A minority of Texas voters put these men in office.
Only 28% of registered voters in Texas
bothered to vote in the November elections.
A victory was had by a mere 14% or more of registered voters.
And yet, we are now stuck with Abbott,
Patrick and their ilk during a critical time in public education.
As the rest of the nation seems to be waking
up to the negative impact of the so-called “reform” movement, Texas continues
to not only embed that movement in law but to extend and expand.
So sad.
What’s good for business is not good for public education.
We are in the business of making every single
kid successful.
Regardless, the Legislature is in session. Hold on to your hats. I predict we will continue to go down the
wrong road even faster: No brakes for kids,
schools or educators.
