Senate Hearing Tackles Vouchers, School Choice
In a preview of a likely battle in the upcoming legislative session, state lawmakers on the Senate Education Committee on Friday heard testimony on school choice programs, including vouchers that would allow students to use public money to attend private schools.
Pointing to the experiences of states like Florida and Indiana, school choice proponents argued that the competition fostered by voucher programs would improve the quality of students' education and bring savings to the state. In addition to increasing the options for parents and creating a better marketplace for teachers, they said, such reforms improve traditional public schools by challenging ...
Comments (21)
Bambi Clark via Texas Tribune on Facebook
You think they are going to tell the truth of how it will like their friends pockets?
Tim Spotswood via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I paid my school taxes along with my kids tuition to private school and I am against the voucher system. (and I work for the school district)
Very first thing that would happen is all the parents who already have their kids in private school would get vouchers - automatically the districts lose millions of dollars without losing a single student. Then, private schools raise tuition enough to keep out whoever they want kept out. It won't help anyone but the wealthy.
Leesa Monroe via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It won't bring savings...
Greg Pulte via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It's a ripoff. Let's pray the public does not fall for it.
gypsy314 ne
Now we are going the right direction and once unions are a past are children can then learn by good teachers instead of being rounded by union teachers. All Americans should vote for Republicans to make sure the unions go and vouchers happen.
Matt Robinson
Senator Patrick wants nothing short of the complete destruction of the Public school system in Texas. He has referred to Public Education here as an "entitlement", and would like to see it's abolition in favor of Private schools & home-schooling.
If Legislators like him would only listen to people in the know, like school administrators and school board members, practical, cost-effective solutions could be reached in the next legislative session.
gameday liberal
In Texas, unions have nothing to do public education. Texas is open shop and a right to work to work. So, labor unions are not an issue in education. What the elite want to do is erode the right to education and establish it as a privilege as it was prior to the advent of public education. I am happy my children left the Texas public school system several years ago because of the continuing antics of Republican radicals in the legislature.
gameday liberal
I should have typed Texas is a right to work state and a union has no effect on public educaiton.
gameday liberal
In Texas, unions have nothing to do public education. Texas is open shop and a right to work to state. So, labor unions are not an issue in education. What the elite want to do is erode the right to education and establish it as a privilege as it was prior to the advent of public education. I am happy my children left the Texas public school system several years ago because of the continuing antics of Republican radicals in the legislature.
Alice Taylor
gypsy314ne.... I know you've been told this many times in these forums, but I'll say it again. There are no unionized public school teachers in Texas. It is against Texas law for a public school teacher to engage in union activity. SS617.002 is the code if you want to look it up for yourself.
Michael Sanderson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The voucher system will cost us all money, without really changing anything. Look at the univerity system- when more money became available through student loans, the universities raised tuition. Private schools will do the same thing. If the voucher is for $3,000, they will raise tuiting $3,000. Since there are currently lawsuits against the state regarding inadequate funding they will not be able to reduce the money going to districts. The additional funds gong to private schools have to come from somewhere. Taxes will go up.
T D
Tim Spotswood's comment, above, should give everyone pause:
The first people to get checks from this program would be those with children already in private schools. So we'd be subsidizing the affluent and the relatively well-off at the expense of public schools.
Brilliant.
GS Crispus
Lets give the Heartland Institute the top billing it deserves. Right wing nuts listening to right wing nuts to make right wing nutty policy. Although this should be expected from Dan Patrick, the man who screamed about jet contrails near California being a government coverup of an Iranian submarine based missile attack, on his radio station.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/godwinization/#postComment
TrueTexas
I don’t understand why people don’t want to give low income families the same option higher income families have of choosing where to send their children to school.
In a San Antonio school district there has been a privately funded voucher system for 10 years and the public school system improved while everyone had a choice. It is funded by James Leininger and you can read about it here: http://jamesrleininger.com
Instead of making up scary scenarios based on imagination look at the facts at where it has been done!
Christie Smith
Alice Taylor:
You are incorrect. There are unionized teachers in Texas. There are a handle of districts where they have meet and confer contracts (not the same as collective bargaining - not near as strong). They can not engage in union activity during work hours, but otherwise they are free to join a union if they so choose.
That being said, the argument that unions are a problem is plainly, stupid. Unions have very little effect on public schools in Texas. The problem with public schools in Texas is wrong-headed policy. Politicians who know nothing about education pass laws that do nothing but line the pockets of test companies. There is WAY too much testing going on now - and it does nothing but measure who well a student can take a test - and reduces learning to teaching to the test, which frustrates teachers.
Taking money out of the system is not the answer. The observation that it will only help the wealthy is spot on.
And to TrueTexas - you said it yourself, it's a PRIVATELY funded program. Any more millionaires like Leininger want to do this - fine by me. However, we're talking in this forum about the use of PUBLIC dollars to go to fund private schools. Pay attention.
Kim Burkett via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Where's the money to pay for this??? Texas couldn't cover the 160,000 new students to the public system to which it is constitutionally responsible. How is Dan Patrick going to fund this? Is Dan Patrick planning to raise TAXES!?!?!?
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
This is all the same privatization agenda cooked up in the American Legislative Exchange Council. Dan Patrick and the liars at the Heartland Foundation should crawl back under the rocks they came out from under. The idiot Perry just appointed to the Texas Education Agency should make everyone realize that the agenda is to destroy public education.
Leesa Monroe via Texas Tribune on Facebook
From what I read today they think it will be cheaper to give out vouches and then that covers the cuts in education. They are looking for ways to reduce the cost. It just does not make sense to me. The unemployment rate for college grads is only 4%. Why wouldn't it make more sense to spend money on education. We will get it back when we have a better educated workforce and lower unemployment.
Zachary Wright
It looks like to me that now the legislators want our kids to attend private schools through vouchers. For the life of me I cannot see how that will work. Private schools for the most part can either be non-profit charters, for-profit charters, or church schools. As far as I can see, our tax monies that come through the department of education on the federal level come to the states then on to the districts then to the schools and teachers, a system that has worked for years is now being trashed by people like Dan Patrick so they can reroute that money to private entities and churches? Lets just corrupt our dying school system along with the legislature. Not to mention, all our tax money that finance the big testing publishers. It is all about the money and not the children. How backwards is that?
Adele Roberson
Republicans on Education: Knowledge-Based Education
We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification
and have the purpose of challenging the students fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority
Adele Roberson
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. According to Bill Nye, aka "The Science Guy," if grownups want to "deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them."
Denial of evolution is unique to the United States. I mean, we're the world's most advanced technological—I mean, you could say Japan—but generally, the United States is where most of the innovations still happens. People still move to the United States. And that's largely because of the intellectual capital we have, the general understanding of science. When you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in that, it holds everybody back, really.
Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It's like, it's very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You're just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place.
Carl Sagan, said, "When you're in love you want to tell the world." So, once in a while I get people that really—or that claim—they don't believe in evolution. And my response generally is "Well, why not? Really, why not?" Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don't believe in evolution. I mean, here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they're at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent.
And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.
It's just really hard a thing, it's really a hard thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view, I'm sure, will be, it just won't exist. There's no evidence for it.
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Elizabeth Rodd and Jonathan Fowler
http://bigthink.com/