House Might Restore Some Education Budget Cuts
A small bipartisan group of House lawmakers is working on a plan to restore some of the money cut from public education in the 2011 legislative session to the state’s current two-year budget.
House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, said that lawmakers have just under $1 billion available to spend without hitting the constitutional spending limit on the current two-year budget. He and a group of lawmakers, which includes House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, are in talks to add some of that money to a supplemental spending bill expected to reach the full House next month.
“We’re ...
Comments (10)
Toni Mikel via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Kids are the most important resource and Great schools will draw good families. I'm disappointed your Senators did not vote for Violence Against Women Act this week:(
Arthur M. Thomas IV via Texas Tribune on Facebook
This is the Texas house Toni, not the federal senate. What does 'your' senators have to do with that act?
Saying 'our kids are an important' resource doesn't really have any meaning. Everyone wants kids to be taken care of. Dumping money on a problem isn't solving it though. Education isn't about money. More money get dumped into bad public policy.. not childrens' minds. Why do people act like there is a correlation between dollar spent and student learning. There is absolutely nothing to back that up. Its a waste and we need to stop government wasting that money and free our education system from government.
Kipling Oren via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It's not a coincidence that revolutionary advancements in communications were made after the Bell Telephone monopoly was broken up. Breaking up the taxpayer-funded, public-school monopoly would have the same effect in education--it would foster competition and then innovation would follow (which is exactly why the vested interests are against it). If the schools are forced to compete for customers--rather than relying on subsidies regardless of the results the schools produce--this would redound to the benefit of our kids. That's how we can truly help our "most important resource."
Chuck Barksdale via Texas Tribune on Facebook
As a teacher, if you are going to dictate what I have to teach and how I have to teach it, you better be supplying money. The free market system really doesn't work in a "mandated" business.
DrJeff Earl Cunningham via Texas Tribune on Facebook
"Dumping money into the problem" is a uniquely Teabagger saying. Redneck Texas doesn't realize that the problem with education is the fact that you don't want to pay for it. At least be somewhat intellectually honest and admit that the only problem you have is not being able to see the benefits of education. My daughter is not a "problem". She is a student that is worth the time and money. I pay thousands a year in property taxes to pay for her education and I don't complain one bit. Before you use the Tbag line, make sure you aren't a Dbag first.
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
Education is a labor intensive business. The majority of the money spent in public education goes to employee salaries. Saying money doesn't matter is false. It does matter, when it is spent prudently and effectively. Conversely, cutting funding does affect the outcome. It is like saying that more money spent on transportation doesn't necessarily get you better transportation, but it can. We see directly what underfunding our transportation system has done. Drive on I-10 between San Antonio and Houston on a road designed in the 1950's when our population was half of what it is now. At some point, you will be stopped in the middle of nowhere in bumper to bumper traffic. You will still arrive, but you will arrive later than what you anticipated.
Education is the same. If you have more students and the students are not the middle class students you recall from your education, but instead come to school speaking a different language than English and come from poverty, you cannot expect the same outcome by applying the same inadequate resources we have in the past. You cannot cut funding, which results in increased class sizes and fewer resources to help students with learning problems and expect the same outcome as a private school that selects and rejects which students to teach. Money matters.
Like it or not, school teachers and administrators deal with student coming to school from houses without food. Some schools have washers and dryers and the teachers bring used clothing and shoes so that the students might have a clean pair of clothes to wear. They have kids dealing with abuse, transient students, students living with friends, grandparents, aunts or uncles. Sometimes, there is no parent that can be found. Often, one or possibly both parents may be incarcerated. Show me a reputable private school that is willing to take students such as these, without kicking them out at the first sign of difficulty.
Teachers have to deal with disrespect, abuse and the pressure of making sure their kids make progress as measured on the state assessment. Education is a complex business, but every Tom, Dick and Harriet thinks they're an expert, because they attended middle school at one time in their life.
Even the best charter schools engage in selection of their students. Public schools don't have that luxury. They have a mission to educate every single student who shows up at the door and they do it surprisingly well, in spite of the odds against them.
Even with all of the difficulty, even with cynical politicians demonizing teachers, they continue to do their job and teach students every day.
To those of you who criticize and demonize educators and administrators, you should remember that it was a public school administrator at Sandy Hook who gave her life trying to protect her children by running toward the shooter. It was a public school psychologist who died trying to protect the kids in the school by running toward the shooter. These are not the actions of people just collecting a paycheck. I should also point out that it was a home-schooled kid who was the mass murderer.
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Chuck, the free market system can and does work in mandated businesses. It works with car insurance. There is competition there.
Teachers have always been told what to teach. nothing new there. How to teach it is not what the State does. That is what the Districts do.
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Contrary to what to the Dr would like you to think "Dumping money into the problem" is not something said uniquely by "Teabaggers".
His assessment of what "Texas" is willing to pay for is made out of ignorance. In money that the State takes in through General Revenue, 56% goes to Education. That accounts for 42% of all revenue that the state receives. That allocation does not include what the local school districts generate from taxes or bonds.
Texas has place a great deal of emphasis on education. That can be seen with the appropriations it has made and with the lengths it is going to have accountability with in the system while allowing local control. Texas has made a large investment into higher education education with some of the best universities in the Nation.
IF there is an issue with education Dr. then you should be complaining to your teachers, principals and school board members. That is where the problem and solution exist.
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
Dear Tea bagger Matthew,
How much of general revenue goes to education is a meaningless statistic. If the State of Texas take in $1.00 in taxes and you spend 80% of that dollar on public education, does that mean we're spending too much? Really, we spend 80 whole cents on public education in the state of Texas. Texas has always been a low tax, low service state. It underfunds everything, however, the only mandate in the Constitution is to provide for an adequate and efficient public education system. Other meaningless and intentionally deceptive statistics used are things like saying state support for education has gone up 70%, while enrollment has only increased 20%. The cut-off is always before the $5.4 billion dollar cut in funding. That canard is tossed out by our brain dead Governor. Adjusting for inflation and student enrollment and taking into account the tax swap buy down, actual funding for education has dropped, even before the $5.4 billion dollar cut.
Higher education is the same story. State funding has continually dropped, forcing universities to raise tuition. Back when I studied economics, the pattern of funding would be called dis-investment. The Tea Bagger response is not to allow the market to work. You now seek to impose price controls on universities, rather than allow free market competition to work.
You guys are nothing more than ideological, hypocritical hacks.
Mack Green
Reply to Mr. Oren's opinions:
" it would foster competition" Are competing modalities of teaching the way we should educate all our young to think and to learn? If so then private schools will "win" because they will be able to choose superior students that will score high. Public schools and students will "lose" by both having their funds shared with private schools and lose by having to toe the shifting lines of regulation/funding drawn by this year's political whims that private schools are not so subject to. "Winning and losing" is a business and sports ideal. Should the Texas ideal of education be to set up systems that produce only winners and losers?
"vested interests are against it [breaking public lschool monopoly]" Consider the vested interests that are FOR privatization? Interests that seek profit, religious infusion, parochial over wider views of the world, technical rather than rounded education, or business interests supporting worker rather than citizen education. What will the future hold for students taught with these biases? Where then will our state go?