Wayne Slater, senior political writer for the Dallas Morning News, tweeted this:
@WayneSlater Put a fork in school vouchers in Texas — ban on taxpayer money for private schools passes overwhelming in conservative TX House
I bet the rural Republicans balked at destroying their communities’ public schools.
This is good news, especially from Texas. Did they suddenly come out of insanity for an instant?
Time to bring in the Emergeny Managers …
Believe me, they never give up …
Excellent! Who knew Texas would be the voice of sanity in this crazy mess.
TN bill withdrawn too.
Terri Harris Sent from my iPhone (901)483-1552
Another big win where unexpected. Is this the beginning of the end for this insanity? Thank you Texas no matter why you did it.
As a Texan, I think they voted against vouchers to protect charters in urban areas. The charters don’t want the competition from private schools.
Interesting perspective.
It is wonderful news! Of course, it’s not over until it’s over, and the Texas Lege is famous for dirty deals cut in the dark of night, but today we are very happy. Lesson learned: Lots of groups/organizations have been working on this for a while. And Diane is right. Rural Texans are not in favor of vouchers, for they could destroy not just their schools, but their towns! We, the people, can win these fights, but it takes a ton of hard work! Let’s get it done across the country! Tell Arne Duncan to start packing up!
Duncan lied along with Senator Feinstein to push mayoral control at LAUSD (AB 1381). They stated that those before Daley took over in 1995 had put the Chicago Schools into $1.8 billion in debt which Daley, Vallas and Duncan had to clean up. The fact is that in the 1994 Chicago Schools Budget there was a surplus so if there became a debt Daley, Vallas and Duncan made it. Remember Rod Paige under George Bush 1 when it was found out that he lied to get the Sec. of Ed. job because he had no dropout rate and later it was found to be about 50%. He lost his job over this. Should not Duncan also lose his job? I have the documents for the unbelievers. It is all public if you do your research.
Vouchers don’t kill rural schools. Oddly enough, vouchers help rural schools. Parents who are looking for school choice are often looking for all the options. The majority of rural schools in my area have developed open boundaries. So, when parents are looking to move their kids out a school district they don’t like, they can move them to another public school with ease. Many of our outlying schools offer the same things as private schools: Small class sizes, little red tape, caring administrators and teachers and close net communities. I know of a private school that takes vouchers that have failed to get these students, and is risk to be closed. Students are fleeing on public school, and being driven 10 miles one way to get to the next public school.
Ms. Ravitch mentioned having some issues with embedding Twitter content on WordPress self-hosted blogs. This is how to do it:
~ Click on the time-and-date of the “tweet”. Then look on the right edge of the “tweet”, where it says “more” or maybe just an ellipsis now, as Twitter keeps fussing with it 😉
~ Click on that, once. You’ll get a drop down menu with two choices, “Email this” or “Embed this”.
~ Click on the latter. This will display a box with HTML tagged text, and instructions to copy it. Do so.
~ Paste it in your WordPress blog entry, wherever you wish.
Don’t worry if it doesn’t display until you actually hit the “publish” button. Trust me! It works in posts. Let’s see if it works in comments too…
If not, my apologies.