The Lt. Governor has a powerful role in Texas government. Unfortunately, the Lt. Gov. right now is Dan Patrick, a former radio talk show host, who is a zealous supporter of vouchers. When he headed the Senate Education Committee, he put forward voucher bills but they died in the House. They died because of rural opposition to vouchers; it seems that rural Republicans in the House don’t see any good reason to kill off their public schools and divide their communities.
But Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick now says he wants “education savings accounts” so that public money can flow to private and religious schools, as well as homeschoolers, and he wants to model his plan along the lines of the one enacted in Nevada. It is still public money going to religious schools, but that’s what he wants. As he says in the article, he wants school choice for all children, not just the poor.
The Nevada plan is being challenged in court by several organizations, because it violates the explicit language of the Nevada state constitution. Studies show that it primarily benefits well-to-do families, not poor families.
As in most other states, about 90% of the children in Texas go to public schools. Those schools are underfunded, especially since a dramatic $5.4 billion cut in 2011. Some of the money was later restored, but not most of it. The children in Texas are poorer than they were five years ago. The pupils are majority-minority. This is the scenario in which Dan Patrick proposes to gut public education.
It is time for the Texas Pastors for Children, for Friends of Texas Public Schools, and for every organization that believes in democratic control of public schools in Texas to step up and beat back Patrick’s bills.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, it’s because ed reformers are “data driven” and rigorously scientific and the Nevada privatization program “works”.
OR none of that is true and it’s purely ideological- an “adult interest”.
I’m still learning to get my head around the idea of paying tens of thousands of public employees to destroy public schools. It’s very “innovative” I must say, enlisting the people who are paid by the public to destroy the schools that are used by the vast majority of the public.
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People in rural areas probably shouldn’t fear vouchers. The ed reform assumption that people hate public schools and will flock to the “better” private schools is dumb. They don’t hate their schools and private schools aren’t necessarily “better”, which people who actually live in these places know.
People pay to send their kids to religious schools for a lot of reasons, but perhaps unsurprisingly they often do that because they are religious. Shocking, I know 🙂
Vouchers were a bust in Ohio, although the ed reform PR machine spent a lot of time and money promoting the idea that we were all “trapped” in the public schools none of them have entered, and would flock to the nearest private school, which none of them have entered either.
Lawmakers in Ohio spent a solid year on vouchers, followed by two years on charters. I’ve come to the realization that these people will work on just about anything as long as it ISN’T the public schools they were hired to “improve”. We all might want to think about hiring some public employees at the state level who have some interest or enthusiasm for public schools. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to continue to pay people in government who oppose the schools they’re supposed to be “improving”.
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Vouchers in Texas would further erode funds to public schools, and the benefits would mostly go to middle class students. In addition, sending public money to religious schools is a clear violation of separation of church and state. This like the Texas Virtual Academy whose ads were all over the media last summer is another bad idea designed to siphon money from already under funded schools.
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See our posts and page comments on this issue on behalf of Texas Kids Can’t Wait! In fact, we invite everyone to LIKE our page. http://Www.facebook.com/texaskidscantwait
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Texas’ neighbor to the north, Oklahoma, is also having its funding for traditional public schools gutted, while those corporate education reformers who are behind that gutting — the politicians and money-motivated businessmen out to profit from school privatization — simultaneously demand that those schools improve or else… and that those working in the Oklahoma public schools must accomplish this with even even less funding than before!
Or else WHAT? Or else, we’ll convert those failure factories to privately-managed charters, firing all the teachers in the process, or we’ll adopt a voucher system that drains away even more funding from traditional public schools, throwing that money towards the actual private schools.
Rinse and repeat until there are no more public schools left, and no schools that have any public control or oversight via a democratically elected school board.
Here’s the story, “where the wind comes sweepin’ off the plains,” and the school funding dries up a like a desert, (forcing schools to “close their doors”):
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OKLAHOMA_BUDGET_EDUCATION?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Meanwhile, here in California, those in charge are going the other way, with increases in funding to traditional public schools:
http://laschoolreport.com/38040-2/
and here:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/governor-proposes-1226-billion-california-budget-36145973
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What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.
This Nevada Super Voucher is a scary monster and it is getting scarier everyday.
https://www.facebook.com/ESA-Nevada-Super-Voucher-523399194474855/
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I made a motion last July at NEARA and try to educate that body of 10,000 teachers about the dangers of the Nevada Supervoucher.
We have to fight.
I cannot express to you how foul this program is and managed by the Treasurer who lined all his rich white friends up to get their checks.
What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas.
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