A Texas State Senator debated a group of students from Richardson ISD, and as they say in Texas, the kids gave Sen. Don Huffines a whupping. The students were in grades 7-12.
He tried to persuade them they needed vouchers so they could go to private schools, and a student told him it wouldn’t work because the vouchers would never be large enough to get them into the best schools.
He got testy and snapped at her:
“Huffines countered by asking: “Do you want me to give them $15,000 so they can go to Hockaday or St. Mark’s? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard.”
Huffines got hot under the collar when the students took issue with him. He lost his cool. His spokesman said “he was ambushed.”
“But Meredyth Childress, a PTA member and mother of one of the students at the meeting, said the students were not political operatives looking to “ambush” Huffines. They were given articles to review about private school vouchers before meeting with the senator. “We’re very proud of the students,” Childress said. “Both sides were passionate. One side displayed the proper respect and decorum. One side did not.”
During one heated exchange, a woman told Huffines that it wasn’t right to send money to private schools that was meant to help public schools.
“What makes you think it’s your money?” Huffines responded, adding that businesses were taxpayers. “Sixty-two percent of all taxes are paid by businesses,” he said.
At one point, Huffines barked at the group: “What are you all afraid of?”
Richardson ISD Superintendent Jeannie Stone said she was proud of how the students responded and grateful they attended the event with her and the PTA.
Bottom line: the high school students were better prepared and more thoughtful than Sen. Huffines.
They knew their stuff. He was outsmarted and outclassed.
Is Sen. Huffines as smart as a seventh-grader from Richardson ISD? What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is great. But the Senator’s takeaway will be that the teachers in the public school system “brainwashed” the kids. But students here in Cooperstown NY would feel the exact same way, and we don’t brainwash them. Students today are well-informed and well-read.
Thanks!! Keep up the articles.
Nick Marcantonio
Mathematics Teacher
Cooperstown High School
________________________________
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
What diaper baby? He was ambushed, really!!
He is a little slow on the uptake if he doesn’t understand that most people have no interest in vouchers in any format. Trying to pass voucher legislation amount to trying to teach a pig to sing. It will only annoy the pig and frustrate you.
Vouchers in Texas are the brain fart..I mean child of Lt. Dan. He thinks he knows best and is the smartest person in the state with nearly 27 million people, 5.3 million are school children.
State senator offers partial apology for rant
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/state-senator-offers-partial-apology-for-rant/415777396
Rant in video at bottom of page
Or available on Facebook
Good thing he’s a senator and not a teacher. He wouldn’t be up to the job.
Any time I’ve watched a legislator discuss issues with students who have studied the issues, the students usually come off better than the politicians. The kids are well prepared and unafraid to ask the questions adults sometimes avoid. The best politicians enjoy and embrace the kids’ incisive questions. But some politicians become condescending, evasive, and officious. I take comfort that the kids see through them pretty quickly.
“officious”
Did you mean “offalicious”?
I have found this as well. I take my students to the state legislature every year. My students really know their stuff. I’ve had students even give suggestions for improvements in legislation that have made it into said legislation.
His point about businesses, also paying taxes, does not necessarily work to his advantage. Sure they pay part of the educational taxes to their community but they also want to keep their employees and customers happy. These students and their parents live in that community and they don’t really want vouchers so vouchers wouldn’t benefit the tax paying companies/corporations in any way. They are probably also anti voucher.
And the business community is always eager for tax breaks. In my hometown, that usually means that schools are the losers. Call it corporate welfare.
From the note: “‘What makes you think it’s your money?’ Huffines responded, adding that businesses were taxpayers. ‘Sixty-two percent of all taxes are paid by businesses,’ he said.”
Huffines fails to understand: **Taxes are fungible according to the needs of the general public, for the common good; it’s a part of the commonwealth. And education of all, without distinction, is a common good for the entire democratic/republican culture. He’s suggesting, however, that he thinks taxes are already privatized according to corporate ideologies, e.g., all sorts of biases and privileges afforded by fiat to the rich and now (let’s call it what it is) to the Jim Crow segregationists.
He’s also assuming that all businesses think like he does, that they are all anti-public education, and that they want to privatize everything that needs to remain public. Even if that mattered (and it doesn’t), let’s see the evidence for that thinking?
Somehow those Texas children have been apprised of how to recognize a scam when they see it. Kudos for their teachers and parents.
There is so much stupid wrapped up inside of Huffines that it’s hard to know where to start critiquing. I used to say we should let Texas secede and keep Austin. Now I think we can let them take Austin too. The rest of us will happily take in those kids and their families.
Apparently, Huffines went to the Louie Gohmert School of How to Be a Really Stupid Politician.
I’m betting it’s an online course (password 1234) and DeVos is on the board. The key course is gymnastics: can you bend far enough to insert head into…?
LOL! Except the password is probably 0000. 😉
“Huffines countered by asking: “Do you want me to give them $15,000 so they can go to Hockaday or St. Mark’s? That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard.”
He’s confused about that. It’s not his money. He’s not “giving” anyone anything.
Were politicians always like this? Professional critics of the people they’re supposed to be serving? People who are paid to scold others? He doesn’t even know the money he has doesn’t belong to him. I’d lay off the scolding 7th graders if I were him until he gets some basic principles straight.
Chiara: I got the impression he was asking the children if they thought HE should make up the difference between the amount of the voucher and the amount needed to attend an elite private school. If that’s the case, then he (inadvertently) exposed the utter arrogance and “economic bias” (at least) underlying the whole voucher idea.
I hesitate to call it “class bias,” because that assumes that having money equals having class–and it doesn’t. <–a common misconception. A case in point: Donald Trump and his entourage and cabinet (with one or two exceptions).
Who might those one or two exceptions be? TIA, Duane
Duane E Swacker: IN THE PRESENT POLITICAL CONTEXT, the two exceptions are Governor Haley and McMaster–and the later only insofar as what I THINK about him presently, which isn’t much yet, plays out in reality. These of course are changeable according to what actually happens. I do find some hope in these two; however, IN THE CONTEXT of the Horrible Others.
Thanks for the response!
I am just so impressed with these students, their teachers & their public school. This is exactly where elected representatives need to be presenting their policies, & defending them (if they can), in the arena with the constituents directly affected. Huffines has inadvertently made a good case against vouchers and provided a free televised ad for the opposition.
If you read ed reform sites public school kids are never heard from. There’s a narrative- the public school kid who was rescued by ed reformers and then enrolled in a charter or private school that was magical and perfect.
You will not find a single public school kid “choosing” to remain. They have no voice at all.
They’re basically barred from DC at this point. They don’t exist other than as some kind of default population that exists to generate data.
People talk about what they value. Ed reformers don’t value public schools.
Since Trump was elected the debate has moved so far Right the “moderate” ed reformers argue that public schools should be permitted to EXIST. That’s the best they can do- a grudging admission that they can’t scale privatization up fast enough.
That’s one side. The “public schools permitted to exist” side. The other side is “tear off the band aid and eradicate”
There is literally no discussion in ed reform on any way to improve public schools,let alone a positive testimonial from a public school kid. Our kids are a “population” that may or may not be affected by “choice”. That’s it.
Huffpuff became mad because the “choice” scheme was discovered by kids: the “choice” is not going to offer a new choice for poor families—even to my family. This is because even with the voucher, we couldn’t afford the $20K private school.
Vouchers simply are blatant donations to the wealthy who already send their kids to expensive private schools: with vouchers they will get a $10K/year aid .
Yeah, this is how we should call vouchers: donation to the wealthy. Let’s forget about the reformers’ frame, and let’s use ours.
It would be useful to calculate how much aid wealthy families already get from these donations to their kids’ education.
Like!
Will start doing that.
I like it too. Should however tap into misinformation and lies about welfare. Wealth subsidies? Entitlements for the entitled? Welfare for the wealthy?
Betsy DeVosVerified account @BetsyDeVosED Feb 23
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Betsy DeVos Retweeted Dan Domenech
.@AASADan Thanks for the productive meeting. Superintendents play a key role in making sure every child can attend a great school.”
Why do public school leaders travel to DC? What possible benefit could an audience with Betsy DeVos offer the kids in their schools?
Are they there as supplicants? To beg for respect? How did this get so screwed up that the US Department of Education now believes US public schools have to PERSUADE federal employees that public schools should exist?
Who works for whom, here? Why are we having to “make our case” to people who supposedly are employed to assist us?
Ask yourself this. Would Eva Moskowitz travel to DC and beg for consideration if the US Department of Education referred to charters as “corporate schools”, “dead ends” and a part of a “blob”? Of course she wouldn’t. She values her work too much to be demeaned and disrespected like that.
You don’t have to apologize for running a public school. We have your back. We’re pulling for you 🙂
Go be ADVOCATES. Be proud of the “public” part of your name. Don’t apologize to people who have never entered your school and offer nothing but slogans about “choice”
Do you really need someone to tell you they value “excellence”? This stuff is useless. It’s a motivational poster in a break room. Skip it if it doesn’t add value.
“Ambushed with the facts”
I was ambushed — with the facts
Quite unfair, these fact attacks
I was ready for debate
Not for evidential spate
That was really fun to watch. Wouldn’t bother me a bit to see that group earn a Hall of Fame nomination.