The University of Texas and the Texas Tribune conducted a statewide poll of public opinion about the direction of education reform.
Here are the results. The public makes more sense than their elected officials, who waste their energy and breath advocating for school choice. But the public wants less testing and more funding. School choice has a low priority.
By the way, I will be speaking in Austin on March 29 at the Austin Marriott North at Round Rock, sponsored by Friends of Texas Public Schools. If you want to attend, contact Jennifer Storm, at stormj@fotps.org for information.
For me, this is a makeup session for the event in 2014, when FOTPS honored me as Friend of the year, and I got stuck in New York City by a blizzard. The fake media called Snowmageddon.
I owe a debt to the public schools of Texas, which educated me. To quote Hank Williams, I’m hoping to set the woods on fire and stop the cranks in the legislature who want to defund public schools and spend public money on nonpublic schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The low number for “more online learning” sticks out at me because that was the result of a local community meeting we had.
I was surprised at how many parents either flat-out rejected it or were extremely wary.
Interesting (to me) was that the younger parents were MOST opposed. They’re supposedly the “digital natives”.
Our school is about half lower income and I suspect the younger parents reject online learning because low income workers are often trained using computer programs and terminals. This stuff is NOT new to them.Their employers use it (because it’s cheaper) and the parents themselves don’t like it in their workplace.
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We had a funny episode in the school planning meeting. They hired a consultant who was patiently (and patronizingly) explaining “project based learning” and this older man next to me said “4-H”. That’s exactly what they do in 4-H. He’s right. Nearly the whole room had been thru 4-H to a greater or lesser extent 🙂
We were like “oh, we already have that and have for a hundred years” 🙂
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Consultants and experts = money burned with no lasting heat value.
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Yes, Chiara, you are correct. We have a farm, used to raise beef cattle, and my kids were in 4-H for many years.
“Project based” is correct. They didn’t just learn how to raise cattle (and grow a garden, and care for fruit trees, and can the produce, make jam, bake cakes and such to show at the County Fair in the 4-H building) but they had to keep track of expenses (math and book-keeping) and turn in notebooks, including detailong what they had done (writing). As well, they could submit photographs and artwork to show at the Fair (art).
The 4-H had mini-colleges every year to teach a variety of things. And there were 4-H camps, where they also learned about nature, and even skills such as archery.
Oh, and also, they learned about pet care and dog obedience training in 4-H. And showing their dogs. And horse care and training and showing their horses.
They learned a whole heck of a lot from 4-H. It was “project-based learning,” indeed.
Maybe, instead of paying that consultant who knows how much, they could have asked for 4-H leaders and volunteers to step up and explain this.
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“School choice has a low priority.”
But, but, if you add the vouchers 13% to the more charter schools 7% to the more online learning 4% you get 24% higher than cutting standardized testing’s 21%.
Am I learning how to think in the rheephormy way, yet???
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“learning how to think” and “rheephormy” are mutually exclusive terms. Just soes you know.
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Echo chamber alert:
http://pahara.org/2017/02/press-release-february-28-2017/
Aspen Education Fellows. ONE person from a public school. One.
Ed reform excludes public schools from public education policy. It’s like how the US Department of Education is now the US Department of Private and Charter Schools.
So how does one respond to this? Develop a new group of people who come out of public schools and just detach from the whole ed reform “movement”? I don’t really accept that the only people consulted on public school policy come out of charter and private schools. I reject that. Is the assumption that they are somehow “better”? Why?
When we held community meetings on our public schools we didn’t pack the place with people from the private school. Why? Because 99% of our kids go to the public school.
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You must remember, when the term “Public” is used in education the term refers to who funds it, not who benefits from it.
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spewingtruth, as it is now, just using “public” as a noun what you are saying is still true: It’s billionaires who benefit from the Public.
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Caitlin EmmaVerified account @caitlinzemma 29m29 minutes ago
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.@ChrisMurphyCT says he doesn’t anticipate getting a lot done on education in a bipartisan way over the next two years
Good. Public schools here are still trying to figure out how to fund the Common Core and the newest round of fads and gimmicks the state legislature got from Jeb Bush.
Maybe they could reform private schools for a while. Work in a realm they are familiar with.
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So 62% want what we also advocate here.
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We have to remember that this is Texas where the governor and lieutenant governor want us to believe that most parents adore charters and vouchers. Instead, they are more interested in cutting testing and increasing funding for existing schools. It shows us how out of touch the policymakers are.
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I would suggest that parents generally don’t know what they want because they do not see that they are being taken in by gimmicks until it is too late to reverse course; by the time they know that they are feeling upset, the news is only promoting the gimmick.
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