Texas Governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Legislature to deal with school finance and once again to push vouchers. Once more, he will try to bribe legislators to endorse vouchers if they want more funding. No vouchers, no funding. The state cut more than $5 billion from the education budget in 2011 and has never fully restored the cuts, even though the enrollment has grown.
As usual, the camel’s nose under the tent is vouchers for children with disabilities. Note that these children have federal rights in public schools but not in private voucher schools.
The State Senate, corralled by voucher fanatic Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, supports vouchers. The House, also controlled by Republicans, has turned them down repeatedly. Republicans representing rural areas and small towns don’t want to destroy their public schools. They are conservatives: they conserve, they don’t tear down their traditional institutions.
“The top House education leader said Sunday that “private school choice” is still dead in the lower chamber.
“We only voted six times against it in the House,” House Public Education Committee Chairman Dan Huberty said. “There’s nothing more offensive as a parent of a special-needs child than to tell me what I think I need. I’m prepared to have that discussion again. I don’t think [the Senate is] going to like it — because now I’m pissed off.”
“Huberty, R-Houston, told a crowd of school administrators at a panel at the University of Texas at Austin that he plans to restart the conversation on school finance in the July-August special session after the Senate and House hit a stalemate on the issue late during the regular session. Huberty’s bill pumping $1.5 billion into public schools died after the Senate appended a “private school choice” measure, opposed by the House.
“Huberty was joined by Education Committee Vice Chairman Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, and committee member Gary VanDeaver, R-New Boston, on a panel hosted by the Texas Association of School Administrators, where they said they didn’t plan to give in to the Senate on the contentious bill subsidizing private school tuition for kids with special needs.”
Dan Hubert is on the honor roll of this blog already. Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are today listed on its Wall of Shame.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
According to this article, 140,000 children are on waiting lists to attend charter schools in Texas.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2017/06/15/vouchers-vs-charters-will-priorities-clash-texas-special-session
If charters are so bad, and traditional publicly-operated schools are so wonderful, whay are 140,000 Texas children on the waiting lists for charter schools?
Charles,
The “waiting list” myth has been debunked many times. If a student applies to three charters, she is listed three times. If she is accepted at one or decides to go to a public school, she is still wait-listed at the charters. Every investigation has found these lists to be inflated with phantom students.
The figure of 140,000 seems inflated to be me, as well. “All I know is what I read in the papers” – Will Rogers.
Charles,
You should be aware that the numbers on “waiting lists” are not audited. They are part of the charter marketing campaign to get more charters and more money.
In addition to what Diane said, there are over 5 million kids enrolled in public schools in Texas. So why do the wants of those alleged 140,000 kids override the needs of the 5,000,000+ kids in public schools? We cannot have multiple parallel systems for the same cost as one public system. So either you are proposing to raise taxes to fund the additional systems (fine with me; good luck getting that past the voters) or you are proposing to suck the money out of public schools where the vast majority of kids go in order to benefit fewer (and generally much easier to educate) kids.
Even considering that the 140,000 might be correct, and more likely than not it’s way high, that 140,000 represents less than 3% of the total students.
As Chiara would say: “Where are the supporters of public education students in all of this?”