This is a clever and short video explaining the magnitude of Texas’s school finance problem.
Texas has more than 5 million students. Its schools are perennially underfunded. They took a big hit in 2011 when the legislature cut their budget by more than $5 BILLION dollars, which the schools have never recovered from.
For the past several years, the State Senate and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick have tried to promote vouchers as an alternative to adequate funding but in the wake of the 2018 elections, the voucher plans are dead (thanks in large part to the good work of Pastors for Texas Children and to the spillover effect of the Beto get-out-the-vote operation).
Right now, the charter industry is making a big move on Texas, seeing the state as the next frontier for charter expansion.
But choice is a distraction. The real dilemma facing the Lone Star State is whether the boys in Austin are willing to pay to have a decent education system for all those millions of children, or whether they will stick with their low-tax, corporate-tax-cutting philosophy.
At bottom, my own fear as a native Texan is that the white men who run the state don’t care about those children. Not their children. But those children are the future of the state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“But choice is a distraction”
The ed reform “movement” never promised public school students and famiies anything other than “choice” and “accountability” though.
They still don’t.
Here’s the deal they offer to the public 1. charters and vouchers, 2. standardized tests
They don’t even pretend to offer anything other than that- 90% of ed reform advocacy is for charters and vouchers. The other 10% is pushing tests and measurement schemes.
If you’re a public school student or family and you strip out all the charter and voucher cheerleading in ed reform it becomes VERY clear that all you’re getting are tests.
Texans got what ed reform promised- they got nothing of value for kids in existing public schools. When you see public pushback to ed reform you see it when the public realizes this “movement” offers 90% of students and families absolutely nothing. In many cases they offer a net LOSS to public school students. That’s certainly been true in OH, MI and Indiana. They simply don’t work on behalf of children in public schools. We’ve now gone 20 years in Ohio with no one in Columbus exerting the slightest effort on behalf of the schools 90% of our kids attend. It’s amazing. They’re just not interested.
If Texas wants to improve public schools they’ll have to hire some people who value public schools and public school students – it’s no more complicated than that. We’re getting the results we should have expected when we hired these people. They never pretended to support public schools. They work on behalf of charters and vouchers.
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Texas is a vast state with tremendous resources. Yet, the leadership of the state is totally regressive and out of touch with the needs of the people. Texas with 5.5 million students has more students in its state system than most cities in the US. In the cities charter drain continues to severely under fund the schools. Houston has still not recovered from hurricane Harvey. Texas also has an extremely wealthy and poor population. Unfortunately, the wealthy with children in private schools control the purse strings.
Texas needs to consider the future needs of the state, and a lot of the Texas economy is driven by technology. Oil and gas, wind, solar, manufacturing and commerce all require an educated populace. Education is the vehicle to lift all those boats that will eventually benefit the state. Charter drain is not only a distraction, but a waste in most of the big cities. The charter industry adds very little to the economy, and it costs a lot in waste and fraud while depleting public schools which provide the best, most efficient use of education dollars.
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Latest rumor is that they are considering an increase in sales tax to increase revenue. Another regressive way to increase revenue.
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Texas Legislature will do anything necessary to shelter oil and gas industry from taxation.
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They sure will or any other legitimate revenue source. Personally I think it is time for Casino gambling. Too much Texas money goes across the rivers to Louisiana and Oklahoma. The other item that has proven an revenue source in other state is marijuana. I have mixed feeling on this but am willing to be open minded if it means more money for our public schools.
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Comparing Komala Harris and Beto O’Rourke……which one seems to have made public education a more prominent issue……showing the courage to leave behind what Obama did with Gates and Duncan?
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Neither of them … and isn’t Beto’s billionaire wife “tied to” the Charter School Industry?
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Amy’s the director of education development for La Fe Community Development Corporation. She’s also the executive director of the La Fe Preparatory charter school, which she helped start.
Amy majored in psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts and received a certificate in Spanish before moving to Guatemala City for a year. While there, she taught kindergarten at Colegio Americano de Guatemala. She left Guatemala in 2004, returning to El Paso to teach first and second grade. She also worked with the nonprofit, Centro de Salu Familiar La Fe in south El Paso for seven years.
Bloomberg once estimated the wealth of Beto’s father-in-law at $20 billion.
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