In the Texas governor’s race between the vile Gregg Abbott and challenged Beto O’Rourke, the candidates are fighting for rural votes on the issue of vouchers. Rural Republicans have a strong allegiance to their public schools, which are often the heart of the community and its biggest employer. Many rural communities do not have any other schools.
Yet Governor Abbott has supinely sought the approval of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation of Children.
The Texas Tribune summed up the conflict:
A battle over school vouchers is mounting in the race to be Texas governor, set into motion after Republican incumbent Greg Abbott offered his clearest support yet for the idea in May.
His Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, is hammering Abbott over the issue on the campaign trail, especially seeking an advantage in rural Texas, where Democrats badly know they need to do better and where vouchers split Republicans. O’Rourke’s campaign is also running newspaper ads in at least 17 markets, mostly rural, that urge voters to “reject Greg Abbott’s radical plan to defund” public schools.
Abbott, meanwhile, is not shying away from the controversy he ignited when he said in May that he supports giving parents “the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.” He met privately last week with Corey DeAngelis, an aggressive national school choice activist who had previously criticized Abbott as insufficiently supportive of the cause.
“School choice” tends to refer to the broad concept of giving parents the option to send their kids to schools beyond their local public school, while vouchers would allow parents to use state tax dollars to subsidize tuition for those other options, including private schools. Opponents of vouchers say they harm public school systems by draining their funding. In the Legislature, vouchers have long encountered resistance from Democrats and rural Republicans whose public schools are the lifeblood of their communities.
O’Rourke is leaning into the bipartisan salience of the issue.
“For our rural communities, where there’s only one school district and only one option of public school, he wants to defund that through vouchers, take your tax dollars out of your classroom and send it to a private school in Dallas or Austin or somewhere else at your expense,” O’Rourke told a rural audience recently.
As usual, the voucher vultures are pushing the lie that money taken away from your public school will allow children to attend elite private schools.
It can’t be said often enough: voucher funds are never enough to pay for elite public funds. It is a lie. Voucher funding ranges from $4,000 to $8,000. The tuition at elite private schools ranges from $30,000 to $70,000.
Elite private schools don’t have vacancies. When they do, they don’t seek to enroll poor kids.
After 25 years of vouchers, the research is clear: kids who leave community public schools for voucher schools lose academic ground. Large numbers return to their public schools.
Meanwhile public schools are grievously harmed by the withdrawal of funding. They must lay off teachers and cut programs.
If the Devil designed a program to hurt the public schools, he would call it vouchers. And it would be funded by the American Federatuon for Chiildren.
Vouchers will allow mail-order ministers to open pop-up private schools deep in the heart of Texas.
Texans, please reject this assault on the cornerstone of our democracy.
nicely said: Mail-order schools, deep in the heart of Texas
Will O’Rourke be able to overcome the red baiting Abbott as he claims that the teachers are evil? Remember, Dobbs has changed the equation, and democrats can claim government interference in private matters. This could get interesting.
Beto is working hard by implementing a grassroots campaign in Texas. Considering the vast size of the state, this is no easy feat. He is launching a 49 day tour mostly in the rural areas of the state. He plans to visit all the counties in the state. Texas voters need to see Abbott for what he is. He is another biased authoritarian that serves the interests of the wealthy. The women of the state that believe in body autonomy must turn out for Beto along with the poor and working class in order for there to be real change in Texas.
I think the idea of vouchers being a major issue upon which people base their votes for non-school board candidates is a mirage. No election trend of which I am aware has ever been won or lost because of education issues. There may be isolated examples, but even those have other factors like personality, I would bet. Any Democrat that runs on the minutia if policy today will likely lose. Every race from now through the foreseeable future will have democratic-republican governing on the line. If they are focused on issues–easily distorted issues for low-information voters–the substance of governing will be regressive.
sadly true: it is hard to think that it would get a top spot with the larger group of voters
I’m currently reading the July 2022 issue of National Geographic Magazine that features Native Americans (in the US and Canada). Both Canada and the US, for about 100 years, legally kidnapped children and took them away from their Native American families under force if necessary, and put them in Christian bordering schools where the discipline was brutally harsh, and those children were not allowed to practice their culture or speak its language.
I think the movement to replace our current publicly controlled schools that are guided by legislation through the democratic process with privately controlled charter schools and vouchers without those same rules has the same goals, but this time to program children that don’t live in theofascist homes to become obedient theofascists.
Does National Geographic identify the schools as Christian or Catholic or both? Any info. on number of students by religious sect?
B.J. Novak’s new movie, Vengeance, set in Texas, offers a thoughtful view about the red state and blue state divide.
My bad for being off-topic here—but I gotta say it. —And then I’m done.
Indeed, Corey DeAngelis has taken Twitter & other platforms by storm w/ his ‘fund-students-not-systems’ mantra. He’s gained a lot of traction this year—and TX is ripe for that move to privatization.
Like so many others, Corey too is part of that well-funded SYSTEM of fellows & directors of institutes, think tanks & policy analysis. Their average salary is well into 6 figures. He’s spent his entire post-doc career in such positions. Would he and others accept the $60k that experienced teachers make? Didn’t think so. When these boys are ready to try teaching—at our pay scale—I’ll hush.
Thank you for indulging me.
I blocked Corey deAngelis on Twitter. He is a paid shill for the Waltons.
Of course he’s a shill. Am either a voyeur or a glutton for punishment: I DON’T block ‘em. I want to read how American parents are thinking. Let’s see a year from now how many students got into some elite private schools—or who were thrown out for having a disability or the wrong colored socks…
As a Latin teacher, I’m more in line w/ their 1776 worldview on paper. Therefore, I’m probably viewed as ‘less like them’. He-he-he….
At the Book Ban Buster site (where actions against book bans are listed), there’s a map showing the places in the nation where there are book bans and where there are Book Ban Buster chapters.
In deep red Ohio, yesterday, at my local library, one of the staff said gay people live in New York and Florida. The amount of ignorance is staggering. Oddly, the book shelf that promotes staff- selected books has, in the past, included books for the LGBTQ audience. Maybe, the person choosing them has left the library.
A significant argument against vouchers is the loss of the economic multiplier effect.
When the local dollar doesn’t remain in the community, the survival of the community is put at grave risk.