Texas Governor Greg Abbott wants vouchers. He claims that polls show parents want vouchers. But they don’t, as this article shows. He says he wants “education not indoctrination,” yet advocates public money to fund schools that explicitly indoctrinate students.
He’s annoyed that he has not yet been able to twist enough arms in the Legislature to get them. He even visited private and religious schools to spread the message that parents would get tuition help from the state. But a strong coalition of Democrats and Republicans has returned him down repeatedly.
Two Texas scholars, David DeMatthews and David S. Knight, wrote an opinion piece in The Houston Chronicle explaining that the public wants better-funded public schools, not tuition for kids in private and religious schools.
They wrote:
Governor Abbott will likely call a special session on school vouchers after House Bill 100 failed to pass during the regular legislative session. But we believe a special session should instead be called to improve school safety and teacher retention, not a voucher scheme that runs counter to what Texas families want for their children.
Texas families want safe schools with a stable teacher workforce, especially following the mass shooting in Uvalde and the fact that roughly 50,000 teachers left their positions last year. In a recent statewide poll, 73 percent of Texans identified school safety, teacher pay, curriculum content and public school financing as top priorities.
In the same poll, few Texans viewed vouchers as a priority, although stark differences in opinion emerged between Democrats and Republicans. Only eight percent of Texans prioritized vouchers.
Unfortunately, some state policymakers continue to push vouchers by attacking public schools. Abbott has overseen the state’s public education system since he took office in 2015, yet only recently has he begun to claim that schools are sites of “indoctrination.”
These attacks likely contribute to Americans’ loss of confidence in public schools. In January 2019, Gallup reported that 50 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans were satisfied with public schools. By January 2022, Republican support dropped sharply to 30 percent. Democratic support remained stable.
With that background, it’s easy to believe that Texans have grown interested in vouchers. But polls showing that, we believe, are misleading. For example, a University of Houston poll asked a sample of 1,200 Texans about their support of vouchers. The researchers concluded that 53 percent of respondents supported the policy. Yet a close examination of the data shows that the statistic leaves out approximately 12 percent of respondents — the ones who said that they “don’t know” enough to express an opinion. When the “don’t know” group is added back in, voucher supporters are in the minority.
Polls asking Texans whether they support vouchers are of little value if Texans are unfamiliar with the policy. And to make matters worse, advocacy groups have invested significant resources to mislead the public.
Texans would not support vouchers if they knew the truth. Ask yourself the following questions. What Texan would support vouchers if they knew recent studies found students using vouchers underperformed on standardized tests relative to their public school peers?
State policymakers pushing vouchers are not asking the right questions or presenting adequate evidence. They are being disingenuous. A special session should focus on school safety and teacher retention, not vouchers. As more families become aware of the harm vouchers cause students, we can’t imagine that most Texans will support them.
David DeMatthews is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas.
David S. Knight is an associate professor of education finance and policy at the University of Washington.
Curt Cardine, a veteran school administrator and researcher, has written frequently about Arizona Republicans’ efforts to privatize education.
Pathway Making Community Connections (MC2) Asset Management and Educational Consulting
Curtis J. Cardine MS Organizational Management, Leadership and Change
3873 E Cavalry Ct.
Gilbert, AZ 85297
603-209-0009 cjcardine@yahoo.com
Legislative Alert:
Recently the legislature requested the data on in-district “choices” and open enrollment data from districts other than the one that the child resides in.
The current way these placements from outside of your districts are “paid for” is that the child’s state dollars follow the child to their new district. This, of course, is not what it cost the receiving district to take on the out of district placement. This new “look” at how many parents take advantage of district choices is the prelude to an attempt to change how “choices” are funded.
I have been involved with the concept of school choice since my undergraduate days at University of Massachusetts at Salem. At that time I had the privilege of attending presentations by Dr. Ray Budd, the originator of the term, “Charter School” (UMass Amherst in 1973). Dr. Budd’s vision was locally controlled charters started by certified teachers with financial oversight by local school boards.
My district in NH was one of the ten school districts chosen to receive federal funding for five years for Public School Choice. At that time the federal government put up $180 M to fund “choice” of which $20 M went to school districts. The Department of Education managed this program for 5 years. The bias built into the first level of funding in 1999 was toward “Public privately owned, charter schools”.
Modifications of Dr. Budd’s vision by the charter industry and state legislatures have included:
• Private firms finances monitored by the school district, (California is an example)
• State Boards for Charter Schools or University oversight of finances and academic performance (Arizona Model)
In order to accommodate the ‘choice” of parents the first step in establishing “choice” was to create Open Enrollment. Arizona did this prior to initiating choice. The other first step was to declare the state to be a “Right to Work” state (first enacted in 1946 during the height of the effort by the federal government to fund other types of schools with federal funding).
As you know these steps preceded the establishment of privately owned charter schools in 1994. The antithesis of Dr. Budd’s model.
Through the efforts of “the Conservative Caucus” (state and national level) and ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council) and locally by the AZ Chamber of Commerce, The Goldwater Institute, and the Charter School Association charters, (followed by various scholarships, and now universal vouchers) have grown exponentially in this state.
Critical Analysis of this latest move by the “Conservative Caucus” and AZ Legislature
Why gather this data now?
This latest request for data on district choice is the next step in attempting to declare that district borders are not relevant. The data, which was recently shared in an AZ Administrator’s Association online presentation by Dr. Anabel, will show how many parents are choosing different schools than the one within their local schools’ boundaries and out of their district.
The “backpacks full of cash” theory of financing the myth of “choice” has always thought of local taxes as a method of funding ‘choice’. There has always been pushback to allowing this funding to “follow the child” whether it was to a charter or a private school.
It is the considered opinion of this researcher and experienced administrator that the next funding that the “choice” advocates will go after is through a state property tax replacing local and county taxes for education. This will be another blow for local control of education.
This new form of taxation for “all choices” needs to be fought from day one, i.e. before the legislature attempts to change things.
The lesson from the latest round of “universal vouchers” is indicative of the high cost to the state for this ‘choice” for people who were in private school already and paying, as they should, for their child’s education. The addition of home schooling to the voucher program and de-facto always in place at charter schools with online programs is creating an economic issue that this change in taxes will claim it is compensating for.
The state’s self-induced economic issue will be used to advocate for this change in taxation for “all choices”.
If you are receiving this notice it is because you have dealt with Pathway MC2 currently or in the recent past. Please feel free to share this with your colleagues.
Thank you for your time.
Curtis J. Cardine
Please feel free to contact me using the address and phone data in the header.
Just over two years ago, Universal Academy, a Texas charter school with two campuses in the Dallas area, made a surprising move.
In November 2020, a nonprofit foundation formed to support the school bought a luxury horse ranch and equestrian center from former ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson. The 12-building complex features a show barn “designed with Normandy-style cathedral ceilings,” a 120,000 square foot climate-controlled riding arena and a viewing pavilion with kitchen and bathrooms.
Last summer the Texas Education Agency granted Universal Academy permission to create a new elementary campus on the horse property’s manicured grounds. It will offer students riding lessons, according to a brochure, for $9,500.
School board President Janice Blackmon said Universal hopes to use the facility to start a 4H chapter and Western-style horsemanship training, among other programs that take advantage of its rural location. “We’re trying to broaden the students and connect them to their Texas roots,” she said.
Splashy purchases like the horse arena are receiving increasing public scrutiny as charter schools continue toexpand aggressively across Texas. Under state law, charter schools are public schools — just owned and managed privately, unlike traditional school districts.
An analysis by Hearst Newspapers found cases in which charter schools collected valuable real estate at great cost to taxpayers but with a tenuous connection to student learning. In others, administrators own the school facilities and have collected millions from charging rent to the same schools they run.
In Houston, the superintendent and founder of Diversity, Roots and Wings Academy, or DRAW, owns or controls four facilities used by the school, allowing him to bill millions to schools he oversees. DRAW’s most recent financial report shows signed lease agreements to pay Fernando Donatti, the superintendent, and his companies more than $6.5 million through 2031.
In an email, superintendent Donetti at DRAW said the property transactions were ethical, in the best interest of DRAW’s students and properly reported to state regulators. He said his school was “lucky” he was able to purchase the property because of challenges charters can face finding proper facilities. DRAW Academy, center, photographed Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, in Houston.Jon Shapley/Staff photographer
Also in the Houston area, at ComQuest Academy Charter High School, the superintendent and her husband also own the company to which the school pays rent.
And Accelerated Learning Academy, a charter school based in Houston, is still trying to get a tax exemption on one of the two condominiums it bought just over a decade ago in upscale neighborhoods in Houston and Dallas. The school claims it has used the condos for storage, despite a nearby 9,600 square foot facility.
The battles between school districts and charter networks have become increasingly pitched, as they are locked in a zero-sum battle for public dollars.
Last year in Houston, about 45,000 students transferred from the ISD to charter schools, resulting in a loss to the district of a minimum of $276 million. That figure includes only the basic allotment received by the districts, excluding special education funding or other allotments.
In San Antonio, the two largest school districts are Northside ISD and North East ISD. More than 12,000 Northside students transferred to charter schools in the 2021-2022 school year, as did just under 8,000 from North East ISD. That means Northside lost at least $75 million, while North East lost $50 million, using the same basic allotment figures.
Each side cries foul about the other’s perceived advantages: charters are able to operate with less government and public scrutiny, while school districts benefit from zoning boards and can lean on a local tax base for financing.
Georgina Perez, who served on the State Board of Education from 2017 until this year, noted arrangements such as these would never be permitted at traditional school districts.
“If it can’t be done in (school districts), they probably had a good reason to disallow it,” she said. “So why can it be done with privately managed charter franchises?”
Lawmaker: ‘Sunshine’ is best cure
The largest charter network in Texas was a catalyst for the increased public scrutiny of charter school spending.
IDEA Public Schools faces state investigation for its spending habits, including purchases of luxury boxes at San Antonio Spurs games, lavish travel expenditures for executives, the acquisition of a boutique hotel in Cameron County for more than $1 million, plans to buy a $15 million private jet and other allegations of irresponsible or improper use of funds. The allegations date back to 2015 and led to the departure of top executives — including CEO and founder Tom Torkelson, who received a $900,000 severance payment.
Over the years lawmakers have steadily tightened rules for charter governance. A 2013 bill included provisions to strengthen nepotism rules; a 2021 law outlawed large severance payments. That bill was sponsored by Rep. Terry Canales, a South Texas Democrat whose district has some of the highest rates of charter school enrollment in the state.
“There’s a lot of work to be done for the people of Texas when it comes to charter schools,” Canales said. “Sunshine is the best cure for corruption. And the reality is it seems to be sanctioned corruption in charter schools.”
Considering the increased scrutiny, “It’s a myth that charter schools today are unregulated,” said Joe Hoffer, a San Antonio attorney who works on behalf of many charter schools. “Every session, more and more laws get passed.” If anything, he said, charter schools often have to jump through more regulatory hoops than local schools.
The Texas Monthly published its rankings of the best and worst legislators of 2023, based in part on how they voted on Governor Greg Abbott’s must-pass voucher legislation. The Governor spent months touring religious schools to sell his plan to subsidize their tuition. Two dozen Republican legislators in the House voted to prohibit public funding of private schools. Governor Abbott has promised to call special session after special session until he gets an “educational freedom” bill to pay private and religious school tuition. Those Republican legislators, known as “the Dirty Two Dozen” are standing in his way.
There are 150 members of the Texas House of Representatives. Eighty-six are Republicans; 64 are Democrats.
Here’s one big difference between the legislatures of Texas and Florida: Florida Republicans do whatever Governor Ron DeSantis tells them to do. Texas Republicans tell their governor to get lost when his plans are bad for their district.
That’s why Florida is going to spend billions on vouchers for whoever wants them, rich or poor, but vouchers were defeated in the Texas legislature by the votes of mostly rural Republicans.
The Texas Monthly writes:
Sound and fury signifying nothing: that’s the Texas Legislature, the overwhelming majority of the time. Lawmakers yell and scrap for 140 days every other year, nibble around the edges of issues that require urgent action, and typically produce little worth remembering. On two occasions, the Eighty-eighth Legislature stood tall: when the House expelled a member, Bryan Slaton, for sexual misconduct and again when it impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton. But for the most part the session was a drag.
It could have been different: this session offered transformational opportunities for Texas. The GOP’s control of redistricting in 2021 ensured safe seats for almost all its members for the rest of the decade, and lawmakers came to town with an unprecedented $33 billion budget surplus, the largest in state history. Previous generations of legislators would have danced with the devil at midnight to be so politically secure and have such ample patronage to dole out. Almost any dream, large or small, could be made real. Connect Dallas and Houston by high-speed rail? No problem. Pull Texas from near the bottom in spending per public school student? We could afford it.
To do any of that, state leaders would have had to put aside their petty intrigues and think big. Instead those intrigues shaped the session. Governor Greg Abbott invested the lion’s share of his political capital in a school-voucher program, knowing full well that rural members of the GOP deeply opposed it. Abbott offered those members their choice of a carrot or a stick and then when they wouldn’t acquiesce, tried beating them with both.
Here are some of the legislators who stood up to Abbott and blocked vouchers:
Representative Ernest Bailes, a Republican from Shepherd, Texas:
Bailes isn’t outspoken or otherwise prominent, like most of the lawmakers on these lists. The Republican has represented his rural southeast Texas district since 2017 but is rarely seen at the House microphones. The big dogs in the room might describe Bailes’s proposals this session as minor—one of his notable bills would have adjusted labeling rules for Texas honey producers.
Rural Republicans who support public schools were in the hot seat this session as the governor pushed a voucher program they saw as inimical to their districts’ interests. That fight brought out the best in Bailes, whose wife works as a schoolteacher and whose mother is a former school board president. The rurals held together and won. On two occasions Bailes won glory for himself.
One small victory came when state representative Harold Dutton, a Houston Democrat, claimed, while laying out a bill, that in one of the school districts in Bailes’s district just 5 percent of third-grade students could read at grade level. The school district was, in fact, “one of the highest-ranked districts in the state of Texas,” Bailes told Dutton from the House floor. Bailes wondered aloud what other falsehoods Dutton was deploying. Dutton’s bill was voted down, and it took him five days to resuscitate it.
A greater victory came when Public Education chair Brad Buckley asked the House to allow his committee to have an unscheduled meeting so that he could pass a hastily drafted voucher bill onto the floor—late at night, without a public hearing. In most cases, these requests are approved, no objection registered. But there, like Leonidas at Thermopylae, stood Bailes at the microphone.
Did Buckley really intend to bring an eighty-page bill to the floor without inviting public comment, Bailes asked? Buckley demurred. Did he not think Texas kids deserved better than “backroom, shady dealings”? Bailes, defender of Texas bees, had the powerful chairman dead to rights. The chamber sided with Bailes. Individual voices still matter in the House. Texans should be glad Bailes used his when it counted.
Representative John Bryant, a Democrat from Dallas.
Bryant is easily the most energetic new voice among Democrats. He’s well prepared. He’s principled. Elected in 2022, he just might be the future of House Democrats. Also: he previously served in the House before some current members were even born and is 76.
But it’s a Sylvester Stallone 76—not, say, a Donald Trump 76. He’s come out of retirement, he’s back in shape, and now he’s whipping up on the youngsters.
Bryant came back to Austin this year with a clear mission: to set an example of how to serve courageously in the minority. Because of his previous tenure in the Lege, he arrived with seniority, landing a nice Capitol office and, more important, a plum seat on the Appropriations Committee, which writes the budget.
Unlike many in his party who seem content to warm their seats, Bryant came armed with facts and tough questions. He impressed and unnerved his colleagues by making Texas education commissioner Mike Morath squirm over the sad state of education funding during a hearing on the budget. Bryant’s genial but ruthless grilling of witnesses earned him a visit from a Democrat cozy with House leadership. Would he please stop asking so many questions? It was upsetting the Republican chairman and jeopardizing certain Democrats’ pet legislation. Bryant declined the request. As he kept pounding—on raising the basic allotment for public schools, on the dismal state of the mental health-care system, on the need to increase funding for special education—he started winning over skeptical colleagues, who saw in him a model for principled opposition.
“Bryant is a folk hero,” said one insider. “He’s reintroduced the spirit of the Democrats in the seventies.” Said another: “John Bryant is a really good John Wesleyan Methodist who believes you do all you can, for as long as you can, for as many people as you can. And that is the only thing that is really motivating him.”
Senator Robert Nichols, Republican from Jacksonville.
There are no Republican mavericks in Dan Patrick’s Senate. But until a real iconoclast shows up, Robert Nichols will do.
Nichols, who represents a largely rural swath of East Texas where few private schools exist, has long opposed creating vouchers, which siphon money away from public schools. Patrick has long supported creating them. So it was notable when the East Texan schooled the lieutenant governor and voted against his voucher plan. “He’s managed to effectively represent his vast district in the politically hostile work environment created by Dan Patrick,” said a longtime Capitol insider.
And Nichols wasn’t just the lone Senate Republican “no” on school vouchers. He’s one of the few Republican legislators to support adding a rape exception to the state’s abortion ban and raising the legal age for purchasing certain semiautomatic weapons to 21. Both of these positions enjoy overwhelming public support yet remain politically untenable because the Republican Party is in thrall to campaign contributors and the 3 percent of Texans who decide its primary elections. When a state’s priorities are set by a small but vocal minority, standing up for broadly popular policies counts for real courage.
So far Nichols appears to have maintained a relationship with Patrick, and he’s been able to get several bills passed. Perhaps Nichols’s greatest accomplishment this session was making Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, part of the University of Texas System. Membership in the UT System will provide the East Texas institution, which celebrates its centenary this year, with a much-needed infusion of money and energy.
The Texas Monthly left off a few outstanding Republican legislators who stand strong against vouchers. So I’m adding them here to my own list of the best legislators in Texas because they stand up for the common good and ignore Gregg Abbott’s demands. They are not afraid of him.
Steve Allison from Alamo Heights in San Antonio. served on the Alamo Heights ISD school board for many years before running for the House in 2018. He has voted against vouchers and in favor of raising pay for teachers, librarians, counselors, and school nurses. He increased funding for women’s health care, providing lower-income women increases access to cancer screenings and mammograms.
Drew Darby (R.-San Angelo)
Drew Darby is a veteran legislator who strongly supports public schools and opposes vouchers. In this interview with the local media, he explains why he opposes vouchers. He says there is already plenty of choice in his district. The crucial issue, he says, is whether it is right to take money away from public schools and give it to schools that are completely unaccountable and that choose which students they want to educate. Greg Abbott can’t scare him! He has been recognized by the Pastors for Texas Children as a “Hero for Children.”
Charlie Geren (R.-Fort Worth)
Charlie Geren is a veteran legislator who has stood strong against vouchers repeatedly. He is clear about his advocacy for teachers and public schools. On his Twitter feed, he publicizes his support for teachers. He has been recognized as a “Hero for Children” by the Pastors for Texas Children. Greg Abbott can’t scare him!
Organizations that opened new charter schools in Texas over the last five years frequently overestimated the number of students they would enroll in their early years when making their pitch for state approval, according to a review of statewide data.
Of the 19 schools approved since 2017 that have opened, 18 fell short of their enrollment projections, and 14 were at least 20 percent lower than they estimated. In eight cases, enrollment was at least 60 percent less than the number projected.
In Harris County, for example, Legacy School of Sports Sciences said it planned to have about 1,850 students by this school year, while actual data shows its enrollment was 447. In Bexar County, Royal Public Schools planned for 672 students, while its enrollment was around 200.
Officials at both schools did not respond to a request for comment.
Over the last decade, the Legislature has smoothed the way for charter schools to quickly expand, giving more authority to the Texas Education Agency and taking it away from the state education board and from cities and towns.
But as charter school groups continue to push for more support from the state, the failures of new schools to hit enrollment projections undercuts the argument that there is massive demand.
Members of the state board have grumbled that charter applicants that come before them for approval are offering overly rosy visions of their future or even misleading the board entirely.
At the State Board of Education meeting last month considering the latest new charter school applicants, Member Aicha Davis, D-Dallas, asked why the board should approve a new set of schools when recent ones haven’t performed to their expectations.
“We’ve been approving charter schools every single year, even during COVID years, without really reviewing the success of the charters that we’ve approved,” Davis said in a phone interview. “Almost none of them are anywhere near capacity, so we’re consistently opening new schools even when the existing schools are having problems filling their classrooms.”
Charter school representatives said the projections are often flawed because they come before schools can secure facilities, a major challenge for charter networks that don’t receive state facility funding or local property taxes.
Charter proponents also pointed to the pandemic, during which enrollment at both public and private schools declined. Of late, many local traditional school districts have also fallen short of their enrollment projections.
Under state law, charter schools exist to augment the system of public school districts, which are required to serve every child.
But there’s a long-simmering tension between charters and districts because when a student transfers to a charter, their former district loses out on the associated funding, which averages to about $10,000 per student.
Challenges faced by charter schools
At least some charters treat the estimates more as ceilings than specific goals.
“The enrollment projections for charter applications become your legally binding ceiling,” said Ryan York, a chief executive of The Gathering Place, a technology-focused charter school that opened in San Antonio in 2020. His school’s enrollment projection fell flat by about 14 percent.
“From a process standpoint, there’s a severe penalty if you underestimate, and there’s no penalty if you overestimate,” York said. “You’re going to put a liberal estimate because you don’t want to end up where you have demand and you’re meeting the community’s needs but you aren’t able to meet those needs because you’ve boxed yourself in with the projection.”
According to the TEA, charters on their applications are required to present “realistic and/or justified demographic projections.”
After approval, the schools wait a year before opening, known as the “planning year,” where they acquire property, hire staff and start recruiting students. It’s true that the projections form a basis for a “ceiling,” but the actual enrollment cap isn’t set until this time.
Brian Whitley, spokesman for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said the projections included in the applications are “very preliminary.”
“Individual public charter schools don’t have a crystal ball,” he wrote in an email. “They know, when they apply, that demand exists in a community — but there are many factors and logistical hurdles that impact how much and how quickly they can grow.”
State Board of Education Member Tom Maynard, R-Florence, said the charter school applicants that come before the board are giving a sales pitch.
“They come in there and they’re probably being a little bit optimistic,” he said. “I think that moving forward that’s probably going to be something that we’re going to think about a little bit more. … The data analysis is going to have to probably get a little bit more sophisticated.”
In the last seven years, 39 of the 190 organizations that have applied to the TEA to open a new charter school have been approved, or 20 percent. In a key choke point in the process — and the only time when an elected body or official weighs in — the state board has the ability to veto those applicants. In all, 26 organizations received final approval, a rate of about 14 percent.
After schools receive approval, they don’t need to go back to the state board for permission to expand, even if it’s outside of their original locations within the state. After a new application and a review from TEA staff, the only requirement is a signoff from the TEA commissioner, who is appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott — an ardent supporter of charter schools and of using vouchers to subsidize private education.
Although only 18 new charter groups were approved between 2017 and 2021, the number of charter campuses increased during that time from 676 to 872.
‘Very different than what we’ve seen on paper’
Statewide, charter schools enroll a higher percentage of Hispanic or Latino students when compared with traditional public schools. However, based on the statewide data, most new charter schools significantly overestimated the percentages of their student bodies that would be Latino or Hispanic, suggesting many struggle to recruit those students.
Officials from several schools said there may be skepticism among some Latino communities to enroll in new charter schools, which have to work to overcome language barriers or mistrust relating to immigration status. SaJade Miller, superintendent of Rocketship Public Schools in Fort Worth, also suggested that the advocacy network within Black communities — including churches, community centers, groups like the NAACP and others — is more developed, which makes outreach to those students more straightforward.
According to the data, the new charter schools consistently enrolled slightly more Black students than they anticipated.
State board Members Maynard and Davis said their key consideration for new charter schools is whether they will offer something innovative that the existing school district does not. They said they’re concerned that schools are painting one picture when they try to win approval from the state — such as opening in one neighborhood instead of another — only to change the plan.
“When we are going through the process of an application and looking at everything, we’re coming from a perspective of what they say they can do,” Davis said. “Then once they open up, a lot of times it’s very different than what we’ve seen on paper.”
Acknowledging that tension, York, with The Gathering Place, said many schools struggle to find a campus when they first open. Enrollment is then often dependent on hyper-specific neighborhood factors, including the other schools nearby and ease of transportation.
It’s a Catch-22, he said: Schools often can’t secure a facility until they have been approved, but they also can’t get approved without a pitch that requires information about geographic details and specific goals.
Correction: A previous version misstated the number of students Legacy School of Sports Sciences projected to have enrolled by this school year. It was 1,850, not 1,450. The estimate was correct in the attached graphic.
Edward McKinley reports on Texas state government and politics from the Hearst Bureau in Austin for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. He can be reached at edward.mckinley@houstonchronicle.com.
He is a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism and a 2020 graduate of Georgetown’s Master’s in American Government program. He previously reported for The Albany Times Union and the Kansas City Star newspapers, and he originally hails from the great state of Minnesota.
Steve Berch is a member of the Idaho House of Representatives, one of only 11 Democrats in a body with 70 members. He is serving his third term. His analysis of the attack on public education in Idaho and other states is brilliantly cogent. He understands that privatization is all about the money. This article appeared in the nonprofit IdahoEdNews.org.
Berch describes the playbook of the privatization movement.
Berch writes:
Idaho will spend $2.3 billion on K-12 public education in 2024. There are powerful out-of-state forces who want to get their hands on that money. Some are driven by profit, others by political ideology, religious beliefs, or a combination of interests. They all share one common goal: shift your public schools dollars to the private sector. Here are some of the dots to connect in the “privatizing public education” playbook:
Make public schools look worse than other school choices. The legislature does this by continually underfunding public education. Schools can’t meet parental expectations, accommodate growth, or hire/retain experienced teachers when salaries are not competitive and buildings are falling apart. Idaho has a backlog of over $1 billion in K-12 school building maintenance and we’re still at or near the bottom in per-student investment, even after having a $2.1 billion surplus and a recent budget increase. This makes other school choices look more attractive by comparison.
Undermine confidence in public schools. Propaganda campaigns incite fear and anger against local schools. Parents are bombarded with false claims about porn in libraries, groomers in classrooms, and student indoctrination. Non-stop postings on social media perpetuate these inflammatory accusations. Self-proclaimed “think tanks” funded by third-parties produce official looking reports that create a false perception of legitimacy to these manufactured fears.
Hide the facts. Legislative leaders tried to kill the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) – which provides factual, in-depth, unbiased research and analysis to the legislature. The public wouldn’t know about the billion dollar backlog in school building maintenance if OPE didn’t exist. The OPE report that revealed this new information angered political leaders trying to tell a different story. Without facts, false narratives go unchallenged.
Legislative intimidation. New laws are making classrooms a hostile workplace. This includes bills that threaten to sue educators, imprison librarians, fine school districts, muzzle teachers, and empower the Attorney General to aggressively prosecute the targets of these punitive laws. No wonder teachers are leaving Idaho.
Promote “school choice” and “education freedom.” This is clever rhetoric, but it is meaningless since Idahoans already have a myriad of education choices – none of which are going away. It’s not about having choice, but rather having you pay for someone else’s choice. A recent in-depth investigationrevealed a vast network of powerful forces funneling money into Idaho to promote and sell their alternative education choices to the public.
Kill public education with vouchers (deceptively called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs). An attempt was made earlier this year to convert most of the $2.3 billion public education budget into checks sent to parents to spend however they want – without accountability. This would starve Idaho public schools into oblivion.
The 2023 bill tried to hit a home run and failed. However, the lobbyists behind privatizing public education will be back, fronted by their legislative allies. Expect to see legislation next year that allows public tax dollars to pay for private and religious school tuition in limited amounts and isolated situations.
This is fool’s gold – there is no room for compromise. If the legislature allows just a small amount of public tax dollars to be spent on tuition for any private school, your tax dollars must be made available to all types of private schools and religious schools. Once one bill passes, the flood gates open up to flow your public education dollars to the bottom line profits of private sector businesses.
Your public education tax dollars belong in your public schools, not in their pockets.
The National Education Policy Center recently posted a study of how teachers choose their workplace. The study was conducted in San Antonio, where about one quarter of students attend charter schools. Why do some teachers choose to teach in public schools while others prefer charter schools?
School choice involves different choosers—students, their parents, and of course the schools themselves. But teachers choose too when they decide where to work. Increasingly, this process involves deciding whether to work or not to work in the charter sector.
A recently published study by Andrene J. Castro of Virginia Commonwealth University, NEPC Fellow Huriya Jabbar of the University of Southern California, and Sebastián Núñez Miranda of the University of Texas at Austin takes a closer look at this process via interviews with 23 prospective or new-to-the-profession teachers and 22 current educators about their job searches in San Antonio, Texas, where about a quarter of the students attend charters. The semi-structured interviews were conducted pre-pandemic, during the 2016-17 school year. The study was published last summer in Education Policy Analysis Archives, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal.
The goal of the research was to examine “how choice policy contexts alter teachers’ professional identities as they search for jobs,” a topic that had received only limited attention from researchers. The researchers describe how:
[T]he job search is not separate or isolated from teachers’ professional identity, rather it is a critical juncture where teachers evaluate their professional identity as they make choices about the sector—charter or TPSs [traditional public schools]—and/or school organizations that best align with their professional beliefs and values.
Teachers, the researchers write, “largely construct professional identities to match positions in the primary sector, that is, jobs in TPSs, which typically offer greater stability, higher salaries, and predictable career paths.” These qualities of TPSs appealed to most of the interviewees.
As one interviewee noted,
Even though they [charter schools] tell you that you’re going to get paid more, in all reality once you sign the contract, the pay is not what you’re told at the beginning of signing the contract. It’s a little more frustrating because I feel like you have to fight more . . . I think it’s more of a challenge now than working at the regular big public schools.
Some interviewees also indicated that charter schools were not in line with their professional identities or values. “I’m not really interested in charter schools,” one job seeker said. “I feel like the public schools, there’s a lot of areas that we need to improve. That’s where I feel like I can do the most good.”
For these and other reasons, the interviewees in this study typically turned to charters as a last resort, explaining that charters tended to pay less, offer temporary contracts, and lack transparency. But some interviewees embraced a charter school career, responding to a different professional identity.
Teach for America participants emerged as a group favoring charters over TPSs. They perceived that the values of TFA aligned with the missions of specific charter management organizations. Also, a few younger teachers who were interviewed felt more comfortable at charters because they tended to have younger staffs, with many teachers who were new to the profession.
Teachers also applied to charters because they believed that those charters provided higher levels of autonomy, better opportunities to learn a lot in a short period of time, and the chance to receive pay raises and promotions more rapidly than might be possible in the traditional public school system. One interviewee noted:
You can be stuck in the same teaching position for seven years [at a TPS] as opposed to [charter school] where if you’re really just doing a rock-solid job at what you’re doing now you can be within mid-management principal-ship within five, 10 years.
One additional finding from the study has clear policy implications for those hoping for cross-fertilization and sharing of ideas and experiences between the sectors: Prospective teachers were more open to switching sectors than were current teachers seeking to change jobs.
“To some extent, we found these segmented identities led to sector entrapment, constraining teachers’ notions, both individually and collectively, regarding what it means to be a teacher in either sector, rather than the profession at large,” the researchers conclude.
Stephen Dyer, former Ohio legislator, closely follows school funding in the state. After studying the latest budget, he realized that the Legislature was sending more money to private school students than to public school students. The Ohio legislature loves charters, Cybercharters, and vouchers. Apparently, the Republicans who dominate the Legislators don’t care about public schools. Nor do they care about accountability.
Dyer begins:
Look, I’m really excited that the Ohio General Assembly followed through on its promise to continue implementing the Fair School Funding Plan — the state’s second attempt at meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient system of public schools for its 1.7 million students.
I mean, in nearly 2/3 of Ohio school districts, the state is already meeting or exceeding its promised funding amounts from two years ago. And while the lion’s share of the remaining shortage is felt in the state’s most needy districts (something I expressed concern about earlier this year), the fact that the state is actually starting to fulfill promises made to Ohio’s 1.7 million public school students is encouraging. Again, though, only if they finish the job, of course..
But the massive increase to private school tuition subsidies that accompanied the public school increase is a colossal turd in the punchbowl. How colossal?
Try this on for size:
Because the state increased the private school tuition subsidy to $8,407 per high school student, the state will now provide $210 more per student to parents whose kids are already in private schools than they will to public school students in Ohio’s urban core of Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo or Youngstown schools, which educate 173,000 students.
In fact, that $8,407 per pupil amount is greater than the per pupil state aid for nearly 8 in 10 Ohio students. A remarkable 1.13 million Ohio students will get less state aid than the parents of a private school student will receive next year.
Oh, and did I mention that not a penny of these tuition subsidies will be audited by a public entity? So we have no idea if the money is being spent educating kids or buying sweet rides for private school administrators. (Because that’s never happened in this state).
And the disparity is despite Ohio’s historic public school funding increase that occurred in this budget — again, a great accomplishment.
But man. This is crazy….
It would be one thing if vouchers (taxpayer provided private school tuition subsidies) provided better options for students. But study after study has demonstrated pretty clearly that even in urban districts, generally the public schools do better than the private schools — in Ohio, it’s almost in 9 of 10 instances that the public outperforms the private. Never mind that vouchers have also delayed critical investment in the educations of the 1.7 million Ohio public school students or added significantly to racial segregation.
Please open the link to read the rest of this shocking story.
Remember back in the day when vouchers were sold as a way to “save poor kids from failing schools”? Those days are over. The new Republican pitch is “universal vouchers,” vouchers for all, regardless of family income, regardless of whether the students ever attended public schools.
Florida is one of several Republican-led states that have passed universal vouchers. With the new money free-for-all, public schools are hiring marketing directors and communications staff to persuade students to enroll in public schools.
For first time, the Palm Beach County School District will actually need to start convincing parents to send their kids to public school.
That’s because Florida’s expanded school voucher program, which went into effect July 1, opens the door for parents of all incomes to use taxpayer money for tuition at private schools. That money is taken away from the student’s public school district at a cost of about $8,000 per student. In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that removed the previous income and enrollment limits on the program.
Superintendent Mike Burke announced an idea in the spring to market public schools to families weighing their options. The district launched a kindergarten registration campaign to get Palm Beach County’s youngest students in public school classrooms. Their thinking was that if students start in public school, they’re more likely to stay.
Among the first orders of business for the district’s new chief communications strategist will be expanding its marketing campaign to try to prove to parents considering vouchers that public schools are their best choice.
“I think we’re going to have to dedicate real resources to this beyond our website,” Burke said. “We’ve been competing with charter schools for 20 years. We’ve never competed with private schools.”
New voucher options arrive on Florida’s education scene at a time when public school districts are fighting pressure from fringe candidates, library book bans and new limitations on what teachers can talk about in the classroom.
Coupled with new obligations to pay millions for private school vouchers, some education experts say Florida is eroding its public education system altogether.
“It’s hard not to look at all of this and grieve,” said Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. “Every school has a pitch. What’s different now, particularly in Florida, you’re going to see schools thinking very carefully about how to market themselves vis-à-vis the culture war stuff.”
Not all private schools in Palm Beach County are religious schools, and they’re also separate from charter schools, which are public schools run by private companies.
Palm Beach County is home to 161 private schools registered with the Florida Department of Education as of July 6. Of those schools, 44% are religiously affiliated.
And most accept vouchers.
While 109 private schools accept Family Empowerment Scholarships right now, Burke anticipates that number growing over the next several months.
“I think we’re going to see proliferation of small, ‘mom-and-pop’ private schools,” he said. “Private schools in a strip mall where people think they can turn a profit.”
Please open the link to finish reading the article.
The Virginia Democratic Party took a strong and well-informed stand in opposition to attacks on public schools.
It issued the following statement:
The Democratic Party of Virginia
Condemns the Right-Wing, Dark Money-Funded, Republican Agenda to Dismantle Public Education, Divert Public Education Funding to Private Education Management, and
Eliminate Critical Thinking and Evidence-based Curricula from America’s Public Schools
Whereas,
GOP leaders have for decades sought to dismantle public education by reducing public support to facilitate moving public funds from public to for-profit schools.
Rather than focusing explicitly on promoting privatization, the coordinated, right-wing, special-interest-bankrolled, decades-long effort has established such schemes as the annual “National School Choice Week” event and deployed “parent” groups such as “Moms for Liberty,” “Parents Defending Education” and the “Independent Women’s Forum” to make it appear that there is wide opposition to public school policies. Their current tactics are to attack public schools by opposing masking policies, remote learning, and evidence-based curricula; harassing school board members, administrators, and staff; and threatening to burn books. “School choice” is rooted in efforts to keep schools segregated by race, class, and disability.
Truthout wrote, “’Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein predicted in March 2020 that COVID-19 presented an ideal opportunity for ‘disaster capitalism,’ a tactic pushed by school privatizers in the wake of the last financial crisis. She identified the global pandemic as a ‘shock,’ or disruptive event that global elites often use to introduce free-market ‘solutions’ that redistribute wealth upwards.” Vindicating Klein’s prediction, since the pandemic, a Koch-funded group produced an “Opportunity on Crisis” report listing numerous school privatization schemes.
Education is a multibillion-dollar market, and the private sector is eager to get its hands on those dollars. Shrinking public education also furthers the overarching Republican Party goal of drastically reducing the public sector overall. Privatization also significantly undermines teacher unions, thereby reducing the voice and power of teachers to affect the terms and conditions of their workplace. Unions are also a strong and active part of the Democratic base and hobbling them hobbles their capacity to support Democrats.
Corporate-focused extreme-right Republican leaders want to censor, control, and narrow the exposure of most students to the broad knowledge base that would enable them to analyze, understand and accurately evaluate, and manage the forces that affect their lives. They want to consign the masses of America’s children to for-profit, unregulated, unaccredited, tax-funded “schools,” with large classes of inexperienced staff or digital platforms with no teachers at all, designed to supply a less-educated, malleable citizenry and subservient labor pool. Meanwhile, the children of the financial and corporate elite are to be taught a broad, rich curriculum in small classes led by experienced teachers in exclusive private schools.
Preparing people for democratic citizenship was a major reason for the creation of public schools. The Founding Fathers maintained that the success of American democracy would depend on the competency of its citizens and that preserving democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues, participate wisely in civic life, and resist tyrants. Early leaders proposed the creation of a more formal and unified system of publicly funded schools.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” Jefferson further explained: “The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries.”
In the 1830s, Massachusetts legislator Horace Mann advocated for the creation of public schools that would be universally available to all children, free of charge, and funded by the state. He emphasized that a public investment in education would benefit the whole nation by preparing students to obtain jobs that will strengthen the nation’s economic position and promote cohesion across social classes. Proponents later reasoned that public schools would not serve as a unifying force if private schools drew off substantial numbers of students, resources, and parental support from the most advantaged groups. To succeed, a system of common schooling would require children from all social classes, and educating children from different religious, and European ethnic backgrounds in the same
schools would also help them learn to get along. Despite its founding ideals, throughout the historical development of early public education, there was discrimination against access for girls, children of color, new immigrants, minority religious groups, children with disabilities and others. However, the founding rationale has guided the evolution of the public-school mission to promoting equity of access to all in the mid-20th century, addressing social needs after WW II and ensuring that all students receive a high-quality education in the 21st century.
The original reasons for public schools — preparing people for jobs and citizenship, unifying a diverse population, and promoting equity–remain relevant and urgent today. The Republican agenda to dismantle public education will reverse all of these.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is facilitating this ongoing right-wing scheme of school privatization and blocking of evidenced-based curricula with his executive orders allowing parents to opt out of mask mandates in Virginia schools, and ending “the use of divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.” Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic legislators are introducing and protecting legislation that supports and promotes public schools with enriched and broad curricula to prepare students for citizenship and work in the 21st century.
Most American parents, students, and teachers do not agree with this privatization and curricula-limiting scheme, and many are standing up for schools that protect kids’ health, teach the truth, and promote equality for all. Our democracy
requires informed citizens. Public education enables its citizens to develop their full potential, which enables our democracy to flourish. It enables individuals to learn and grow and creates a successful and prosperous society.
Therefore, be it resolved that the Democratic Party of Virginia:
1. Calls on local, state, and federal officials, within the purview of their offices and roles, to:
a. Investigate, expose, and prosecute all individuals and groups who deploy intimidation tactics, threats of violence and violence against school board members, administrators, teachers, and others;
b. Initiate a public campaign, including forums, social and other media, etc., to highlight the historical compact establishing universal primary and secondary public education as a necessity to prepare an informed citizenry for their role in a democracy; illuminate the accomplishments of many decades of public education and the benefit to our country’s democracy; and provide a platform for people, including doctors, scientists, business leaders, and religious leaders, to relate their stories of the public school teachers who were instrumental in their success;
c. Increase funding and support for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation; and
d. Introduce legislation and support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.
2. Commends Officials at all levels, including democratically elected school boards, who implement and parents who support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.
3. Calls on grassroots activists and organizations to launch a campaign to expose the right-wing, special-interest funded, Republican agenda to dismantle public education, divert public education tax dollars to private management of public schools, and to eliminate critical thinking and evidence-based curricula from America’s public schools.
4. Calls on grassroots activists, organizations, community and faith groups, parents, and the public to support increased funding for public schools and educator, administrator, and staff compensation, and to support an enriched, broad, public-school curricula for all students in liberal arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and career and technical education.
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