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Texas: Bill to Require Ten Commandments in Classrooms Fails

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2023 //
48

The New York Times reported that the Texas legislature did not pass the bill to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. It had already passed in the State Senate, but was not taken to a vote in the House, which meant it died. Maybe the theocrats will bring it back next time.

A push to inject religion into public schools across Texas faltered on Tuesday after the State House failed to pass a contentious bill that would have required the Ten Commandments to be displayed prominently in every classroom.

The measure was part of an effort by conservative Republicans in the Legislature to expand the reach of religion into the daily life of public schools. In recent weeks, both chambers passed versions of a bill to allow school districts to hire religious chaplains in place of licensed counselors.

But the Ten Commandments legislation, which passed the State Senate last month, remained pending before the Texas House until Tuesday, the final day to approve bills before the session ends next Monday. Time expired before the legislation could receive a vote.

The bills appeared aimed at testing the openness of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court to re-examining the legal boundaries of religion in public education. The court sided last year with a Washington State football coach, Joseph Kennedy, in a dispute over his prayers with players at the 50-yard line, saying he had a constitutional right to do so…

“Forcing public schools to display the Ten Commandments is part of the Christian Nationalist crusade to compel all of us to live by their beliefs,” said Rachel Laser, the president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit advocacy group. She pointed to new laws in Idaho and Kentucky permitting public school employees to pray in front of students, and a bill in Missouri allowing elective classes on the Bible. “It’s not just in Texas,” she said.

Categories Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

Texas: Legislature Votes Tonight Whether to Post Ten Commandments in Every Classroom in the State

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2023 //
114

People of deep faith don’t usually try to impose their beliefs on others. They don’t jump on platforms to salute their own piety. In Texas, some folks who have shown little or no compassion for the needy, who have scorned the tenets of their own religion, want to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom across the state. That way, no one will every break any of them, right? No one will covet what others have, no one will commit adultery, etc., etc.

Michelle Boorstein writes in the Washington Post about the growing demand in Texas to flaunt the symbols of religion. The legislature votes tonight on posting the Ten Commandments. This is the same legislature that allows anyone to carry a deadly weapon and refuses to protect the lives of innocents. Massacre after massacre in schools, bars, and residential neighborhoods, but nothing to protect people from killers. Hypocrites!

The legislature will vote in a few hours, or the proposal dies.

AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state, part of a newly energized national effort to insert religion into public life.

Supporters believe the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer in favor of a high school football coach who prayed with players essentially removed any guardrails between religion and government.

The bill, which is scheduled Tuesday for the House floor, is one of about a half-dozen religion bills approved this session by the Texas Senate, including one that would allow uncertified chaplains to replace trained, professional counselors in K-12 schools.

Texas’ biennial legislative session is short, chaotic and packed, and it was not certain Monday whether the Ten Commandments bill would definitely get a vote Tuesday. If it doesn’t by midnight, it’s dead for the session. But groups that watch church-state issues say efforts nationwide to fund and empower religion — and, more specifically, a particular type of Christianity — are more plentiful and aggressive than they have been in years. Americans United for Separation of Church and State says it is watching 1,600 bills around the country in states such as Louisiana and Missouri. Earlier this year, Idaho and Kentucky signed into law measures that could allow teachers and public school employees to pray in front of and with students while on duty.

Many legislators cite the Supreme Court’s June ruling in favor of Coach Joe Kennedy of Bremerton, Wash., who prayed with his players on the 50-yard-line. They see the Supreme Court as righting the American ship after a half-century of wrongly separating church and state.

“There is absolutely no separation of God and government, and that’s what these bills are about. That has been confused; it’s not real,” said Texas state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R), who co-sponsored or authored three of the religion bills. “When prayer was taken out of schools, things went downhill — discipline, mental health. It’s something I heard a lot on porches when I was campaigning. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time.”

Those who object to the bills say they reflect a country that is tipping into a new, dangerous phase in its church-state balance, with people in power who want to assert a version of Christian dominance.

If the Founding Fathers wanted the new nation to be a Christian nation, the Constitution they drafted would say so. But it specifically says that there must be freedom of religion, the freedom to practice any religion or no religion. And the Constitution says there shall be no “establishment” of religion. That clearly means that the state shall not sponsor or favor any religion.

Texas is at war with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.

Categories Education Reform, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas

Houston: Mayor Says That Disruptive Mike Miles Will Be Takeover Superintendent

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2023 //
6

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told the Houston Chronicle that he has heard from several people that the state will choose former Dallas superintendent Mike Miles as the takeover superintendent to replace the elected local Board of Education.

This would be a punishment for the Houston Independent School District.

Mike Miles is a military man who trained at the Broad Academy. He is known for top-down leadership. He led the Harrison School District in Colorado Springs, Colorado, before coming to Dallas. He lasted three years in Dallas, from 2012 to 2015. During his tenure, he established a teacher evaluation system based on test scores. Teacher dissatisfaction soared during his tenure, and many teachers abandoned the district.

When Miles arrived, he set out numerical goals that the district was expected to reach. He expected everyone to share his vision.

After one year, Miles’ family returned to Colorado because of hostility to him.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Dallas, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston, Teachers, Texas

Texas: Conservative Christian Mobile Service Won Control of 4 School Boards

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2023 //
18

In Texas, people with strongly held conservative Christian beliefs wanted to send their dollars to a cellphone service that shared their values. Before long, such a company came into being, and it’s now selling mobile service to customers across the state. The money generated has been used to win control of four school boards.

NBC reported:

DALLAS — A little more than a year after former Trump adviser Steve Bannon declared that conservatives needed to win seats on local school boards to “save the nation,” he used his conspiracy theory-fueled TV program to spotlight Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based cellphone company that had answered his call to action.

“The school boards are the key that picks the lock,” Bannon said during an interview with Patriot Mobile’s president, Glenn Story, from the floor of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Dallas on Aug. 6. “Tell us about what you did.”

Story turned to the camera and said, “We went out and found 11 candidates last cycle and we supported them, and we won every seat. We took over four school boards.”

“Eleven seats on school boards, took over four!” Bannon shouted as a crowd of CPAC attendees erupted in applause.

It was a moment of celebration for an upstart company whose leaders say they are on a mission from God to restore conservative Christian values at all levels of government — especially in public schools. To carry out that calling, the Grapevine-based company this year created a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, and gave it more than $600,000 to spend on nonpartisan school board races in the Fort Worth suburbs.

This spring, the PAC blanketed the communities of Southlake, Keller, Grapevine and Mansfield with thousands of political mailers warning that sitting school board members were endangering students with critical race theory and other “woke” ideologies. Patriot Mobile presented its candidates as patriots who would “keep political agendas out of the classroom.”

Their candidates won every race, and nearly four months later, those Patriot Mobile-backed school boards have begun to deliver results.

The Keller Independent School District made national headlines this month after the school board passed a new policy that led the district to abruptly pull more than 40 previously challenged library books off shelves for further review, including a graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl,” as well as several LGBTQ-themed novels.

In the neighboring city of Southlake, Patriot Mobile donated framed posters that read “In God We Trust” to the Carroll Independent School District during a special presentation before the school board. Under a new Texas law, the district is now required to display the posters prominently in each of its school buildings. Afterward, Patriot Mobile celebrated the donation in a blog post titled “Putting God Back Into Our Schools.”

And this week at a tense, eight-hour school board meeting, the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District’s board of trustees voted 4-3 to implement a far-reaching set of policies that restrict how teachers can discuss race and gender. The new policies also limit the rights of transgender and nonbinary students to use bathrooms and pronouns that correspond with their genders. And the board made it easier for parents to ban library books dealing with sexuality.

To protest the changes, some parents came to the meeting wearing T-shirts with the school district’s name, GCISD, crossed out and replaced with the words “Patriot Mobile Action ISD.”

“They bought four school boards, and now they’re pulling the strings,” said Rachel Wall, the mother of a Grapevine-Colleyville student and vice president of the Texas Bipartisan Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting school board candidates who do not have partisan agendas. “I’m a Christian by faith, but if I wanted my son to be in a religious school, I would pay for him to go to a private school….”

Initially, Patriot Mobile’s founders said their goal was to support groups and politicians who promised to oppose abortion, defend religious freedom, protect gun rights and support the military.

After the 2016 presidential election, the company’s branding shifted further to the right and embraced Trump’s style of politics. One of Patriot Mobile’s most famous advertisements includes the slogan “Making Wireless Great Again,” alongside an image of Trump’s face photoshopped onto a tanned, muscled body holding a machine gun….

Patriot Mobile has also aligned itself in recent years with political and religious leaders who promote a once-fringe strand of Christian theology that experts say has grown more popular on the right in recent years. Dominionism, sometimes referred to as the Seven Mountains Mandate, is the belief that Christians are called on to dominate the seven key “mountains” of American life, including business, media, government and education.

John Fea, a professor of American history at the private, Christian Messiah University in Pennsylvania, has spent years studying Seven Mountains theology. Fea said the idea that Christians are called on to assert biblical values across all aspects of American society has been around for decades on the right, but “largely on the fringe.”

Trump’s election changed that.

“It fits very well with the ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra,” Fea said. “‘Make America Great Again’ to them means, ‘Make America Christian Again,’ restore America to its Christian roots.”

What next? Will every religion set up its own cell service? Why?

Categories Education Industry, Elections, Religion, Texas

Jim Hightower: Chicken Little Attacks America’s Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2023 //
18

Jim Hightower is a Texas populist who has observed the state’s hard rightward swing with dismay. In this post, he flays the profiteers who are attacking teachers and public schools. You should consider subscribing to his blog.

He writes here in honor of teachers:

I’m a child of privilege. Not the privilege of money (I come from a family of small-town working people). But it was my privilege to grow up in the public schools of Denison, Texas.

There I received the rich blessings of dedicated classroom teachers, a diverse student body, playground socialization, librarians, coaches, cafeteria and custodial workers, student politics, vocational training… and a deep appreciation for the unifying value of community and the Common Good.

That’s why I’m flabbergasted by today’s clique of corporate profiteers, theocratic zealots, and laissez-faire knuckleheads who’re lobbying furiously across the country to demonize, defund, and dismantle this invaluable social benefit. If ignorance is bliss, they must be ecstatic!

Public schools do have some real problems: Politicians constantly slashing education budgets, professional burnout created by understaffing and low pay, the devastating strain of a killer pandemic, and a new-normal of assault-rifle murders. But the profiteers, theocrats, and knuckleheads aren’t interested in those, instead focusing on what they say is the fatal flaw in public education: Teachers.

Yes, the claim is that diabolical educators are perverting innocent minds by teaching America’s actual history, showing students that the full diversity of humankind enriches our society, and presenting our Earth as something to be protected, not plundered. And worse – OMIGOSH – many classroom teachers are union members! So, teachers suddenly find themselves political pawns in the GOP’s culture war. “Our schools are a cesspool of Marxist indoctrination,” squawked Sen. Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump squealed that schools are run by “radical left maniacs” and “pink-haired communists.”

These right-wing Chicken Littles are demonizing America’s invaluable educators because they need someone for people to hate, providing cover for their unpopular plot to privatize education. But hate can easily backfire on hatemongers – and local teachers are a whole lot more popular than conniving politicos and profiteers.

Categories Censorship, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Supporting public schools, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

Josh Cowen: Texas Doesn’t Need Vouchers. Neither Does Any Other State.

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2023 //
11

Josh Cowen is a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. He has been involved in research on vouchers for two decades. He wrote the following article for The Houston Chronicle.

Every state has versions of Texas’ Snapshot Day: the time early in the school year when districts submit pupil counts to their state education agency. How many students go to school in each district determines how much money districts receive each year, as well as a variety of other services and programs.

Not every state is considering a school voucher program, however, and as the Texas Legislature debates that possibility (officially called an education savings account), details like pupil count are going to matter a lot more than either voucher supporters or opponents are considering right now.

Here’s how we know.

I’ve been studying school choice policy for two decades. That work includes official evaluations on behalf of state agencies, and more recent experience on the research advisory board for Washington D.C.’s federally required evaluation. I’ve also worked as a research partner to states and districts across the country. I know how little, seemingly inconsequential, technical details can have great impacts on how education programs function.

And I know those impacts can be costly — with taxpayers footing the bill.

Consider evaluations of voucher programs like the one before the Legislature right now. I’ve described elsewhere how these studies show catastrophic
academic harm to students who switch to private school with a voucher. That’s because vouchers tend to pay tuition, not at elite providers that don’t need the tax dollars, but at subprime schools needing the bailout — including those popping up to cash in on the new government subsidy.

Here’s something else those programs tell us: Although supporters often describe school choice as a long-term opportunity, the reality is that, for many kids, school choice is just a revolving door in and out of a new academic setting. And that’s especially true with vouchers.

Studies show that more than 1 out of 5 students give up their voucher every year. In some places like Florida that number is as high as two-thirds of voucher students leaving the program within two academic years. Similarly, the numbers publicly available from Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin range between 20 and 30 percent annual student attrition.

These exit rates matter not only because they underscore the false promise vouchers give to at-risk students — switching from school to school is a well-understood marker of academic or economic duress — but because they imply a huge potential fiscal waste.

Voucher supporters say it’s easy: The “dollars follow the kid” (this already happens with public schools, which is why count days exist). But it’s not that simple. Public programs with price tags in the hundreds of millions of dollars never are.

Imagine a parent who spends all of the proposed $8000 of their voucher at a private school nearby. Let’s say that before the last Friday in October — Snapshot Day — she sees the school simply isn’t working for her child and withdraws him. Will that private school keep the money? Or will the “dollars follow the kid” immediately back to the public school?

Imagine that parent waits until the holiday season to make the change. And in January, she enrolls her child back in a local public classroom. Will that local school be forced to enroll her child — a refugee from the voucher program — on its own local dime for the rest of the year?

Do these answers change if instead of the parent deciding to remove her child, the private school has made that choice instead?

If the voucher school has asked or forced her child to leave — something the current legislation permits for any reason along with denying admission in the first place — will it keep her tuition dollars as long as it waits until after Snapshot Day to do so?

These 30 percent of voucher decliners aren’t just numbers. The studies from other states tell us they’re likely vulnerable: kids who are scoring lower on school exams, kids from lower income families, children of color, and children from single-mom households.

Senate Bill 8 only stipulates that parents must notify the state of their exit within 30 business days; it does not establish a process to recover those dollars. And even when state guidance on these questions is issued, who will enact them? The fiscal note on SB8 makes assumptions about staff and legal support to run the program, but the legislation itself is ambiguous on issues like tuition reimbursement, or even the authority that compliance officers have to recover state funds.

Details matter. The ballooning voucher budget in Arizona and controversial new roll-out in Arkansas warn us that making public policy by slogan — however clever “fund students, not systems” might sound — is no substitute for careful planning.

The revolving door of school voucher tuition is one such detail — one that not only affects taxpayers’ bottom-line, but more basic issues of equity and opportunity as well. The bottom line for SB8 then, based on the evidence in other states, is that school voucher-type programs are on average bad for kids and bad for taxpayers. Texas would do well to reject them now.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Funding, Texas, Vouchers

Texas: Civics Education Gutted by Law Banning Student Interaction with Elected Officials

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2023 //
31

Civics education in Texas has been turned into textbook study by a 2021 law that bans student interaction with elected officials. Apparently, the Republicans who control state government want to keep students in the dark about getting involved in civic action. Participation is a feature of civic education, but it’s illegal in the Lone Star State.

The Guardian reports:

The defining experience of Jordan Zamora-Garcia’s high school career – a hands-on group project in civics class that spurred a new city ordinance in his Austin suburb – would now violate Texas law.

Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.Being the only one leaves a mark: a Black mother on the long shadow of school segregation

Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.

Zamora-Garcia’s 2017 project to add student advisers to the city council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.Since 2021, 18 states have passed laws restricting teachings on race and gender. But Texas is the only one nationwide to suppress students’ interactions with elected officials in class projects, according to researchers at the free expression advocacy group Pen America.

Categories Civics, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Ignorance, Injustice, Politics, Republicans, Texas

Gregg Abbott Criticized for Referring to Victims of Massacre as “Illegal Immigrants”

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
40

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott came in for criticism when he referred to the five people murdered in a senseless act of gun violence as “illegal immigrants.” A man asked his neighbor to stop firing his AR-15 at 11:30 pm because the baby was trying to sleep. The man with the gun entered the home of the complainer and killed five people with a bullet to the head, including an 8-year-old.

The criticism of Abbott’s comment was surprising since it is a well-established fact that Governor Abbott has neither a heart nor a soul. Nor is he a Christian who follows the teachings of Jesus.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

Gov. Greg Abbott has sparked national outrage after referring to the five people killed in the Cleveland mass shooting as “illegal immigrants” in a tweet Sunday afternoon.

The five victims of Friday’s mass shooting all hailed from Honduras and were members of the same extended family: Sonia Guzman, her 9-year-old son Daniel Guzman, Diana Alvarado, Jose Casarez and Julisa Rivera.

Casarez and Rivera leave behind two children — a 6-year-old and a 9-month-old.

Law enforcement officials have described all five victims as being from Honduras, but have not confirmed their immigration status. Sonia Argentina Guzman, one of the deceased, is listed as owning the home where the shooting took place in San Jacinto County records.

@GregAbbott_TX

I’ve announced a $50K reward for info on the criminal who killed 5 illegal immigrants Friday. Also directed #OperationLoneStar to be on the lookout. I continue working with state & local officials to ensure all available resources are deployed to respond.

Celebrity chef José Andrés responded to Abbott in a tweet: “nobody is illegal in heaven.”

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was killed in Florida’s Parkland high school mass shooting in 2018, tweeted at Abbott: “On behalf of those like my daughter who are victims of gun violence, F*** YOU!!!”

MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough criticized Abbott on his show Monday morning.

“Maybe he’s part of this Christian nationalist movement, but what would Jesus do? You don’t have to be a Bible scholar to know: not that. What a dreadful, shameful thing,” Scarborough said.

Responding to Abbott’s tweet, an immigrant rights activist shared on Twitter a photo of Diana Alvarado’s ID card identifying her as a permanent resident of the United States. Carlos Eduardo Espina said the photo was sent to him by Alvarado’s husband.

At a ceremony for fallen officers in Austin Sunday, Abbott said the suspected shooter had been deported four times and had re-entered the United States illegally.

In stark contrast to Abbott, Beto O’Rourke reacted to the shooting with a tweet Saturday morning calling for a ban on AR-15 rifles like the one used in the Cleveland mass shooting.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Guns, Texas

Texas: Family Asked Neighbor to Stop Firing His Gun Because the Baby was Sleeping. So He Killed Them.

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2023 //
23

In Cleveland, Texas, about 40 miles from Houston, five family members were killed. Their neighbor liked to fire his gun outside, and he was shooting at 11 p.m. A family member asked if he could stop shooting because the baby was sleeping.

The neighbor went into the home next door and killed five people, including an 8-year-old.

The suspect was the victims’ neighbor and went to their home Friday night after they asked him to stop shooting an AR-15-style weapon in his front yard because of the noise, Capers [the sheriff] said.

Oropeza frequently shot the gun in his yard, Capers said, and allegedly became angry when the neighbors said their baby was trying to sleep around or after 11 p.m. Authorities saw video footage of Oropeza walking up to the victims’ front door before going inside…

Vianey Balderas, who lives across the street from the family, said she first heard some gunshots when a few people were outside. About 20 minutes later, Balderas heard about five more gunshots, then another 10, she told The Washington Post.

“When I heard those gunshots, I didn’t think anything of it because in this neighborhood everyone has guns. Every weekend you hear gunshots,” she said in an interview in Spanish. “People shoot in their backyards, after they drink alcohol, men take out guns at house parties and shoot the ground.”

All five victims were shot in the head, he said. Two of the women who were killed were found lying on top of the surviving young children in a bedroom, “trying to protect them,” Capers told The Post by phone from the scene.

Just another day in a land where everyone has the right to own a gun, in a state where no one is required to get a permit.

Categories Guns, Texas

Texas: Why Is Governor Abbott Pitching Vouchers Only at Private Christian Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2023 //
7

The Texas Monthly asks the question: Why is Governor Greg Abbott pitching vouchers only at private Christian schools? Could it be that he knows that vouchers are a subsidy for the tuition the family is already paying? If tuition is $12,500 per child, a voucher of $8,000 is a nice chunk of change. Maybe he knows that in other states, 75-80% of vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. He knows this is a reward to his evangelical base. He doesn’t give a hoot about the 5.4 students in public schools, most of whom are not white. He cares a lot about the 300,000 kids in private schools. He criticizes public schools for “indoctrinating” students. What does he think happens in religious schools? It is spelled I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.

Who would school vouchers really benefit?

Governor Greg Abbott is helping to answer that question, not so much through his rhetoric, which is relentlessly on-message (“educational freedom,” “parental rights,” “school choice”) as through his actions. Over the last few months, the governor has been taking his case for school vouchers on the road, traveling around the state to talk up the benefits of education savings accounts, the wonky name for a program that would offer taxpayer dollars to parents who enroll their kids in private schools.

But it’s impossible not to notice that Abbott has only visited expensive private Christian institutions—all Protestant—in front of friendly audiences of parents who have opted out of public education. Of the seven schools the governor has visited on his “Parent Empowerment Tour,” not a single one has been a public school or a secular private school or a religious school affiliated with Catholicism, Islam, or Judaism. Not even a Montessori. If the goal was to reassure critics that Abbott’s embrace of vouchers wasn’t a recipe for draining the public school system while subsidizing the children of wealthy Christian conservatives in private schools of their choice, well, none of those critics were around to hear it. The governor was quite literally preaching to the choir.

A recent appearance, at Brazos Christian School in Bryan, is representative. Brazos Christian is a private school serving kids from prekindergarten through high school, whose mission is “training, equipping, and educating students to impact the world for Jesus.” Tuition costs more than $12,500 a year for high-school students. Applicants for seventh through twelfth grade at Brazos Christian “must evidence a relationship with Jesus Christ” and provide a reference from a pastor to have a shot at acceptance. When Abbott showed up in early March, he spoke at a dais emblazoned with a sign reading “Parents Matter,” the kind of focus-group-tested slogan beloved by politicians and marketers. Hovering behind the governor’s head was the school’s cross-centric emblem.

Imagine your tax dollars supporting a school that will not accept your child because he or she does not have a “relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Categories Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers
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