A tweet by Mark Wiggins, a pro-public education lobbyist in Texas, spread the news that the Republican-dominated State Board of Education came out against vouchers.
*NO VOUCHERS*
As one of its 2023 legislative priorities, majority Republican @TXSBOE urges #txlege to reject vouchers in all their forms. #txed
@MarkWigginsTX
It seemed that the maniacal slaughter of students and teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, did not dampen voters’ enthusiasm for Republican Governor Greg Abbot, who does not believe in gun control. Abbot has pushed through legislation to allow people to carry guns without a permit, whether open or concealed.
I swear I do not understand why voters vote against their best interests.
“The fight goes on”: For several families of the victims killed in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, the election this year wasn’t like other elections. It was personal.
In May, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers with a semi-automatic rifle he bought days earlier. The tragedy caused some families to become politically active. They threw their support behind Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, hoping that he would be the catalyst to change gun laws in the state.
But O’Rourke lost badly on Tuesday. And Uvalde County decisively voted for Gov. Greg Abbott.
John Lira, the Democratic candidate who challenged U.S. Rep. Tony Gonazles for the seat that represents Uvalde, joined families at a watch party Tuesday night. He said that while Abbott’s victory was “crushing,” he was proud of the families for becoming politically engaged after experiencing a tragedy.
“It just means the fight goes on,” said Lira, who also lost on Tuesday.
As the night went on, many families said their effort to force change in Texas isn’t close to being done. Jerry Mata, whose daughter Tess was killed in the massacre, consoled his oldest daughter, Faith, after the election results were announced.
“Five years from now, the media may leave, everybody may leave, but we’re not going to leave. We’re going to continue the fight and get what we deserve for our kids.”
If you visit Texas, be sure to bring or buy a gun for self-protection.
Texas Republicans have been longing to pass a voucher bill, but they have been stymied by grassroots opposition and by our friends, Pastors for Texas Children, who believe in separation of church and state.
This year, Governor Greg Abbot and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick are determined to pass voucher legislation, and they have the support of wealthy white Evangelical Christian nationalists.
NBC News reported the story of the big money behind vouchers:
Texas Republicans bankrolled by Christian conservative donors are hoping to ride a wave of parental anger over the teaching of race and sexuality in schools to achieve what has long been an unattainable goal: state funding for private education.
Groups committed to giving parents the option of sending their children to private schools using taxpayer dollars — sometimes known as “school choice” or “vouchers” — have given millions of dollars to Republican candidates in Texas this year, helping to win key races and pushing some establishment lawmakers further to the right on the issue. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott recently pledged to make school choice a priority in the next legislative session if he wins re-election over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke.
As a result, political observers say, public school funding is effectively on the ballot Tuesday.
The push for private school vouchers has been funded in large part by Defend Texas Liberty, a Christian nationalist-aligned political action committee led by a former far-right Republican state lawmaker and bankrolled by a pair of West Texas billionaires. The PAC has spent nearly $10 million this year, largely backing candidates who support public funding for private education and attacking those who oppose it, according to an NBC News analysis of Texas Ethics Commission campaign finance reports and data compiled by the nonprofit OpenSecrets.
Defend Texas Liberty did not respond to messages requesting interviews with PAC leaders.
Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, said big spending by groups like Defend Texas Liberty and local fights over the way schools address racism, history and LGBTQ identities have “softened the ground” for school privatization — in Texas and nationally.
“These groups have been demonizing what is being taught in public schools, and that’s the fastest way to erode faith that public schools work,” Rottinghaus said. “Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. If people believe that it’s true, then it’s politically potent.”
Defend Texas Liberty gave $3.6 million to former state lawmaker Don Huffines, an Abbott primary challenger who ran a campaign promising to crack down on medical care for transgender children, require the teaching of creationism in public schools and give parents government money to send their children to private schools. (Abbott publicly came out in support of private school vouchers two months after winning the primary with 66.5% of the vote.)
The PAC also spent $168,000 supporting Republican Nate Schatzline, a former pastor running for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives on a campaign to give parents more freedom to decide how and where their children are educated. Schatzline won a competitive GOP primary in a solidly conservative North Texas district in part by painting his Republican opponent as an advocate for teaching “leftist, woke ideologies” in schools.
“It’s time to outlaw the sexualization of our children!” Schatzline wrote on his campaign website. “It’s time to outlaw racist ideologies that seek to divide our children, not unify them. It’s time to teach our children to love America, not hate it!”
Defend Texas Liberty donations accounted for more than a third of Schatzline’s campaign funding. He initially agreed to speak with a reporter for NBC News, but later did not return phone calls or text messages.
And this fall, Defend Texas Liberty spent $100,000 to put up dozens of billboards along Texas highways, including some that showed a photo of O’Rourke next to a baseless allegation about “grooming” children, an anti-LGBTQ attack that’s become popular among conservatives this year.
In a statement, Tori Larned, a spokesperson for O’Rourke’s campaign, said, “Abbott is now calling to defund public education with his voucher program that takes tax dollars out of public school classrooms across the state and sends them away to private schools.”
Abbott has denied that vouchers would harm public education.
“We can fully fund public schools while also giving parents a choice about which school is right for their child,” he said during a May campaign event in San Antonio. “Empowering parents means giving them the choice to send their children to any public school, charter school or private school with state funding following the student.”
Defend Texas Liberty is led by former state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a Republican who earned a reputation as the state’s most conservative lawmaker before leaving the legislature in 2021. Nearly 90% of the PAC’s funding this year has come from Tim Dunn and the family of Farris Wilks, a pair of billionaire oil and fracking magnates who have expressed the view that Texas state government should be guided by Biblical valuesand run exclusively by evangelical Christians. Combined, they’ve spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade funding far-right Texas candidates and a network of nonprofits and advocacy groups that push conservative policy ideas. Stickland, Wilks and Dunn did not respond to interview requests.
Please open the link and read the rest of the story. There are five million children in the public schools of Texas. The schools have been underfunded since 2011, when Republicans cut their budget by more than $5 billion. Where does Governor Abbott get the idea that the state can fund Evangelical schools (and Catholic and Muslim and Jewish and all other private schools) without taking more money away from public schools?
Paul Cobaugh, a military veteran, moved to Texas in 2005. He registered as a Republican because he considers himself a principled conservative in the mold of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But today, he writes, the Texas Republican Party today is a party of radical extremists who trample on the rights of those who disagree with them.
He writes:
I’m deeply ashamed of the extremists running the TX Republican Party, that control our state, destroy our American/ Texas values and built their 2022 election platform on conspiracy theories and lies. Maybe it’s because I consider myself an, “Eisenhower-Republican” or just for the simple reason that I’ve worked against extremists in combat zones and beyond. There is no difference today between the TX GOP and the Taliban. Yes, please reread and remember that last sentence.
Like most Texans, I’m proud of our state and its accomplishments. Principled conservatives and liberals built much of what we’re proud of. I frankly don’t give a damn if someone is left/ right, Republican/ Democrat or liberal/ conservative. America does better when principled and well-informed “sides” debate issues. When extremism is not only present, but dominates one side, all else fails. For the record, one of my deep, professional specialties is terrorism, extremism and counter-terrorism, that include several combat deployments prior to my retirement.
We see this in TX at every level of state responsibility. I’ve seen the same in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and other less-than-hospitable parts of the world. I refuse to stay silent when extremism rears its evil head here in my home state. The nation I’ve sworn to defend is now threatened by the soul-scorching, extremism of a party with an insatiable appetite for conspiracy theories and fascist ideals. Someone must have the courage to stand up for integrity and truth. I won’t speak for the left’s dysfunction, but I can guarantee that Abbott and his party are NOT the ones to demonstrate moral courage. We all have a citizen’s duty to be well and accurately informed. It was front and center in the minds of our founders….
In plain language, TX, like most of America, the extremists controlling today’s GOP, seek more power for their own personal gain and immorally use an anti-constitutional, social agenda, to achieve it. The opposition has little to no power in TX because they cannot agree on which individual interest has priority, but collectively ignore the big picture that clearly demonstrates the potentially lethal injury, today’s GOP is causing to the soul of our nation and worse, our national values….
The word conservative in TX is a “sacred cow” of sorts. The problem is that the current TX Republican party is now, like the national party, controlled by extremists. They are not, “conservatives.” Principled conservatives have zero voice. America, just like TX 122, is now engaged in an actual war over our unique, lofty and constitutional values versus extremism. That is what’s on the ballot in a few days: Extremism vs. reality
In TX, like most of the nation, GOP candidates run for office on extremist, unconstitutional views, while claiming to be principled, conservative patriots. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Cobaugh lists issues that typify extremism in the GOP. Education is one of them:
Critical Race Theory
i. Yes, I know this because my wife retired from teaching TX public school last year and… I do research for a living. Anyone that can read and that has integrity knows the truth. Still, Dorazio is willing to publicly lie about this, like his other R extremists
ii. I would also like to point out, that in conjunction with this CRT dishonesty that the TX Republican party wants to put religion into public schools. Yes, it’s written into their platform. This violates some of the most basic constitutional principles of our nation and TX.
“31. Prayer, Bible, and Ten Commandments in Schools: We support prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments being returned to our schools, courthouses, and other government buildings”
– TX GOP Platform/ 2022
Pg. 6
iii. The effort by these nuts is in support of vouchers which would allow public funding to pay for charter schools that could indoctrinate TX kids with extreme religious and political views.
iv. The CRT insanity cascaded into the book banning and burning craze. Yes, the same party that has run TX for 27 years exclusively, all of a sudden decided to ban books that they’d already approved, while blaming it on the left who has had very little say in those years.
The Republicans have made a big campaign issue of crime. They claim that Democrats are “soft on crime,” while they are “tough on crime.”
Don’t believe it. It’s a bald-faced lie!
Republicans oppose any legislation to limit access to guns. They vote against “red flag” laws, that seek to keep guns away from people who pose a danger to others. They oppose background checks. They oppose raising the minimum age for buying a gun from 18 to 21. They oppose laws that are commonplace in civilized nations.
The United States has the highest murder rate in the world. Could it be because we have so many guns and so few limits on guns?
Texas, for example, now allows anyone to carry a gun without a permit. Let that sink in: anyone can carry a gun without a permit.
A new law allowing people to carry handguns without a license has led to more spontaneous shootings, many in law enforcement say.
HOUSTON — Tony Earls hung his head before a row of television cameras, staring down, his life upended. Days before, Mr. Earls had pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an A.T.M. in Houston.
Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her.
“Is Mr. Earls licensed to carry?” a reporter asked during the February news conference, in which his lawyer spoke for him.
He didn’t need one, the lawyer replied. “Everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law.” A grand jury later agreed, declining to indict Mr. Earls for any crime.
The shooting was part of what many sheriffs, police leaders and district attorneys in urban areas of Texas say has been an increase in people carrying weapons and in spur-of-the-moment gunfire in the year since the state began allowing most adults 21 or over to carry a handgun without a license.
Far from an outlier, Texas, with its new law, joined what has been an expanding effort to remove nearly all restrictions on carrying handguns. When Alabama’s “permitless carry” law goes into effect in January, half of the states in the nation, from Maine to Arizona, will not require a license to carry a handgun.
The state-by-state legislative push has coincided with a federal judiciary that has increasingly ruled in favor of carrying guns and against state efforts to regulate them.
But Texas is the most populous state to do away with handgun permit requirements. Five of the nation’s 15 biggest cities are in Texas, making the permitless approach to handguns a new fact of life in urban areas to an extent not seen in other states.
In the border town of Eagle Pass, drunken arguments have flared into shootings. In El Paso, revelers who legally bring their guns to parties have opened fire to stop fights. In and around Houston, prosecutors have received a growing stream of cases involving guns brandished or fired over parking spots, bad driving, loud music and love triangles.
“Tough on crime?” Hardly.
Pastors for Children has never made a political endorsement before. But the stakes are so high for children, families, communities, and public schools that they could not sit on the sidelines. The Lt. Governor is a very important political position in Texas. The Pastors for Children is endorsing Mike Collier. Pastors for Children is the 501c4 arm of Pastors for Texas Children.
Collier’s opponent Dan Patrick is the current Lt. Governor. He is a strong supporter of vouchers. He was a rightwing talk show host before he ran for office.
Pastors For Children Endorses Mike Collier For Texas Lieutenant Governor
Current Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has defunded public education and allowed Texas homeowners’ property taxes to skyrocket.
Fort Worth, TX – Pastors for Children, an independent 501(C)4 organization, announced today their endorsement of Mike Collier in the race for Texas Lieutenant Governor. Along with their endorsement, they have launched a 30-second television spot focused on Tarrant County.
“Mike Collier has a proven track record as a successful Certified Public Accountant, businessman, and consultant in the Oil and Gas industry,” said Pastor Charles Foster Johnson, Executive Director of Pastors For Children. “We believe the combination of these analytical and professional skills, intelligence, and high moral character make Mike Collier the far superior choice for Lieutenant Governor.”
Mike Collier has the endorsements of well-respected members of both parties, including Republicans Sen. Kel Seliger, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, State Rep. Lyle Larson, former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, former State Rep. Byron Cook, former State Rep. Bennett Ratliff, and former Dallas Mayor and US Congressman Steve Bartlett. He also has the endorsement of Pastors For Children’s close allies in education, the Association of Texas Professional Educators, the Friends of Texas Public Schools, the Texas State Teachers Association, and the Texas AFT.
“The bipartisan support for Collier is evidence of his appeal as a candidate to folks in urban and rural counties, who want to see the polarization of the Texas Legislature stop and return to getting things done for the people of Texas,” said Pastor Johnson. “Mike Collier is the best candidate to make that happen. It is time for the voters of Texas – Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, to send Dan Patrick into retirement.”
Mike Collier will focus on keeping our Texas school-children safe, providing adequate funding for our public schools, and returning good policy and competence to the office of Lt. Governor. For these reasons, Pastors for Children is proud to endorse Mike Collier for Lt. Governor.
Pastors for Children is a nationwide network of faith leaders and community partners dedicated to school service and fair and equitable public school funding
Forest Wilder writes in the Texas Monthly about a scheme hatched by charter operators and voucher zealots to launch private school vouchers, which have been stalled in the legislature for years. Vouchers were originally intended to allow white students to escape racially integrated school. Now they are falsely sold as a means of helping poor kids “escape failing schools,” but in fact they are almost always used to subsidize the private school tuition of affluent families.
The article shows how a charter chain—ResponsiveEd—is trying to sneak vouchers into the state. Responsive Ed was called out in Slate in 2014 for teaching creationism. Slate wrote: “Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.”
Today, ResponsiveEd has two charters in Texas which operate 91 different charter schools, including an online school. When Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, she gave ResponsiveEd a five-year grant for $40.8 million to expand. The CEO of ResponsiveEd is Board Chair of the Texas Charter School Association. State Commissioner Mike Morath approved 13 new campuses for the chain in 2022.
Wilder writes:
The proposal landed on Greg Bonewald’s desk like a pipe bomb. Bonewald, a soft-spoken career educator, had served as a teacher, coach, and principal in the fast-growing Hill Country town of Wimberley for fifteen years. In 2014, he took a bigger job as an assistant superintendent in Victoria, about two hours to the southeast. But he maintained an affection for Wimberley, and when its school board sought to bring him back as superintendent this year, he was thrilled. His honeymoon would be short.
In a document obtained by Texas Monthly, stamped “Confidential” and dated May 3—the day after Bonewald was named the sole finalist for the job—a Republican political operative and a politically connected charter-school executive laid out an explosive proposal for “Wimberly [sic] ISD.” (Out-of-towners frequently misspell “Wimberley,” much to the annoyance of locals.) Apparently, the plan had been in the works for months and had been vetted by the outgoing superintendent. But Bonewald said no one had bothered to mention it to him.
One of the authors of the plan was Aaron Harris, a Fort Worth–based GOP consultant who has made a name for himself by stoking—with scant evidence—fears of widespread voter fraud. In June, he cofounded a nonprofit called Texans for Education Rights Institute, along with Monty Bennett, a wealthy Dallas hotelier who dabbles in what he regards as education reform. The other author was Kalese Whitehurst, an executive with the charter school chain Responsive Education Solutions, based in Lewisville, a half hour north of Dallas.
Their confidential proposal went like this: Wimberley would partner with Harris and Bennett’s Texans for Education Rights Institute to create a charter school tentatively dubbed the Texas Achievement Campus. But “campus” was a misnomer, because there would be none. The school would exist only on paper. Texans for Education Rights would then work with ResponsiveEd, Whitehurst’s group, to place K–12 students from around the state into private schools of their choice at “no cost to their families.”
The scheme was complex but it pursued a simple goal: turning taxpayer dollars intended for public education into funds for private schools. The kids would be counted as Wimberley ISD students enrolled at the Achievement Campus, thus drawing significant money to the district. (In Texas, public schools receive funding based in large part on how many students attend school each day.) But the tax dollars their “attendance” brought to the district would be redirected to private institutions across the state.
The plan was backed not only by an out-of-town Republican operative and a charter-school chain with links to Governor Greg Abbott, but by a Wimberley-based right-wing provocateur who bills himself as a “systemic disruption consultant.” Texas education commissioner Mike Morath—an Abbott appointee—also seemed to support the deal.
Its proponents have called the scheme pioneering and innovative. Though the effort ultimately failed in Wimberley, one of its backers says he is shopping the plan around to other districts. Critics have raised all manner of alarms.
“I’m not accusing anyone of laundering money, by the legal definition, but there sure are a lot of hands touching a lot of money in this,” said H.D. Chambers, the superintendent of Alief ISD, a district in the Houston area that serves 47,000 students. He also pointed to another, more sweeping, concern: “It’s a Trojan horse for vouchers.”
Please open the link and read the rest of the story.
Texas is distributing DNA kits to students, which will be used to identify them in case of a mass shooting in their school.
At the same time, Governor Greg Abbot is determined to remove all gun controls so that anyone can buy and carry an assault weapon or handgun.
Rex Huppke writes in USA Today:
Hey, Texas! Instead of scary school DNA kits for ‘safety,’ how about some gun safety laws?
Since the horrific Uvalde school shooting in May, Texas officials have done everything they can to protect the state’s guns and comfort the people who own them while doing little to help fearful parents.
In that vein, Texas schools are handing out “safety” kits that encourage parents to collect their children’s DNA and fingerprints in case of an “emergency.” These kits are labeled, without a hint of irony, “A gift of safety, from our family to yours,” right under a giant seal of the state of Texas….
It would be entirely reasonable for Texas parents – or anyone who sees a link between school shootings and easy access to high-powered firearms – to stand in the Chihuahuan Desert in West Texas and scream to the creosote bushes: “Could we please do something about guns instead of planning for how to identify our kid’s bodies, you sellouts?!?”
But we all know how that’ll go. You might scare a couple passing javelinas, but extracting Texas politicians’ heads from the tuchuses of BIG GUN is like trying to teach common sense to a dude who keeps 37 handguns and five AR-15s in his home for “protection…”
Heck, why don’t we just start issuing dog tags to school kids? If our response to school shootings is to treat children the way we treat soldiers, maybe the DNA kit should come with a weapon and a flak jacket.
Would it be easier to enact reasonable gun laws that require universal background checks, ban the sale of assault weapons, limit magazine capacities and raise the minimum age for gun ownership to 21? Sure, but that might ruffle the feathers of those who think everyone needs to live in a house made of guns and then own more guns to protect themselves from everyone else’s gun-houses and all the other guns. Or something like that. I can’t quite follow the logic, if I’m being honest, but I’m sure if I buy a couple dozen guns it’ll make sense.
America’s love of guns is “absolutely nuts.”
The next time you hear a Republican claim he or she is “pro-life,” ask them why they oppose gun control?
The Texas Monthly describes the takeover of the state Republican Party by evangelical Christians. The party freely uses the language and symbols of evangelicals. Their passionate commitment to freedom and religious Liberty is self-referential.
A recent article begins:
Late last month, Senator Ted Cruz stood beside a pulpit at the Texas Faith, Family, and Freedom Forum, hosted by Texas Values, a conservative policy group based in Austin, and made the case that liberal insanity in Washington was worse than he’d ever seen it. He took Trump-style potshots at the appearance and scruples of his opponents—in this case a handful of congressional Democrats. “Five years ago in the Senate there was one open and avowed socialist,” Cruz said, referring to Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Crazy uncle Bernie, white hair standing straight up. By the way, would it kill the guy to use a comb? I mean he’s a socialist, he can just take one from someone.”
Calling Democrats lunatics is standard practice for Texas’s junior senator. But mixed in with his jeremiads were other signals more fitting to the setting, a stage at Austin’s Great Hills Baptist Church with a large cross adorning the podium beside him. “A revival is coming,” said Cruz, the son of an evangelical Protestant minister. And while he added that politicians like him were ready to lead it, he also reminded those gathered that much of the public still needs to be won over. “We need to do a much better job as evangelists,” Cruz said. “Evangelists for Jesus, yes, but also in the public sphere as evangelists for liberty, for our values.”
Cruz blended explicit biblical language and patriotic imagery throughout what was, at its core, a speech to rally the political activism of the “joyful warriors” convened that evening by Texas Values, which itself makes little distinction between Republican, Christian, and American priorities. The group’s website explains its position that “government is an institution ordained by God, with the purpose of punishing evil and rewarding good” and adds that “those who serve in government are God’s ministers.” A cross-shaped graphic accompanying the term “Religious Liberty” on the homepage makes clear to which religion’s God the group is referring….
After the Texas Supreme Court sided with cheerleaders in East Texas in August 2018 and allowed them to display a verse from the New Testament on their football team’s run-through banner, state attorney general Ken Paxton tweeted in support. “God bless these young cheerleaders for their faith in God and their fight to protect their religious liberties. Just like their banners said, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’” The verse, taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, references the apostle’s spiritual growth, which allows him to endure the unpredictability—including hunger and financial need—in his missionary work. The verse has become popular among athletes, politicians, and other competitors as a triumphalist blessing over their ambitions. It would be better applied as a way of saying “I’ll be fine, even if I lose, because God’s kingdom doesn’t depend on a football game or an election.” But that’s not the message Paxton is sending in the tweet. His public messaging and that of other top Texas politicians implies that the kingdom of God very much depends on who wins elections.
David DeMatthews and David S. Knight wrote in the San Antonio Express-News that Governor Greg Abbott’s voucher plan is “a terrible idea,” and they explain why. (Since I don’t have a subscription to the San Antonio Express-News, I am copying their tweet.)
David DeMatthews is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at The University of Texas at Austin.
David S. Knight is the associate director of the Center for Education Research and Policy Studies and an assistant professor of educational leadership at The University of Texas at El Paso.
To summarize:
1. The vouchers don’t cover the cost of most private schools.
2. The money spent on vouchers will hurt public schools, which most students attend.
3. Budget cuts will force public schools to cut popular programs, like dual language education, STEM programs, and vocational training. These cuts will hit low-income districts the hardest.
4. Private schools that get vouchers are not held to the same standards of accountability as public schools, nor do they provide the same services to students with disabilities.
5. Studies of various voucher programs have consistently shown that they are no better than public schools and often worse.
6. Many voucher programs subsidize affluent students already attending private schools.
7. Texas already has one of the worst funded school systems in the nation, especially for children with disabilities. Vouchers will make it worse.
8. In rural communities, public schools are the hub of the community. They will be harmed by vouchers.
9. Vouchers are a terrible idea for Texas. The state needs well-funded schools staffed by high-quality teachers. Vouchers will undercut that goal.
