As the Senate Education Committee hears testimony on three reckless private school voucher bills, we just sent out the following press release:
Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller today called proposed bills under consideration in the Senate Education Committee today reckless and even cynical schemes to shift funding from neighborhood public schools to private and religious schools.
“We’ve seen lawmakers set up our neighborhood public schools to fail by cutting billions of dollars in their funding and then insisting that they do more with less,” Miller said. “Now some of the same lawmakers are pushing voucher schemes that would ultimately take away billions more to subsidize private and religious schools that aren’t even accountable to taxpayers. Enough is enough. They have to stop insisting that taxpayers essentially fund two separate school systems instead of focusing on paying for the public schools that educate the vast majority of Texas children.”
The Senate Education Committee is hearing public testimony today on three private school voucher bills, SB 4, SB 276 and SB 642. A fiscal analysis from the Coalition for Public Schools, of which the Texas Freedom Network is a member, shows that the proposed bills would save neither taxpayers nor public schools money as supporters claim and would likely, in fact, ultimately cost billions of dollars each biennium. Redirecting that money from public schools would make a farce of the Texas Constitution’s requirement that the state fund public education, Miller said.
“The claims that these bills would save taxpayer dollars and wouldn’t hurt neighborhood public schools are so dishonest that they’re almost laughable,” Miller said. “Funding vouchers through tax credits is just a shell game that diverts tax dollars to private and religious schools. And ‘taxpayer savings grants’ is just cynical wordplay by politicians trying to hide the real cost to neighborhood schools and the kids they educate.”
So very sad that Texas legislators are so full of hate. They are so intent on dumbing Texas. Thank you for all your hard work.
The reason for the TEAliban cutting way back on education was to make the words of Hitler come true in this country. Hitler said that governments should be grateful that the people they administer do not think.
They have tried and tried again to ELIMINATE critical thinking skills in public schools at all levels. Why? So the people they administer DO NOT THINK and non-thinking masses vote for people they think is the cutest.
United States of Fascism coming in <20 years.
I watched some of the testimony today. It was almost laughable. I stopped counting all the logical fallacies and emotional attacks.
My favorite was the young man with autism who was at a Catholic School. His mom said that he was in public school and, after exceptionally passing the STAAR, was accepted into the Catholic school… and somehow, that is a reason to give more money to Catholic schools? The public school got him up to speed and then the Catholic school accepted him.
The 4 guys from the various voucher schools said much the same thing. Paraphrase, If students can’t handle our workload (including Saturday and after school tutorials), then they can go back to public school. Sure, if you can dump non-performing kids, your results will be awesome. Public schools don’t have the option of dumping non-performing kids.
This has disaster written all over it. And I make too much money to put my kid in private school and not enough to afford private school for him. Sigh.
Harold Cook pretty much sums this issue:
http://www.lettersfromtexas.com/2015/03/school-choice-how-to-get-away-with-robbery.html