At Capitol Education Rally, Tough Words For Legislature
by Morgan Smith
Public education advocates accused lawmakers of strangling public schools with out-of-control high-stakes testing and funding cuts at a rally at the Capitol on Saturday.
“There are five million kids in Texas waiting for this legislature to keep our forefather’s promises,” said John Kuhn, the superintendent of Perrin Whitt Consolidated Independent School District, in North Texas. “And to those who want to take away that promise, I’m with the moms and the trustees and local business people who will say what brave Texans have said before, come and take it. Just try to kill that promise of our Constitution.”
Educators, parents, and students gathered at the event organized by Save Texas Schools, a statewide coalition formed during the 2011 legislative session to fight funding cuts. According to their crowd count, about 3,500 people attended.
While 2011 might have the Alamo for Texas public schools, said Kuhn, whose rural district of about 400 students is located northwest of Fort Worth, “this year is our San Jacinto.”
Several lawmakers attended the rally, including Sen. Kirk Watson and Reps. Elliott Naishtat, Mark Strama, Lon Burnam, and Donna Howard. Rep. James White, from Hillister, was the lone Republican.
“The verdict is in, and it says the Texas school system is inadequate, unfair, and isn’t even constitutional,” said Watson, referring a district court judge’s recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by school districts against the state.
Instead of moving restore funding in light of that decision now, he said, “the Legislature is sitting around like a litigious deadbeat dad waiting from a ruling from a higher court.”
Many speakers — including Diane Ravitch, a Houston native and former assistant secretary of education to President George H.W. Bush who is now an outspoken opponent of vouchers and high-stakes testing — called out Senate Education Committee chairman Dan Patrick by name.
The Houston Republican has made creating a scholarship program for students to attend private schools a priority during the ongoing legislative session. He also has introduced a bill, Senate Bill 2, that would dramatically expand the state’s charter school system.
Among Ravitch’s concerns was the senator’s attempt to pass a “parent-trigger” law in which local school boards could vote to convert to a charter school. It would more aptly be called a “parent tricker” law, she said.
She urged members of the crowd to support efforts to roll back student testing in the state. “The testing vampire started here,” she said, referring to the Texas origins of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. “Kill it.”
Former Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott also spoke at the rally. Scott, who stepped down from the agency in July, made national headlines last year when he told an annual gathering of 3,000 public school administrators that the state’s testing and accountability system had gone too far.
On Saturday, he said the state’s $90 million a year test-development contract was influencing the “totatilty” of public schools.
“Now, some of you may look at that and see that as the tail wagging the dog a little bit, wouldn’t you? I don’t,” he said, “I look at it as the flea at the end of the tail of the dog trying to wag the dog.”
He said that realization was part of his decision last year to speak out against the direction of state education policy.
“I had to turn in my reformer card because I looked at it as a flea circus,” he said, “They are selling two ideas and two ideas only: No. 1, your schools are failing and No. 2, if you give us billions of dollars we can convince you [of] the first thing we just told you.”
Prior to the rally, a handful of school choice advocates gathered on the north steps of the Capitol at a media conference organized by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based conservative think-tank.
They emphasized the need for a scholarship program that would give public school students to the option to attend private schools of their choice, saying that such a program would provide competition that would improve public schools and also give parents the ability to choose the best educational choice for their children.
“They are advocating for more money, but they always do, they always will, and the focus needs to be on the student and the education they’re getting, and this is what we’re talking about — giving parents choices to be sure that they can send their children to schools where they’ll be educated,” said Talmadge Heflin, a former state lawmaker who is the director of the TPPF’s Center for Fiscal Policy.
In addition to TPPF officials, attendees included Peggy Veneable, the president of the Texas Branch of Americans for Prosperity, and representatives from Americans for Tax Reform and Texans For Fiscal Responsibility.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://www.texastribune.org/2013/02/23/capitol-education-rally-tough-words-legislature/.
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The Legislature has a responsibility to operate
Public Schools not subsidize private schools.
I can only be thankful my children are grown now and out of school. I am entirely frightened for the generation being “educated” in the schools of today.
Public schools are full of the most passionate and caring of teachers. To them it is not about the paycheck but the children the serve. I have served in a public school for seven years and here is my perspective…when parents (and I am a parent as well) are given the “choice” it takes always the influence, and usually positive one, that the teacher has and affects the teacher and schools over all self-esteem. A teacher is a professional. It requires at least a four year degree, including practical experience, and a rather hard series of tests in order to become “highly qualified” which according to NCLB is the least requirement to become a teacher. Then because it is a noble profession the job market is very competitive. In my school district, over 2000 applications were submitted for less than 400 teaching positions. The point is, we are professionals and a parent who is convinced by a test score that we or the school are inadequate should not then be given a check to go somewhere else. That does not fix the problem, if there really is one. The money should be reinvested in the public school and spent on training, more in school resources and additional teachers to reduce class sizes.