What You Elect & What You Pay For
(Education • Texas)
What if the people we elected to the Texas Board of Education actually believed in the potential virtues of the public education of our children and actually worked to improve the state’s public education system?
But they don’t. For instance, the woman representing my district on the board (and who thankfully is not seeking re-election) home-schooled her children. At one point she led a successful vote to remove Thomas Jefferson from a list of people allowed to appear in Texas-approved history textbooks, whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century.
She and six or seven or eight of her cohorts on the board have worked hard to change public school curricula to reflect their notion that the United States was never founded upon the principle of separation of church and state. I tend to disagree with their view, for several reasons, but mostly because it’s a major lie. And though some of my best friends are Baptist, I don’t think it should be the Official Religion of the United States of America.
Now this same group is trying to push their idea that people shouldn’t have to pay taxes to fund public schools. They tried (and failed at) the first step toward this plank in their agenda yesterday in a tied vote that, had it succeeded, would have provided state funding for privately administered charter schools. They’re going to give it another shot today.
What have I got against charter schools? Nothing in general except that their administrators and teachers don’t appear to be held accountable by much other than after-the-fact lawsuits. That and the fact that we in Texas don’t spend much at all on public education already, compared to most other states. So we shouldn’t be siphoning off public education funds to pay for private or semi-private or religious-based schools.
If I could be king, I’d prod my Board of Education to address the issues behind stats such as these, gleaned from the National Education Association and the Texas Comptroller. This’ll give you some insight into the priorities of Our Government Leaders. The numbers represent where Texas ranks compared to the other 49 states:
→ Per capita spending of state and local governments for public welfare – #48
→ Per capita spending of state and local governments for all education – #45
→ Per capita spending of state and local governments for health and hospitals – #36
→ Per capita spending of state and local governments for police & fire protection – #36
→ Per capita spending of state and local governments for interest on debt – #15
See, Texas legislators don’t believe in welfare and don’t need no edumacation. And if you git sick you kin jest cowboy up and take some damn vitamins. We all got guns and don’t hardly need to be spendin no money on no po-lice, neither. On the other hand, the Texas Legislature (controlled lo these many years by conservative Republicans, just by coincidence) does love to spend money – building grand buildings and planning trans-Texas corridors and such. And if you don’t have the cash handy, heck, just charge it.
But I digress. We were ranking Texas education efforts:
→ Average salary of public school teachers – #34
→ Public school revenue per K-12 student in average daily attendance – #41
→ Spending per student in fall enrollment at K-12 public schools – #44
The result?
→ Average math SAT scores – #46
→ Average verbal SAT scores – #49
You get what you pay for. You get stuck with what you elect, too.
You and I can’t change this mess by ourselves. But if you happen to live within Texas BOE District 10, you can do yourself and your children a favor by voting for Judy Jennings, a professional educator who cares about academic outcome and is running against yet another Luddite who wants the Book of Genesis taught as scientific theory and is basing her campaign on what she terms “100% pro-life answers.”
The trouble is, 100% pro-life answers don’t address the questions that Texas Board of Education members need to be asking in their quest to improve education for our children.
Update: San Antonio Democrat Rick Agosto left yesterday’s Texas BOE meeting early, whereupon the right-wing flat-earthers took a re-vote and agreed 7-6 to put $100 million – in money that should be going to improve public education – into private charter schools. Thanks, Rick, we really appreciate the effort.
If there’s a saving grace to this latest educational travesty, it’s that what the board did is likely a violation of the Texas Constitution.
The constitutional issue in question is whether a charter school facility investment would meet the “prudent person” standard that generally says an investment’s return must be commensurate with its risk.The board’s investment adviser described the charter school investment as low-return and high-risk and declined to make a recommendation for or against the investment approach.
Board member Cynthia Dunbar , R-Richmond, said the board members are meeting their legal obligations to vet investments thoroughly.
But Cynthia, my current BOE representative, is the one I mentioned above, who is so interested in public education that she home-schooled her kids and led the charge to erase Thomas Jefferson from the history books. And claims the United States was not founded on (among other things) the principle of the separation of church and state.
So when Cynthia makes a pronouncement, you have to remember that she is playing about three violins short of an orchestra and thus is nearly always wrong.
→ B.Dunn, Jul 23, 2010, 06 07 AM
