Posted on 05/01/2003 11:20:40 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
When times are tough, we all have to make choices and set priorities. As Gov. Rick Perry said recently, in tight times, families know they have to take care of the basics -- like the mortgage or the car payment-- but it may mean bringing your lunch to work or cutting out cable TV.
Perry had a similar message to state legislators: Cut spending, but take care of basic needs. And yet, while Texas is facing its most severe budget crisis in a generation, some of my colleagues in the Texas Legislature want to mortgage one of the most basic and important needs of our state -- our children's education -- for a costly experiment in private school vouchers.
The House has already passed deep cuts to public school budgets and to teacher and staff health benefits. Despite that, some lawmakers propose taking more tax dollars out of our neighborhood public schools to fund a private school voucher scheme. What they call a "pilot" would actually be a full-fledged voucher program in 11 of the state's largest school districts, including the Houston, Pasadena, Aldine and Alief Independent School districts.
Taxpayers would foot the bill for sending thousands of students to private schools, at a cost exceeding $265 million for the experimental phase alone. And the price tag goes up after that. That's $265 million to be distributed to most anyone who wants to open a school and can get some students to attend. Money even for schools that lost their charter under the state's charter school program. Money to teach any curriculum, regardless of state standards, using anyone for teachers, regardless of qualifications. In short, a blank check with your tax dollars.
Education is our state budget's largest expense, and rightly so. Even so, state support to local school districts now covers only 40 percent of school district expenses. Local property taxpayers make up the difference, a burden that grows heavier every year.
Districts across the state are under relentless financial pressure to cut programs, eliminate teachers and crowd classes -- all measures that hurt student learning and risk the future of Texas children. Not one school district in Texas has surplus money available to start subsidizing private schools.
The voucher program under debate in Austin can drain state and local funding from more than 1,200 schools, at the expense of the 881,000 students attending those schools. The 472 schools affected in the Houston area could lose $105 million in the first two years alone. Like any other unfunded mandate, that's money they could only make up by hiking property taxes even further.
Bottom line: We cannot afford to fund this risky and costly experiment. This "pilot" program is so costly that if only 5 percent of the eligible students participate, more than $265 million would be drained from our neighborhood public schools and be diverted to private schools in the first two years alone. That's $265 million just to see if vouchers work.
That's more money than the House just cut from a program to put computers in our schools -- funding that was cut, we were told, because the state just doesn't have enough money this year.
Vouchers are bad public policy even when times are flush. No voucher program has been shown conclusively to improve student learning. Every voucher program drains resources from public schools. And every voucher program removes accountability for tax dollars from local school boards and the taxpayers who elect them.
Given its hefty price tag and negative impact on public schools, there are no grounds to even debate the voucher issue this session. Our state's current financial crisis makes it an impossibility. Until the needs of public schools -- and the 94 percent of Texas students served by them -- are fully met, the Legislature should not consider diverting even a single dollar to support private school education.
Hochberg, a Democrat, represents Texas House District 137 in Houston.
Well, we know what doesn't work. Public education institutions are draining taxpayers dry and the return on the investment in their children's future, in the nation, is not reflected in knowledge learned or sound physical structures. To continue handing ever increasing requested sums, without competition for these tax dollars will only give us more of the same.
State Rep. Hochberg fails to note voucher money will follow the student out the door. Certainly, he doesn't expect money for a seat that is not filled. Parents want their children out of public schools and they want to take their education dollars with them. Let the competition begin.
Risky scheme, is that like a quagmire?
Taxpayers would foot the bill for sending thousands of students to private schools
And public schools are free :)
Hanging upside-down from the rafters.
Bump!
Now they're driving up the value of homes so they can take more in taxes (steadily increasing property apprasials, is no less than raising taxes without community imput). The Robin Hood plan of taking from sound districts and giving it to bankrupt districts, has drained districts that could pay those ever growing bills, but no longer can. It's a RACKET, plain and simple and the people are what these "for-the-children" education crooks are draining dry.
Many politicans and teachers don't put their children in public schools, but they push it on eveyone else.
May 2, 2003 - Williams endorses vouchers for schools [Full Text] Mayor Anthony A. Williams announced his support yesterday for a school-vouchers program pushed by Education Secretary Rod Paige, who has met resistance on the issue from D.C. officials.
"I fully and strongly support [President Bush´s] initiative to bring scholarships to this city," Mr. Williams told a crowd of students, teachers and administrators at the Community Academy Public Charter School in Northwest.
"We will find that our regular public schools will end up in better shape."
Mr. Williams is the first high-ranking D.C. official to support Mr. Bush's program. The mayor had opposed bringing vouchers to the District as recently as February, when he said through a spokesman that "you are not going to see our government participate in a government-sponsored voucher program."
The mayor's press secretary, Tony Bullock, said yesterday that Mr. Williams recently concluded that it is necessary for the city to participate in Mr. Bush's national voucher "experiment," which would bring the city an additional $76 million for education.
"It would be malpractice ... to thumb our noses at that kind of support when we are in our current fiscal crisis," Mr. Bullock said.
But D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat and the District's nonvoting congressional representative, lashed out at Mr. Williams' support of vouchers, saying the program would violate home rule. She said the mayor had not consulted her about the matter.
D.C. Council member Kevin P. Chavous, chairman of the council's Education, Libraries and Recreation Committee, stopped short of endorsing vouchers, but agreed that alternative instruction methods, such as charter schools, needed to be explored.
"Traditional public school education in place today was around 150 years ago, [and] it needs to change," Mr. Chavous, Ward 7 Democrat, told the audience.
D.C. school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz also attended the event yesterday, but did not discuss the recent uproar surrounding a column she wrote criticizing Mr. Bush's voucher plan.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Mrs. Cafritz, who previously endorsed the voucher program, admitted writing the column. It also appeared on her Web site two weeks ago.
Yesterday morning, Mrs. Cafritz praised charter-school programs. "I ask you all to put aside the need to put down one form of education to benefit another," she said.
Vouchers have been a matter of contention in education circles in recent years.
More than $756 million from the fiscal 2004 budget would fund the national school-choice programs, with a small portion going toward a pilot voucher plan in the District and several other cities.
Republican lawmakers in Congress have supported vouchers as a choice for low-income families who want to take their children out of the District's public schools. But many D.C. leaders oppose the idea.
"Public tax dollars should not go to sending children to private institutions that do not endure the same amount of scrutiny regarding their education measures as the [public] school system," D.C. Council member Adrian Fenty, Ward 4 Democrat, said in a written statement.
Leaders of teachers unions also criticized the voucher program.
"It is disingenuous at best and duplicitous at worst to siphon money from the District's public schools to finance vouchers for private school education when there is already a proposal to cut $100 million from the city's school budget," said Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent organization of the Washington Teachers Union.
"If voucher advocates really want to help students and strengthen D.C. schools, they should stand with the citizens and teachers of Washington, D.C., who oppose private school vouchers and support the use of effective educational programs and strategies," Miss Feldman said in a statement.
Mr. Williams and Mr. Paige, who toured Community Academy yesterday morning, read "George Shrinks," by William Joyce, to second-graders and helped third-graders mold clay. Their visit coincided with the National Public Charter School Week.
"I like building this house," said third-grader Rakia Pinkney after Mr. Paige inspected her work.
Rakia, 7, was excited to see visitors in her classroom, even though she wasn't sure of Mr. Paige's identity. "It's nice they came to see us, so we can show them what we are doing," she said.
Fifth-grader Rhoni Jacobs, 10, agreed.
"I got his autograph," she said, referring to Mr. Williams, who stayed well after the tour ended to meet students and sign autographs. "It's so exciting they came to see us because the teachers here really help us to learn," she said.
During the hour-long ceremony, students remained seated and quiet as they listened to Mr. Paige and Mr. Williams speak.
Mr. Paige said educators should think outside the box, and reminded teachers and administrators that every child performs differently under each program. He said educators should tailor programs to the growing needs of American students.
"We are a great nation, but we can never be as great of a nation as we need to be without great schools," Mr. Paige said.
"Some people don't believe that we can do that, but we can. We can create schools like this one where no student is left behind," he said later. "This is the type of community we should see elsewhere, because it works."
Community Academy has 500 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The school was founded in 1998 by Kent Amos, a former vice president of Xerox Corp. "We wanted to create an environment and an institution that challenged students and teachers to change, to improve education," Mr. Amos said.
Students who attend Community Academy wear a uniform of khaki pants or skirts, and white tops, and rarely misbehave.
"Each room has a set of 10 rules, and if we break one of them, we have to write it out 25 times," said Chantal Fuller, a sixth-grader. "If we do it again, it's 50 times. And if we do it again that means they have a meeting with our parents, and it's a 100 times, and these are all paragraphs, not just a few words."
Chantal, 12, wants to be a lawyer or a criminologist after she graduates from college. She said she didn't think she could graduate and have a career had she stayed at the public school she used to attend.
Sixth-grader Shireen Jones, 11, said everyone at Community Academy is treated equally. "At the public school I used to attend, there was a girl named Karen; she was Hispanic and she said she could not be my friend because I was black," Shireen said. "Here, everyone is equal, and the teachers don't play favorites." [End]
Bump!
Bump!
I guess they care about the money, not the kids.
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