Texas Schools

"One textbook says ... that Trump’s election was responsible for hurricanes"

Uh what?

 

Due to climate change no doubt.

 

So his policies not his actual election. Can't tell if that failed explanation is the mistake of the textbook or article. (Not even complaining about the climate change topic itself.)

 

I'm an advocate for school choice but I do have big concerns about the near term impacts to public schools. Given the funding mechanism based on attendance/enrollment, if we see a sizable exodus in students it would imperil the system in the short run. I'm all for putting economic pressure on public schools to improve but if we do this too fast then the existing system will collapse on itself.

Say what you will about the existing system, but it is not all bad. Public education has played a very valuable role for us.

As i said earlier, academic achievement is all about the desire and discipline. Those come largely from the home. So it follows that those that care and are willing to put forth the effort, will be the first ones to choose to go somewhere else. That means we have more hi achievers moving out of public school and thus a higher concentration of low achievers staying in public school which means working with more challenging families/kids with fewer resources.

I'm all for letting adults sleep in the bed they made themselves. I do have many reservations about placing that burden on kids before they've had the opportunity to make any real choices for themselves.

 

A few things to note. First, the schools aren't going to lose every dollar associated with the students who leave. Districts with less than 20,000 students will get $10,000 per year for 2 years for each student that leaves - free money for doing nothing. The per-pupil funding will increase.

Second, I don't doubt that this would be disruptive to many (though certainly not all) public schools. The worst schools will pay a price in terms of declining enrollment and therefore less funding to pay teachers and administrators. I understand, but we need to remember who the priority is supposed to be - the children who are in school right now, not the people who work for the districts. The interests of the children are supposed to be paramount.

Finally, I didn't want it to happen this way. I've been following this issue since 1997, and most on my side only wanted a pilot school choice program that went strictly to poor children in low-performing schools. Did the system accept this very small and easy compromise? No. It crapped it pants and freaked out about it to kill the idea, and it did everything it could to avoid accountability and accepting the oversight of parents. Accordingly, I don't consider them good faith actors in the equation, and I'm not sympathetic to them. When school choice passes (and it eventually will), they will deserve what they get.

The lesson - if you're a government entity that ******* for money 24/7 and then opposes all accountability and attacks the values of the taxpayer, they may take your crap for a while. However, eventually you might awaken the sleeping giant. After following this for 25 years, I hope that's finally happening.

 

Government schools have been a disaster for the psyche of students with the obvious examples in the last 2 generations. The system collapsing would be a good thing for the country and for actual education of children.

 

I don't see the value in giving parents money to pay for part of a private school. If that goes through, the private schools will just increase the tuition by the value of the voucher.

 

Like everything else involving the State and particularly the feds, the schools that don't need the vouchers (Jesuit, St Marks, Strake, Episcopal, Kinkaid, St Johns) will be leery because the vouchers are being gobbled up by newly founded "We promise a 400 SAT score as long as your name has less than four letters school for those who haven't started the third grade for the fourth year Prep Academy".

Kinda like all the "trade schools" getting $20,000 in student loans to certify a nurses aide and providing then a job at $8/hour.

 

I'm not sure that's entirely true, because I suspect that a lot of churches that aren't in this to cash in will open private schools for their members and local community. Having said that, I'd be a lot more comfortable if they required private schools to accept the voucher as full and final payment.

The bill contains a section that says, "An education service provider or vendor of educational products may not charge a child participating in the program an amount greater than the standard amount charged for that service or product by the provider or vendor." Accordingly, they can't charge extra unless they're going to do it to all students. That's a little bit of protection but not much.

 

I was on the board of directors for a Christian preschool. While the church elders didn't create the school to make money, the people directly working on the school-side are most certainly in it for the money. I used your above argument as to why we should not raise tuition one year. The preschool director was livid and quit before the end of the school year, in part for that dispute. I doubt that's isolated because the tuition at a second preschool also went up annually.

I wasn't thinking of the situation where a school would charge one student more if the family used a voucher. I was thinking vouchers would be so popular that every family would be using one - so of course the tuition increase would affect all. I agree the best option is for the voucher to count as the full and final payment.

 

That's a real concern, and though I'd take the current bill over nothing, I'm not a fan. The last thing we'd want is for the voucher program to become like the federal student loan program. Big mistake.

 

Supply and demand will determine private school prices. Plus there will still be the public school option. If private schools want to get in their own way they can use the vouchers as an excuse to increase their prices. It won't be a good financial decision at the end.

 

The problem is that supply and demand gets distorted when government starts handing out free money. Same happens with the student loan program.

 

No criticism, but in reading this thread, I have two major questions:

1) Do y'all realize what a QUALITY private school costs in this state?

2) I question whether or not the quality private schools will accept the vouchers.

FWIW, I served on the school board of a private school in Houston for four years, as well as numerous committees. While I was serving we got our graduates accepted into Yale, Harvard, MIT, Wharton, UVA, UNC, W&L, Vandy, Northwestern, USC, UCLA, Stanford, and of course Texas & aTm.

 

Why lead the list with your weakest and most embarrassing point?

 

The schools were listed geographically to help my feeble mind remember them.

I could have gone full "unwoke" by saying that none of the admissions were quota or federal government admissions

 

It's not free money though. It is a return of tax dollars.

 

Mona,

So do you & I get the same amount when your ad valorem taxes in Memorial are $52,000 a year and mine in Jersey Village are $2,800?

 

Not to smack talk, but have you read the bill?

 

I haven't. I admit I might have assumed wrong.

Is money being given that wasn't taken in from taxes earmarked for schools?

 

Good question. I would think no as private schools would also cost more in areas where more taxes are taken. But to me as long as money isn't coming from other areas of the budget I am okay with any reasonable distribution of the money.

 

It's ok. Like I said, I wasn't intended to smack talk, but there is some deceptive language in the bill and in some of the rhetoric. There bill calls the program "Education Savings Accounts," which suggests that parents are putting aside money (like a health savings account) or a property tax credit to pay for their own children's education. That isn't how the program is bankrolled. Obviously, anyone can donate to it like they could to any government program, but the bill specifically states that the program will be a general revenue account and intends to be funded by appropriation. It has a negative fiscal note (meaning it costs taxpayer money).

You can get it even if you pay nothing in taxes, so effectively, it is "free money." That doesn't make it per se bad, but it is how the current bill is drafted.

 

don't understand what you mean by "disaster for the psyche of students" but government schools have a huge role to play in the US. There is no private school mechanism that could do what the public schools do. The problem with public schools is that they are run/influenced by unions who are in bed with the dem party. public schools have slowly moved away from meritocracy because they have not been able to move the needle with respect to the metrics by which we measure schools. We have continued to decline in world academics and P.S.s have failed in one of their own holy-grail metrics..."gap between black and white". They all know the underlying truth...that achievement is driven at home...but their allegiance to the dem party won't allow them to acknowledge this publicly, because it would undercut the dem message that it is "the racist system" that is to blame. In addition, acknowledging that parents play a larger role in child development, learning and achievement would deflate the halo around teachers and undermine their argument for increased pay. PS's have increasingly become like most large institutions...eventually they forget their mission and become more about circling the wagons and protecting their turf than achieving their mission.

 

This is all very confusing. Not the way an engineer would design a system. The way I think about it is this. There are $X taken in property taxes per year. Some portion of that x% is given to public schools today for their funding. $Y=$Xx%. Let's call the amount of money going to school vouchers $Z which is a subset of $Y. A reasonable program would have, $Z < $Y. Public schools would then receive $Y-$Z, call it $A. The accounting or distribution method is unimportant to me as long as all this is true or generally true for the program.

State governments can't monetize debt so they have to take in taxes to pay for these programs or cut money from another program. I am okay with that too, if the "extra" money for school vouchers reduces the amount paid to another state agency. I would be against anything that increases state tax or budgets.

I am okay with this if everything I wrote above holds true. To make that practical there might be an upper limit of income in order to receive a school voucher. The voucher program's purpose is to 1) get students out of failing schools (almost 100% poor schools) and 2) take funding away from public schools to hold them accountable for teaching poorly, allowing violence to run rampant, and pushing woke agenda.

 

Yes. Public schools are captured by extreme leftists and therefore should be punished and our children should be given alternatives.

I recognize some schools aren't as bad as others. Those public schools will remain.

The psyche comment was based on the fact that public schools are not in fact public but government schools funded largely by the federal government. The DOEd regulates them and pushes all kinds of anti-American, immoral, woke, pro-socialism, pro-government power, etc stuff. It is a tool they use to propagandize our children. Separation of education and state is important for anyone who loves America as America and has any sense of loyalty to our culture, history, founding, etc.

 

ok. we're more in agreement than not. DoEd needs to go.

 

Not too many engineers end up as elected officials. They tend to keep working actual jobs.

 

I'm doing my best but this Biden economy is rough.

 

We're reading about many layoffs at tech companies, which surely means lots of liberal voters. You'd think they could realize what caused this, but no, they'll vote for Slow Joe again in '24.

 

They're not designing it for true workability or simplicity. They're designing it around political considerations, and frankly, that's true of pretty much all legislation.

Agree.