Letter to the Editor: Pay attention to 'school choice' discussions
Many of you recently received a text from the Hertiage Foundation which is a far right wing conservative group that spends millions of dollars lobbying for various causes. Just to be clear what they are talking about with the slogans “school choice” or “money following the student” is another separate educational system or vouchers.
As I read the text from the Heritage Foundation they talked about school choice opening up more opportunities such as:
Training in skilled trade industries
Partnerships between schools and businesses
Work force training and skill certifications
Fine arts training
The ability to transfer to any public school for any reason
Empowering parents by allowing funding to follow the student
I thought to myself after reading the text and listening to proponents of school choice “hey that sounds a lot like our public education system that we have now”. In our Texas High Schools today, our students are able to receive certifications in the fields of Welding, Feedlot management, Computer software’s, Health Science technologies, culinary arts, drone operations and hundreds of other areas. We have hugely successful programs in theater arts, art, band, choir and debate that many of our students participate. Our schools have excellent dual credit and accelerated learning programs in conjunction with Amarillo College, West Texas A&M, and Texas Tech. We operate our cafeterias, transportation and many other areas of our schools with third party businesses.
In our state today any student can transfer to another district, however, each independent school has the authority to decide on a case by case basis if they will take a student or not. Students in Texas can go to fully funded state charter schools, and any private school of their choice. So the slogan “school choice” doesn’t really fly for us in Texas. We already have many choices.
What about accountability? Will these schools that pop-up be held to the same standards as our public schools? What about our students in 504, special education, dyslexia and many of the other groups of students that our public schools serve? Today, less than 3% of the districts in Texas are failing according to data put out by the Texas Education Agency but the politicians and voucher folks keep talking about failing schools. At the same time, our state is ranked 46 out of 50 in funding for public school districts.
What the proponents of “money following the student “are really talking about is taking taxpayer dollars without having any accountability, or oversight!! In Public School districts, the districts are operated by a local school board of seven elected officials. If the local voters do not like the way the school is operating they can choose new members. To me this is the ultimate local control and accountability.
The Texas school finance system is a complex process. All the taxes collected in our school districts are collected and sent to Austin where the Texas Education Agency divides the money among all schools in Texas. The goal being to make all schools the same and in some cases make all of them poor. I mention this because if it is this complicated for one taxing system how could they possible manage two systems economically. One of the systems (public education) and certain areas of the state mainly rural will suffer, and folks it will be Amarillo ISD and the surrounding communities. Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio will be the benefactors.
Our legislature meets in the next few months our Governor, Lt. Governor and many other legislators have received large campaign contributions from folks who are in favor of vouchers and many of them have come out for vouchers. If you like your public school and local control please call your representatives.
Blair Brown,
Panhandle, Texas
Blair Brown is the superintendent of Panhandle ISD.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Letter to the Editor: Pay attention to 'school choice' discussions
