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Why would the GOP vote to remove vouchers? Don't they love vouchers? I'm not as intimately familiar with the OTG stuff in Texas.
Rural Republicans not budging
Why would the GOP vote to remove vouchers? Don't they love vouchers? I'm not as intimately familiar with the OTG stuff in Texas.
Rural Texas loves their public schools and here are few private options available.
Friday night lights and all that.
Weiiiiiiird.
It's a good thing. More than half of the private school options include theology to varying degrees in their curriculum. This whole thing is about the modern Puritanism movement. The same people who pushed to end Roe.
They do not have enough people to support their policy in the current plurality so they are trying to get the state to manufacture some for them.
Not really, if you think about it. In a lot of rural counties public schools are the main social hub and the biggest ins ution around. For the students, schools are the career escalator and the ticket to big city life.
Public education is a per se public good. Rural Texans understand this.
Establishing and maintaining a system of robust, universal public education in Texas is also a cons utional requirement going back to the 19th century.
But that doesn't count for much for today's radical Republicans.
"school choice" is a cynical ploy to line the pockets of political donors and indoctrinate children
Texas GOP struggles to oust antisemitic and neo-Nazi adjacent elements.
Longview is the principal city in Gregg County, TX.
I'm gonna sound stupid saying I haven't done much research, but it's the truth. That said, public schools with teachers who consistently underperform (as is the Republican/right wing argument that potentially resonates with me personally) in terms of their students' testing scores -- how do we deal with these currently? As far as I can see from the limited dive I've taken shows very little regard for student performance when retaining teachers. If your school sucks, why should your taxes keep supporting it? There's arguments for things like school being a glorified daycare so poor parents can work 2 jobs or whatever, sure - I get that side of it. But wouldn't vouchers serve a similar purpose? I'm going to read more up on it in the very near future as my daughters are reaching ages where this stuff matters. At first glance, school choice sounds great to me, but I'm sure I'm missing a lot of the picture here, friend.
The part that you're missing is that the underperformance of public schools is overhyped, despite schools being chronically underfunded and teachers routinely disparaged. People generally like the schools their children go to but disparage schools in general, kind of like how they like their US reps but hate the US Congress. I know that doesn't answer the question of turning around underperforming schools. Investing more in them and trying to retain teachers couldn't hurt, though, particularly in Texas. We're way below the median.
Charter schools are measurably worse than public schools pretty much everywhere, and private schools are beyond the reach financially for most Texans, not numerous enough to accommodate all who might want to change, and not generally accountable to regulatory standards. Nor norms relating to reasonable accommodation for students with special needs.
Public schools have their problems, but cheap cynicism and sweeping generalizations don't help. Standardized testing seems to be more of a placeholder for accountability than accountability itself.
I'm not sure why schools need to spend so much more money on administration than cuŕriculum and teaching. It certainly doesn't seem to be an efficient use of resources. Sorting kids by age rather than ability and not being able to accelerate the curriculum for students who can assimilate it faster seem like two obvious problems to me, but I'm not an expert either, and none of us get to remake education from the ground up. It's a hard problem.
A lot of great insight - thank you.
The bolded really jumps out at me. Are private schools, by and large, worse on the same metrics as public schools, or is there simply a lack of information/requirements to submit such information? I've got some digging to do. If it's the former, then vouchers are silly out of hand. If it's the latter, it's su ious as .
Honestly, I don't know how private schools measure up in the aggregate. Looking at the summary of TEPSAC regs below, it would seem that reporting of educational outcomes is optional for private schools in Texas, as it's hardly mentioned at all. It doesn't appear that Texas requires private schools to do academic assessments of any kind.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/n...map/texas.htmlAccreditation, Registration, Licensing, and Approval
- Accreditation: optional
- Registration: no requirements
- Licensing: no requirements
- Approval: no requirements
Teacher Certification
- Teacher certification is not required for private schools.
- All teachers in accredited private schools must be "highly qualified," but each accrediting agency is allowed to define what that means as part of its approval process. The accrediting agency may choose to use the Texas state teacher certification or may develop its own standards, as long as they are higher than those for the Texas state teacher certification. The accrediting agency also has the option of recognizing out-of-state credentials. TEPSAC Policy Book.
Last edited by Winehole23; 11-26-2023 at 01:21 AM.
^ So I spent some time doing research, but really, you've already nailed it, WH. Not surprised.
There's absolutely no accountability for teachers or the curriculum, and on multiple studies done in other states with long standing voucher systems, such as in the Milwaukee area, students did worse on average.
It does seem like a very clear case of haves vs have-nots, as middle class kids who otherwise might not go to private school are subsidized at the expense of the possibly lower class kids (but it would depend on the district, obviously).
Also, most parents in the studies I skimmed seemed to do it for religious reasons and not necessarily educational reasons.
All that said, I'm still actually a fan of the debate occurring, though I'm more leaning against vouchers now. schools are schools, there should be some fire under their asses rather than simply accepting failure is endemic.
thanks btw for discussing policy, it's a relative rarity in this forum these days.
it did for the radical Republicans of the 19th century, and today's radical Republicans are still red-assed about it.
Today's party of Lincoln hates the OG party of Lincoln.
it's faith based, not evidence based.
that's a political choice. favoring evidence and academic assessment is too.
vive la difference
SB 4 will result in US citizens getting arrested and deported. It's a racial profiling law.
"Papers please"
We all know today's Republicans are southern democrats from the 1930s era. At least, we should all know that.
Why I'd probably say no on a referendum about vouchers. I don't mind religion - but I also don't want to subsidize it, which seems like the real intention here, the more I read and ponder.
Want a hand up to get your kid into a better school? yes.
Want a hand out so your kid can learn about the Bible? no.
John Oliver had a show highlighting that charter school quality is an issue.
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