Burnt Orange Report

Vouchers Ready to be Rolled Out

By Andrew Dobbs

Quorum Report has the skinny. Apparantly some GOPers have drawn up a voucher plan and are circulating it around the Capitol and are taking one of three courses with it. Either the proposals will be actually included in the original lay out of HB 1 on Saturday (with the bill reaching the floor on Wednesday), it might be added as a floor amendment after Wednesday or it might just be introduced as a stand alone bill.

With Grusendorf's complete contempt for public education, my gut tells me that it will be a part of the lay out and that will be much tougher to beat. Either of the other two comes up for an up or down vote by itself, which ensures defeat I think. Still, I would hope that a GOP voucher opponent would propose an amendment striking all the voucher sections of the bill, thereby defeating it. Also, such a bill is unlikely to pass the 2/3rd muster of the Senate. I don't imagine vouchers will come out of this, but of course I didn't think anyone had the heart to kick 100,000 poor kids off CHIP and I was wrong about that.

So what does the bill look like? From Quorum Report (sorry, subscription needed):

School districts that would be required to participate in the voucher program under the proposal being circulated are:

BEXAR COUNTY East Central ISD Edgewood ISD Harlandale ISD San Antonio ISD Somerset ISD South San Antonio ISD Southside ISD Southwest ISD

DALLAS COUNTY Dallas ISD Grand Prairie ISD Irving ISD Lancaster ISD Wilmer-Hutchins ISD

HARRIS COUNTY Aldine ISD Alief ISD Channelview ISD Galena Park ISD Goose Creek ISD Houston ISD North Forest ISD Pasadena ISD Sheldon ISD Spring Branch ISD

TARRANT COUNTY Castleberry ISD Everman ISD Fort Worth ISD Lake Worth ISD Masonic Home ISD

TRAVIS COUNTY Austin ISD Del Valle ISD Manor ISD

The school districts listed above are located in the five largest Texas counties and have a majority of students who are economically disadvantaged.

Under the proposal, the students who would be eligible to receive a voucher are: -- Economically disadvantaged students (presumably meaning they qualify for the free and reduced price lunch program) -- All students with disabilities -- Students "at risk" of dropping out of school. [See Sec. 29.081 of the Texas Education Code for a definition of students at risk of dropping out of school. Some of the types of at risk students are: students who fail to pass any one section of the TAKS test, students of limited English proficiency, students who were not promoted to the next grade, students in prekindergarten-3rd grade who do not perform satisfactorily on a readiness or assessment test, students who are pregnant, homeless students, students on parole or probation, students placed in an alternative education program.] -- Students who have dropped out of school -- Victims of violence from a fellow student.

Other aspects of the two-page "Education Freedom Pilot Program" proposal to use public money to fund private school tuition vouchers are:

Effective Date: Program begins in the 2004-2005 school year.

Amount of Voucher: The public school district where the student resides would count the student in its average daily attendance (ADA). Participating private schools would have an initial tuition cap of $6000 per student, with the actual amount paid by the state being the lesser of either the cap amount or the school's actual annual cost per student.

Program Enrollment: The annual enrollment is limited to 5% of each school district's total enrollment from the preceding year.

Admission Policy: Private schools must abide by all federal and state nondiscrimination laws. If there are more student applicants than available seats, the school must use a lottery method for selecting students to be enrolled.

Accountability: Participating private schools must administer either the TAKS test or a nationally normed test.

Program Rules and Administration: Rules will be developed by the Governor's Office and administered and enforced by the Texas Education Agency.

So yeah, pretty scary stuff. First off, if kids in the private schools really do get a better education, then thousands of needy kids will get screwed over because they lost a lottery. Also, this plan costs taxpayers extra money to pay for private schools that have little to no impetus to accept these kids. Really, it will only promote mediocre private schools. The best private schools (*cough* St. Marks *cough*) don't want to take a kid on for only $6,000- they charge more than twice that now. The worst probably wouldn't qualify under the accountability standards so we really only get middle of the road private schools accepting kids, which begs the question, why not just spend this extra money in the schools we already have? The answer is that these people have a long range vision of essentially eliminating government and having private education, private services for everything and a country that is completely run by the wealthy elite. It has nothing to do with education, it has everything to do with ideology.

We ought to be concerned, we ought to be outraged. Be sure to get on the phone with your state reps and state senators and let them know what you think about this plan.