Post by Moses on Mar 26, 2005 2:37:08 GMT -5
When Public Schools Go to Profiteers, all of Texas Loses
When the Legislature considered an education bill recently, Texans expected their elected officials to make our schoolchildren, their families and their teachers our top priority. Unfortunately, the plan that narrowly passed the Texas House turned a deaf ear to the best advice Texans had to offer. Instead, House leaders forced passage of a House Bill 2 plan that was lifted, almost verbatim, from a report issued by the Koret Task Force, a product of a right-wing California think tank.
In my community, a proposal made by Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abe Saavedra to hand over control of three Houston high schools — Yates, Kashmere and Sam Houston — to private management companies prompted an intensely negative response from parents and community leaders. Yates High School is a historic anchor of the Third Ward community. It belongs to us, not profiteers. Today, we can make our case before our local school board, but under the House Bill 2 plan, local parents would have no voice.
House Bill 2 includes a provision that could turn over 400 Texas public school campuses to private school management companies and provide them a potential $2 billion in profit. The bill would require the Texas education commissioner to turn over as many as 5 percent to 10 percent of all Texas school campuses, without approval from local school districts.
Who would get the money?
John E. Chubb, chief education officer and one of the founders of Edison Schools Inc., was a member of the Koret Task Force. At least 20 school districts in Texas and across the country have severed contracts with Edison because the company's schools performed so poorly. Edison has hidden costs in contracts with school districts and cut teaching and staff jobs as enrollment and school costs increased. Investigations found that Edison exaggerated achievement results in schools in Dallas, Minneapolis and Dade County, Fla.
Despite Edison's poor record, some of our state leaders ignored the voice of Texas educators and turned to an Edison official to write a blueprint for Texas education reform. We don't know who paid for the Koret study, but the profiteers certainly got their money's worth in House Bill 2.
Instead of calling students on struggling campuses low-performing, we should make them our highest priority. But the misguided House Bill 2 plan sets these schools up for failure by denying them resources for critical programs, and then turns them over to for-profit education management teams. Instead of renting out our neighborhood schools to profiteers, we should target funds for local intervention teams of professionally trained educators to help improve struggling schools.
A study performed for the Select Committee on Public Education by researchers from the governor's alma mater, Texas A&M University, determined that Texas schools need to invest more resources in our children's classrooms to help young Texans succeed.
In one opinion poll after another, a sizeable majority of Texans agree that our schools need more resources. The Texas PTA, teachers, administrators and school board members have asked us to invest more in our public schools. Yet for some reason, all these Texans were ignored by a House plan that shortchanges our school children.
Perhaps the governor and other Republican leaders of the House and Senate education committees didn't want to hear that message, so they asked an out-of-state think tank to make recommendations for our schools.
The result was House Bill 2, and it is not a real education plan. It does not even cover the cost of inflation and enrollment growth in our schools. It does nothing to restore more than $3 billion in state funds that were cut in 2003 from successful programs designed to help students in the most challenging academic settings master the skills they need to succeed.
House Democrats proposed a learn and live plan that would make a real investment in public schools and provide larger property tax cuts for homeowners. Our plan restored funds for textbooks and technology; reading, science and math initiatives; mentoring and after-school efforts; and programs designed to help those with the greatest needs — and it gave teachers a real pay raise. We sought bipartisan support for our plan, because the effort to improve our schools should rise above partisanpolitics.
Unfortunately, House Bill 2 reflects the advice given by a think tank more than the advice given by the vast majority of Texans. Surely, we can do better. Our schools should be run for our children, not for politics, and not for profit.
Coleman, a Houston Democrat, has provided a link to a summary of HB 2 at www.garnetcoleman.com
— State Rep. Garnet Coleman
Houston Chronicle
2005-03-25
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3101496
When the Legislature considered an education bill recently, Texans expected their elected officials to make our schoolchildren, their families and their teachers our top priority. Unfortunately, the plan that narrowly passed the Texas House turned a deaf ear to the best advice Texans had to offer. Instead, House leaders forced passage of a House Bill 2 plan that was lifted, almost verbatim, from a report issued by the Koret Task Force, a product of a right-wing California think tank.
In my community, a proposal made by Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abe Saavedra to hand over control of three Houston high schools — Yates, Kashmere and Sam Houston — to private management companies prompted an intensely negative response from parents and community leaders. Yates High School is a historic anchor of the Third Ward community. It belongs to us, not profiteers. Today, we can make our case before our local school board, but under the House Bill 2 plan, local parents would have no voice.
House Bill 2 includes a provision that could turn over 400 Texas public school campuses to private school management companies and provide them a potential $2 billion in profit. The bill would require the Texas education commissioner to turn over as many as 5 percent to 10 percent of all Texas school campuses, without approval from local school districts.
Who would get the money?
John E. Chubb, chief education officer and one of the founders of Edison Schools Inc., was a member of the Koret Task Force. At least 20 school districts in Texas and across the country have severed contracts with Edison because the company's schools performed so poorly. Edison has hidden costs in contracts with school districts and cut teaching and staff jobs as enrollment and school costs increased. Investigations found that Edison exaggerated achievement results in schools in Dallas, Minneapolis and Dade County, Fla.
Despite Edison's poor record, some of our state leaders ignored the voice of Texas educators and turned to an Edison official to write a blueprint for Texas education reform. We don't know who paid for the Koret study, but the profiteers certainly got their money's worth in House Bill 2.
Instead of calling students on struggling campuses low-performing, we should make them our highest priority. But the misguided House Bill 2 plan sets these schools up for failure by denying them resources for critical programs, and then turns them over to for-profit education management teams. Instead of renting out our neighborhood schools to profiteers, we should target funds for local intervention teams of professionally trained educators to help improve struggling schools.
A study performed for the Select Committee on Public Education by researchers from the governor's alma mater, Texas A&M University, determined that Texas schools need to invest more resources in our children's classrooms to help young Texans succeed.
In one opinion poll after another, a sizeable majority of Texans agree that our schools need more resources. The Texas PTA, teachers, administrators and school board members have asked us to invest more in our public schools. Yet for some reason, all these Texans were ignored by a House plan that shortchanges our school children.
Perhaps the governor and other Republican leaders of the House and Senate education committees didn't want to hear that message, so they asked an out-of-state think tank to make recommendations for our schools.
The result was House Bill 2, and it is not a real education plan. It does not even cover the cost of inflation and enrollment growth in our schools. It does nothing to restore more than $3 billion in state funds that were cut in 2003 from successful programs designed to help students in the most challenging academic settings master the skills they need to succeed.
House Democrats proposed a learn and live plan that would make a real investment in public schools and provide larger property tax cuts for homeowners. Our plan restored funds for textbooks and technology; reading, science and math initiatives; mentoring and after-school efforts; and programs designed to help those with the greatest needs — and it gave teachers a real pay raise. We sought bipartisan support for our plan, because the effort to improve our schools should rise above partisanpolitics.
Unfortunately, House Bill 2 reflects the advice given by a think tank more than the advice given by the vast majority of Texans. Surely, we can do better. Our schools should be run for our children, not for politics, and not for profit.
Coleman, a Houston Democrat, has provided a link to a summary of HB 2 at www.garnetcoleman.com
— State Rep. Garnet Coleman
Houston Chronicle
2005-03-25
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3101496