The Effort To Destroy Public Schools In Texas…

 …is at least as old as this century:

The authority over whether to allow charters to expand used to belong to the 15-member elected State Board of Education. But the Legislature transferred that power to the state’s education commissioner in 2001. More recently, it repealed a provision in state law that appeared to conflict with that earlier change. 

The board has in recent years unsuccessfully asked the Legislature to restore its authority over charter growth. 

 “I think a lot of my colleagues would be more open to approving charters initially, or not vetoing them, if they knew they were going to have additional input down the road on expansions. Because right now, once we approve them, we just go away in the process,” Keven Ellis, the Republican chair of the state education board, said in an interview. “If we had more authority later on, I think it would give us a little more comfort.” 

Instead of increasing the board’s authority, the Legislature has over the years given more power to the education commissioner.

Now let me put that in context.

The Texas Education Agency has a 15 member elected board. There is also a Commissioner, appointed by the Governor. The Commissioner has the power to grant waivers to charter schools that seek to expand, but haven’t met the rigorous standards for academic achievement expected if charter schools. (They have less oversight than public schools, but are supposed to meet higher academic standards in student performance.) The TEA Board, as you just read, has no authority over how the Commissioner exercises his waiver power.

And he has been exercising it with abandon. The Commissioner recently took over Houston ISD, the largest in the state, because one school out of 250 in the district had “failed” for two years in a row. HISD sued to block the takeover, and two years later, when the Texas Supreme Court sided with TEA. the school in question had improved dramatically. No matter; the Commissioner took over anyway, firing the Superintendent who had turned the district around, putting in place a friend with no education experience whatsoever (“we don’ need no steenken’ badges!”), and replacing the elected school board with one appointed by the new, appointed superintendent. (School boards are supposed to hire superintendents, not the other way around.) On some campuses the Superintendent has shut down the libraries and turned them into detention centers. Things are going so well the Administration forgot to tell the schools, parents, and students that last Monday, a federal holiday, was no longer a district holiday. Seems the new Board voted to cancel that holiday as one of their first acts (because the Superintendent is running the board). But the administration forgot to announce the change; until the day before, which was a Sunday.

I’m still wondering how many faculty, staff, or students showed up that day.

The Commissioner can fight like hell to make an example of Houston ISD, but has regularly and quietly waived failures in charter schools to let them take in more students on more campuses. Because: sure, why not?

The Legislature is back in Austin for 40 days to fight about vouchers again; and maybe actually funding public schools. Given the bad blood between the House and the Senate and Abbott, nobody expects anything but a waste of time. And further damage to Texas schools just by inaction.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the Legislature has a constitutional obligation to provide an “efficient” public school system, and that the term “efficient” covers school funding. But all the schools being impoverished is at least all the schools being equitably funded, so the fix is in.