Education Conversation Continued

I wrote on education on Monday, and there was a thought-provoking comment I’d like to respond to.

lease April 3, 2017 at 6:09 PM

Hey! I've got a couple genuine questions for you, knowing that you've spent much of your life focused on education. As long as parents have the ability to homeschool their children, how does public education usurp power from the people? Is the main issue with spending tax dollars on education or are there other ways you feel power is being taken? And 2.) while it's admirable that the general population was relatively well educated in the early 1800s, what of the slave population during the same time period? What of the many immigrants and non-English speakers who have come since? And what of the increasing number of households who need two incomes to provide for their families, and even then still can't get by? These are issues that have increased dramatically, and they are issues public education *attempts* to address. Totally imperfectly to be sure. But I can't see how a free market or philanthropy alone would do any better. As of 2011, one in five kids live in poverty--what is the incentive to supervise/educate/feed these kids, relying on philanthropy alone? It would be wonderful if parents were able to take full responsibility, but that is not the reality for most households. Help me to see what should be done.

These are good questions, and worth taking some time to respond to, in the ongoing conversation about education.

photo source

To begin, I agree with Lease that the problem looks overwhelming. And I agree that, with things as they are now, suddenly switching to a system of “pay for your own kids’ education” plus “we’ll use philanthropy to pay for the education of the poor kids” is an idea that brings on a panic attack. I’m not advocating for anything sudden, or anything that will leave a generation of kids without what they need.

I do believe in educating every child, including those whose families can’t provide. But I think right now there is a generation not getting what they need—because of the public schools.

Texas is big enough to generalize from. So let’s use some numbers from a piece I wrote in January:

[T]here are about 5.2 million K-12 students in Texas. That means 10% of kids in the US are going to school in Texas.

More fun facts: there are 130,000 students on wait lists for charter schools—which are proliferating in Texas, but can’t meet the need. Meanwhile there are 100,000 empty seats in private schools….

Also, there are 900,000 (17% of that 5.2 million) attending 1,032 failing schools in Texas. That means the school didn’t meet the minimal yearly progress (a pretty low bar) for three years in a row.

If you’re worried about 1 in 5 students being below the poverty line, a bigger worry ought to be that nearly 1 in 5 students is stuck in a school that does not educate them, but they are trapped there by the public school system with no way out—with the exception of a lottery for the lucky few who might get into a charter school.

Failing schools are most likely to be located where the poorest students live: inner cities and rural areas.

And remember, to be just above failing is a very low bar. That means huge numbers of children are trapped in public schools that do not offer them an adequate education—let alone an education tailored to help that child reach his/her potential.

Every time the school choice movement begins to get the word out, for even tiny, incremental changes, there is a huge outcry claiming this takes money away from the kids. This is during a period during which real money per student has increased manifold with no measurable increase in education outcomes.

This is, again, from my January piece, about my highly rated school district that failed my children:

·         Student enrollment has grown 30%, with a population explosion.

·         Teacher ranks have grown 50%, which is well above that population growth.

·         Non-teaching staff has grown 102%.

If you really care about educating children, why would you spend so much education money on something other than educating children?

Let me repeat the Spherical Model axiom:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

To apply that to education, if the stated goal is to provide an education for every child, the unintended consequence of government institutionalized education is less education, especially for poor children.

This is assuming that a quality education leading to an educated next generation is actually the goal; I suspect that the real, unstated goal of government institutionalized education is control of the populace and the inculcation of radical post-modernist ideas. I wrote about John Dewey, a founding father of modern public education here.

So, in answer to Lease’s first question, there is a problem with taking my tax dollars for public education while failing to provide my children with the education they need. And there’s also a problem with the government’s attempts to control the minds of children. There are attacks by CPS, as though homeschooling your own children is equivalent to neglecting them. There are attempts to control what is taught, attempts to “approve” of curriculum, attempts to enforce dissemination of certain messages and exclusion of other messages.

In Texas we have a lot of homeschool freedom—but we have that because of constant vigilance to prevent the (relatively conservative) legislature from encroaching on parental rights to see to the care and upbringing of their own children.

Daughter Social Sphere, citizen lobbying at the
state capitol, one of our homeschool adventures

I do believe the only antidote must consist of free market plus philanthropy. But Lease asks, with the overwhelming numbers of children whose families can’t afford to educate them, how can free market and philanthropy possibly fill that need?

As things are now, maybe they can’t. But I’m not in favor of keeping things as they are. The market for educational options needs to grow. We need more choices, better quality, and lower prices—which are the usual and expected results of innovation in the free market.

And we also need some family changes. In order for a society to support the exceptions to families providing for themselves, there needs to be a critical mass of families with married mother and father taking care of their own children. I’m guessing a critical mass is somewhere north of 75%. If nearly all children are born to married parents, and no more than 25% are then raised by single parents, poverty is greatly reduced. We know the way to avoid poverty in America:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma.

That’s a pretty low bar. But we’re not meeting it. Only a few of us are teaching it.

Economic and social spheres interrelate. If we don’t value and preserve marriage and family, then we get the calamities we see in inner cities today. If we don’t have schools—and families—getting this message through, we’re stuck in a downward spiral, and I have no answer other than changing direction.

Meanwhile, here are some direction-changing ideas worth acting on:

Idea 1: Get rid of the US Department of Education—and have the money that has been sent there be given back to the states for use on education. My concern here is that, simply getting rid of the Department of Education wouldn’t be combined with a cut in US taxes (or spending), and the money counted on now for education would simply disappear into the abyss of national debt. That must not happen.

Idea 2: Have all education money attach to the child. If the goal is to educate every child, then it is obvious that is not equivalent to funding public schools. No family should be forced to pay taxes for public schools and then also pay for their child’s education when the public schools do not provide for their needs. That’s true for poor families as well as the families able to make the huge sacrifices to educate their children no matter the odds.

Idea 3: Allow the parents to use the money attached to their child’s education as they see fit: for public school, for private school (including parochial), for private tutoring, for private lessons, for alternative therapies (equine therapy, for example), for online courses, for homeschool curriculum, or any combination thereof.

Step 4: Encourage businesses, through tax credits, to offer scholarships to supplement or replace the per child allotment for certain students based on need and/or merit. This is being put forward by both my state representative and my state senator in the current Texas legislative session.

Step 5: Encourage any and every form of educational choice: charter schools, ESAs, use of public school buildings for private education business uses, and ideas we haven’t thought of yet.

Everywhere it has been tried, allowing parents to control the money for their child’s education costs less than the per child cost of public education, with better outcomes. Allowing that money to stay with the child—for future years and even for higher education—encourages wise use of the money for the particular child. And simultaneously it encourages market answers to educational needs.

Already, in large part because of the growth of homeschooling, we’re seeing online educational resources proliferate. Many of these are free or low cost.

For example, I wanted to use a particular math program for homeschooling my daughter that my boys had used in a gifted school in another state. I contacted my boys’ teachers and asked what the program was. I happened to ask why, if the program was so good, it wasn’t used for all students, but only the gifted classes. The answer was that it was too expensive. I bought the teacher’s edition, everything I needed, grades 3-6, for around $350. It was one of our bigger curriculum purchases. It was intended for an entire classroom; I used it for one child. There were a few consumable pages, but otherwise you’re looking at under $100 per year per classroom. I can’t figure out why a typical classroom, spending $1100 per year per child, couldn’t afford that. By the way, the program is now available online for free.

At some point we can look at the internet as a higher education alternative to astronomically expensive college tuition. MIT has free courses online. Many universities have online courses at lower per credit hour costs than on-campus tuition. YouTube is mostly free. There’s a lot out there. What we need is a way to free ourselves from the cost of entry into society that an ever-less-valuable university degree program provides.

Meanwhile, in some third-world countries, very poor people are successfully building private schools to get the education the government schools are failing to provide. We’re told it can’t be done, but it’s happening.

I don’t know that I’ve fully answered all of Lease’s questions. I didn’t touch on the history of slaves not being educated (wish it hadn’t happened, and that no one had been deprived of their life, liberty, and property). Or immigrants (my grandfather immigrated in 1906, at age 16, speaking no English, and went on to be successful in various businesses—no government intervention needed).

The biggest hurdle is how do we get to the ideal I see from where we are. I don’t know. But I believe that recognizing that education is a parental right, not a government responsibility, is a first step.

We ought to encourage parental control of education wherever possible, allowing the market to meet growing demand for alternatives.

And we need stronger families, which will lead to less poverty and less societal need beyond what parents must provide for their own children.

Do I foresee the ideal happening? Sometimes I’m hopeful; sometimes I’m discouraged. All I can really do is what is in my power: see to the education of myself and my children, and share good ideas in hopes others will make good choices.

I know this is already long, but if you want fuller answers and more details, follow the links in the copy.

Thanks, Lease, for engaging in the conversation. I welcome respectful feedback like yours.

Disagreements Among Friends

The Texas legislature is underway. That happens late January through early June every odd-numbered year. So there an intense couple of months during which everybody is trying to get attention for their issues. The only required legislation is the budget (balanced budget is required). Everything else is extra—sometimes good, sometimes bad.

This past Saturday our District 7 State Senator Paul Bettencourt held a luncheon with precinct chairs and other interested conservatives, to talk about several issues and encourage support. Over 100 people attended.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt speaking to the crowd on Saturday

Then, Monday night was the quarterly Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee Meeting, which is made up of precinct chairs and other officials. When we do new business at these meetings, that can include resolutions, which basically are statements we vote on. They are not law, and are nonbinding, but can have some clout with the legislature since we’re a big conservative body. I didn’t get the official count, but somewhere around 200 people had a vote, while an additional 50 or so looked on.

At the Saturday meeting Paul Bettencourt talked about lowering property tax increases. The idea is to cap annual increases at 4% (down from 8%). This is in response to the average home’s taxable value being increased 36.4% between 2013 and 2016, even as the oil industry has been in a downturn.

This is SB 2 in Texas. The low number indicates high priority interest among Senate bills. It is now in the Finance Committee, waiting for consideration. Interested citizens can contact their state senator as well as members of the finance committee to express their opinions.

Paul Simpson chairs the HCRP Executive
Committee Meeting on Monday

An issue that came up at both meetings is school choice. There’s a bill containing two good ideas: Education Savings Accounts and Tax Credit Scholarships [SB 3, which is a priority for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick]. Another bill suggests ESAs for special education students only, which is how it was handled in Arizona [HB 1335]; I would prefer this be open to any student. And there are companion bills for Tax Credit Scholarships [HB 1184 authored by Dwayne Bohac, my representative, and SB 542 authored by Senator Bettencourt].

I’ve been writing about ESAs since last spring when I learned about the idea. The tax credit scholarship idea is new to me, but it fits what I’ve had it in my mind for a long time. Businesses can receive a tax credit for donating to a scholarship fund. Students in either public or private schools can access an allotted amount for these scholarships. No money comes out of the state’s education budget. It is a free-market solution. I envision a day when we are post-public-school-monopoly, and this is the type of solutions that allows us to see that every child still gets an education.

HB 1184 came up as a resolution at the HCRP meeting, and there was a lot of disagreement. The procedure for debate is: the resolution is presented, the presenter gets 1 minute in support, then a person in opposition gets 1 minute, going back and forth until either no one else wants to speak in favor or opposition, or there have been 3 speakers for each side.

Unless you’re in the world of alternative education, you might think just the way you’ve been trained to: public school is the way we care about the education of the next generation, and care about the teachers who teach them. Anything outside that paradigm faces resistance. But among conservatives as a whole, we generally prefer free market to government solutions. And we prefer individual choice and accountability to government mandate. So the fact that there is disagreement shows there is some education of conservative activists that needs to happen if we’re going to get school choice ideas mainstreamed.

One of the arguments was that we should be against anything that takes money away from public schools—but this legislation takes zero dollars from that budget.

Another argument came from a homeschool mom I respect. She resists anything that could be skewed in any way to allow the state to regulate homeschooling. I am with her on the concern—but not about this opportunity. Tim Lambert of Texas Home School Coalition is reading every word of legislation to make sure we can support it, and feel assured it can’t do damage to homeschool freedom.

In addition, there’s a proposed constitutional amendment [HJR 62] to protect private and home schools from state and local regulation. This is already the law in Texas, but there’s so much public school mindset that well-meaning people say things like, “Well, they should have accountability” and “Someone should be making sure they’re actually teaching, for the sake of the children.” If you know better, you know that is always interpreted as government interfering the parents’ decision about the care and upbringing of their children, overruling the parent, and using governmental power to coerce certain things to be taught, regardless of the parents’ better wisdom about their own child.

When it came to the vote on this resolution, it was close. The chairman called it in favor of the proponents, but a standing vote was called for. That also looked somewhat close, but the chairman again called it in favor. A roll call vote was requested, but the body refused.

After this kind of disagreement, even among those you’re sitting next to, everybody just moves on. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

Another issue of disagreement Monday night was a resolution to eliminate multilingual ballots. I wasn’t in favor of the resolution, although I understand where this is coming from. I am in favor of making English the official language of the United States, and I’m in favor of making it the official language of the state I live in—and any other state where the people choose that. We have official state trees, birds, and flowers. Of course we should have an official language. If you don’t speak that language, you’re at a disadvantage in our society.

But that doesn’t mean we outlaw every other language, or act like we’re too good to tolerate anyone who doesn’t speak our language. We’re a country of immigrants. My grandfather arrived here in 1906, unable to speak English. Of course, he learned the language, and became a citizen.

Learning the language is a requirement for citizenship. That is why there’s some resentment about a law that forces us to spend money to provide ballots in multiple languages. There seems to be an assumption, as well, that if a person can’t speak English, then how can they legally be a voting citizen?

They have a legitimate question. But, if someone is a citizen and not in prison, they have a right to vote.

Learning a language is a challenging thing. I’ve learned two foreign languages. I’ve gotten good in at least one of those to study the materials for citizenship in that language (hypothetical, since you study in English here). I have opportunities to speak in these languages usually a couple of times a week. But I’m not fluent enough to read and fully understand the wording such as we see in ballot propositions—which are sometimes oddly worded and cause confusion.

As a good citizen, I study the issues before going to the polls. Arguably, a person who speaks English only marginally could study ahead of time, and prepare. Look up words. Maybe even read a translation ahead of time. But you have to admit that a great many English-speaking Americans don’t do that level of preparation before going to the polls. We let them vote anyway.

So, while I don’t think the law should require us to provide ballots in multiple languages, it is a courtesy I think is good to do. I qualified this past election to be a bilingual election clerk. My polling place was expected to have bilingual clerks for Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese; a precinct with 50+ surnames related to those ethnicities is expected to offer these services if we can. Those who need language help can also bring in their own helper, who is sworn in with an oath not to influence the voter. We usually get 2-3 Spanish speakers and maybe one of each of the others on a busy election day. Those who speak other languages must provide their own helper, and they won’t get the ballot in their language. They know that ahead of time. Since they’re in an English-speaking nation, this shouldn’t surprise them.

But since we use e-Slate machines, rather than paper ballots, there’s very little printing costs—only the estimated amount for those who request a paper ballot. So, as a courtesy, it doesn’t seem too big a burden to provide a ballot in these three common languages.

There was debate on both sides at the meeting. An argument against is that it makes us look bigoted to have this resolution go through, where media will its spin without allowing the full context of the arguments. Proponents won handily.

And then we went on to the next issue.

I’m surprised at how much disagreement there is, sometimes passionate, all in one party where conservatism is the rule. But the example of civil discourse, and moving on while remaining friendly with your differing neighbors, is something I’m glad to experience.