Snake Oil

An emotional and incredibly strange war waged over the last two years—in community halls and small-town diners, conference calls and YouTubes, Fox News broadcasts and legislative hearings—concluded this morning as Sen. Dan Patrick announced that “the era of CSCOPE lesson plans has come to an end.”

And so begins the time for Tea Party and anti-CSCOPE activists to take a victory lap, or, if you’re one of the thousands of teachers that used CSCOPE’s lessons in your classroom, the time to start printing off and photocopying those handouts before they disappear forever.

“The big lesson here is that if you can generate a witch hunt that includes enough incendiary and distorted claims, then there are politicians at the Capitol who are ready to throw their supposed commitment to local control out the window,” said Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller in a statement this morning.

The curriculum management program, run cooperatively by the state’s 20 regional Education Service Centers, will still be available for the hundreds of school districts that use it to help teachers cover all the state standards, or TEKS. But the handouts and sample lessons that prompted charges of Marxist, progressive, liberal, socialist, globalist, environmentalist, anti-American, anti-Christian, Muslim, Mexican indoctrination will be gone by August 31.

It all ended with a 72-hour blitz of meetings at the Capitol and a letter late last night, “signed by all 20 members of the CSCOPE board,” Patrick said. CSCOPE administrators had turned over thousands of financial documents to Patrick’s office last week.

“It couldn’t be a more exciting day for us on the education committee,” said state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels). “We identified something that was shrouded in secrecy, that affected education for our children, made it difficult for parents to find out what was being taught to our children, and we now have that issue resolved.”

Kyle Wargo, executive director of Amarillo’s Region 17 service center and a CSCOPE board member, got the privilege of speaking for the defeated. ”I’m certainly very excited,” he said, which is understandable given what a punching bag regional service centers have become over the last six months.

“It’s the right thing to do. It’s in the best interests of the school districts, it’s in the best interest of the children.” Wargo said. Writing lessons for schools across Teas just isn’t practical, considering how much diversity of thought there is across a state Texas’ size. “We’ve learned one thing,” he said. “Lesson plans have a lot of subjectivity to them.”

“This is a great example of what happens when moms and dads across the state of Texas come together and get involved in their children’s education,” said Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands). “Everything that happened has happened here as a result of all their hard work, tireless efforts, blogging, Facebook messages, Twitter messages, email, press conferences, traveling tireless hours across the state to raise awareness about this program.”

Toth will pull his CSCOPE accountability bill in response to today’s news, and Patrick said the State Board of Education would also shelve its review of CSCOPE history lessons.

Patrick said he hoped big school districts would step in to help small districts replace the lesson plans they’d been getting from CSCOPE before—a practical solution, but also the sort of regional partnership that created CSCOPE in the first place. Failing that, he said, of course there’s always the private sector: “There are many vendors that, I’m sure, will try to fill this vacuum starting next year.”

We featured Rep. Matt Krause’s House Bill 360 back in February as a “bad bill,” because it would let student groups discriminate among its membership, kicking out students who don’t fall in line with the principles the group was founded on. It’s especially easy to imagine groups kicking out gay members in the name of their founding principles.

Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director for the ACLU of Texas, put it simply: “It’s not legitimate to use public funds for discriminatory conduct.”

But the Fort Worth Republican said it’s a free speech guarantee, a protection against “subversive” members hoping to hijack a group. He offered what seemed like a hilarious off-hand example at the time: the Red Hat Society, a ladies’ social organization promoting fun, friendship, freedom, fulfillment and fitness. And wearing red hats, probably. “You would exclude the blue hats,” Krause explained.

His bill died at last week’s deadline, but he brought it back today as an amendment to the Higher Education Coordinating Board’s sunset bill. With it, he also resuscitated his old analogy.

“Let’s say there’s a red hat club,” Krause suggested on the House floor today. “Anybody who wants to come in and subvert that, ‘I don’t like red hats’,” well, he suggested they just start their own club.

“Are we opening this up to the Ku Klux Klan?” Krause asked rhetorically. “A school is not going to allow the Ku Klux Klan,” he said answering his own question.

“It doesn’t apply to race, it doesn’t apply to gender, it doesn’t apply to sexual orientation. It only applies to those which would seek to purposefully come in and subvert and undermine the purpose for which the club was in the first place.”

Dallas Democrat Eric Johnson tweeted that it was a “mean-spirited amendment,” and the Texas Freedom Network and LGBT groups were working all day to rally opposition to Krause’s amendment, which had been pre-filed.

Krause’s original bill is exactly the sort of ultra-contentious legislation that’s been kept off the House floor so far this session. Lawmakers have even been pulling down many amendments that might spark bitter partisan battles.

But in a lengthy debate over the amendment, nobody challenged Krause on its implications for gay students, or students of a particular race who could be excluded from a club. Opponents mostly played along with his vague “red hat” scenario—Rep. Senfronia Thompson did suggest replacing it with “The Islamic Club”—and worried it was simply impractical.

Krause batted away suggestions that his plan would run afoul of a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that discrimination in student groups is unconstitutional. He sidestepped the suggestion that his bill would take away local control, or that kicking students out of clubs would create needless paperwork for universities.

Rep. Marisa Marquez (D-El Paso) did press him about what his bill would mean in the long term. ”Things change. They evolve,” she said. “The mission changes, sometimes the demographics change. What you’re saying here is that you have to keep these parameters in place for these clubs.”

“Let’s go back to the red hat club,” Krause suggested. “Let’s say everybody want to wear a red hat so it’s a big club. All of a sudden everybody wants to wear a yellow hat. Eventually it’ll atrophy, it’ll get smaller and it’ll be nonexistent.”

Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) suggested an alternate possibility: “I think the red hats ought to accept the blue hats, and the blue hat doesn’t look blue to me cause it’s now purple.”

The majority of House members disagreed, passing Krause’s amendment 78-67. The bill passed minutes later. Whether Krause’s plan sticks is up to a few House and Senate members who’ll take on the bill in conference committee next.

With more money to play with this session, lawmakers in both chambers have already approved sending more dollars to public schools and women’s health providers. On Tuesday, House members tried to make sure businesses get theirs too.

House Bill 500, which passed this evening, would effectively hand back $667 million to Texas businesses with a slew of changes to the franchise tax—$270 million of which came from amendments tacked on during hours of debate on the floor. The plan is in keeping with Gov. Rick Perry’s call for business tax “relief,” though the Texas Tribune notes the bill will be a tough sell in the Senate.

The much-maligned business tax has never raised as much as it was intended to, saddling lawmakers with an $8 billion deficit at the start of each session since the tax was reworked in 2006. House members dug that hole a little deeper today.

Rather than rework the tax law in a streamlined fashion, House Ways and Means Chairman Harvey Hilderbran (R-Kerrville) proposed a series of tweaks aimed at particular businesses. Lawmakers—mostly Republicans, some Democrats as well—dropped in amendments adding $20 million at a time, one after another. Most defended their proposals as relief for small business owners. Rep. Angie Chen Button (R-Garland) threw in a $20 million break for corporations with federal contracts, mentioning defense contractor Raytheon as a particular inspiration.

Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) brought an abacus to the back microphone to remind lawmakers he was watching what their amendments cost. He kept the heat on Hilderbran all afternoon. Hilderbran and Turner talked in circles about just who benefits from lowering the tax on businesses, building to a fiery exchange.

Hilderbran: “The small businesses, the mom-and-pop employers, get a tax break in this bill, and their employees will be better off.”

Turner: “Is there a tax break in HB 500 for mom and dad who do not own a business?”

Hilderbran: “If they work for those businesses they benefit from this too, because those businesses thrive, they’re more competitive and they’re gonna grow and then they’re gonna be in a position to elevate wages and hire more people.”

Turner: “Let me telll you my concern here with this bill and some of the others, we talk about—”

At the sound of the speaker’s gavel, signifying his time was up, Turner dropped his head, gathered his papers and stepped aside. Hilderbran sighed, “Daggum, Sylvester.”

On Twitter through it all, the Center for Public Policy Priorities’ tax and budget experts Dick Lavine and Eva DeLuna Castro groused about the ham-handed show of policymaking like they were watching from the Muppet Show balcony. Castro noted the debate showed the “difficulty of cutting business taxes when they’re so low to begin with.” Lavine poked at lawmakers claiming their tax exemptions would only cost a few million, naming school programs the state could fully fund with the difference.

Facing criticism that their cuts would cost the state too much in the next two years, some lawmakers just bumped their cuts back a few years. Lavine called one amendment, from Houston Republican Jim Murphy, a “time bomb” for the 2016-17 budget.

Dallas Democrat Yvonne Davis struck a grave note about the tax reform effort, recalling what a mess the margins tax was when lawmakers created it seven years ago.

“It had an $8 billion hole in it when we passed it. It never performed the way they thought it was going to perform, and what we’re doing today is not fixing that problem,” Davis said. “This has become just a pork barrel add-on attempt to get money for your special interests and special projects.”

At one point during this year’s SXSWedu—a slick Austin conference heavy on marketing for education technology—an audience member stood and asked a panel of Texas lawmakers the question most in the room were probably wondering: how do you get the state of Texas to buy your software?

State Rep. Dan Branch suggested an egalitarian process at work behind the scenes: build a good product and put in your time convincing lawmakers. “If you walk the halls and talk to key members of committees, I think you can get your message out pretty well,” Branch said. For example, he said, one particular outfit called Reasoning Mind has built a reputation at the Capitol as “a very strong math software program.”

The creators of the Reasoning Mind software have certainly found success in Texas, but Dan Branch might be surprised to learn how they attained it.

The state contracts with all sorts of companies for educational software; most decisions are made by the Texas Education Agency. Reasoning Mind, a math program, is the only software program lawmakers wrote into the budget by name last session.

In its most recent funding request, TEA suggested cutting Reasoning Mind—they’d already contracted with another online math program—but lawmakers weren’t keen on ditching it. They gave the program its own budget rider and kept its funding steady, at $2.25 million in public funds a year.

It’s even more impressive that Reasoning Mind did so well at the Capitol without the services of a registered lobbyist. But Reasoning Mind has something even better going for it: close friends in the highest ranks of big oil.

Reasoning Mind’s board is chaired by Ernest H. Cockrell, the longtime head of the Cockrell Oil Corp. Its vice chair is Forrest Hoglund, a former Enron CEO and a force in the Dallas philanthropy world. As of 2011, the program’s biggest backer was the ExxonMobil Foundation, which, according to EducationWeek, had donated $5 million to Reasoning Mind. In April, the world’s largest corporation leaned on its support for Reasoning Mind to rebut an ad by an anti-oil group suggesting that “Exxon hates your children.”

Russian couple Alex and Julia Khachatryan founded Reasoning Mind in 2000 as a computer-based math education program for their son, whose school lessons they deemed too basic. Geared toward students in grades 2 through 6, Reasoning Mind promises to build math skills and to encourage critical thinking and independent learning, all with a game-like interface for kids.

Those friends in the oil industry are no accident. Before starting Reasoning Mind, the Khachatryans ran a firm called RPC overseas—short for Russian Petroleum Consultants—based in Moscow and Houston, with clients including Halliburton, Koch Industries and Cockrell Oil. According to its tax filings, Reasoning Mind spent $1.6 million on “computer programming and testing of end product” in Moscow, and paid another $20,000 direct to RPC Overseas for office space. As president and CEO, Alex Khachatryan made $62,292 in 2011, down from $115,000 the year before.

The program is growing. Schools in a few states use Reasoning Mind today, but its strongest foothold is in Texas, where Houston ISD and Dallas ISD both use the program. In all, the company says, 60,000 Texans use the program either as a supplemental curriculum or a full-time course. Nearly 11,000 copies were paid for by TEA.

The company has proved resilient when its funding is threatened. In summer of 2011, during the special legislative session on the state budget, the House overwhelmingly approved an amendment to zero out funding for Reasoning Mind. But when the budget bill returned from conference committee with the Senate, the math program’s rider was back in. House members couldn’t change the bill at that point, so Reasoning Mind’s funding continued. Because the conference committee discussions are closed to the public, it’s hard to say who in the Senate championed the program. Reasoning Mind’s two biggest boosters, Cockrell and Hoglund, have each given $66,000 to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s campaigns since 2004.

In November 2012, the Dallas Morning News reported an internal study from Dallas ISD saying the program cost too much and did too little—but the district with more Reasoning Mind students than any other in the state stood by the program and pulled the study from its site.

Reasoning Mind countered with studies of its own. To help out, Reasoning Mind’s blue-blooded backers got involved. The News recounted an interview with Hoglund, who “said prominent charitable givers might pull their support for DISD if it isn’t continued.”

Too many important people, in other words, had too much invested in the program to let the district pull the plug—performance be damned.

Like so much else in Texas, in the education tech business, it helps to know a few oil execs.

In a county juvenile lockup, you can be shut alone in a room for all sorts of things. Fighting, sure, or trying to escape. But in some counties, “horseplay” and “disrespectful attitude” also count as “major rules violations” that could land you in seclusion with no idea when you’ll get out.

Youth advocates say some counties are putting kids in seclusion too readily, for far too long. Juvenile justice officials say they have those rules for a reason, and when a child is dangerous and acting out, they simply have to isolate them.

It’s a familiar disagreement in juvenile justice, but lawmakers got to hear it again Tuesday night as they considered placing a four-hour limit on counties’ use of seclusion.

Under a bill from Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio), only assault, escaping or trying to escape would carry a penalty of seclusion for more than four hours. Each county facility in the state would also have to report how often it placed juveniles in solitary, and why.

As part of the movement away from big, state-run juvenile facilities, more kids are held and treated by county juvenile probation offices. It’s a good idea for many reasons, but it also means rules can vary from one county to the next. It’s tough to get statewide data from such a decentralized system, and the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition says the state’s oversight of the county system is still too weak.

In advance of the bill’s hearing, the Associated Press took a longer look at the issue, and some of the research on why solitary confinement is so harmful for kids.

“This bill reflects a national trend in rethinking the use of solitary confinement,” said Catherine McCullough from the ACLU of Texas Tuesday night—but the county juvenile officials who turned up uniformly opposed the bill.

Some argued that four hours in seclusion was no great deterrent at all—at 9 p.m., after waiting all afternoon to testify, one woman joked that even “eight hours goes by pretty fast”—and only long stints in seclusion would make an impression on kids.

Others said disciplinary seclusion was hardly as bad as advocates suggest. “When kids are in their room … they have to have all their rights given to them,” said Doug Vance, the chief juvenile probation officer for Brazos County. “They’re not locked away in some dungy cell for hours and hours on end.”

They made a strong distinction between their disciplinary seclusion and the sort of solitary confinement youth might get in the adult system.

The county officials said they were fine with reporting their use of seclusion, but urged senators to commission a study on improving their use of seclusion—if there’s any problem at all.

Mark Williams, Tom Green County’s chief probation officer, said Van de Putte’s bill ignores the reality of running a youth lockup, and gives too much credence to the opinions of outsiders.

“The people that don’t work with the kids are the ones that really like this bill,” he said, “and the ones that work with the kids are the ones that do not.”