Snake Oil

Sen. Dan Patrick at this morning's hearing on his school voucher bill, and the places where the rest of his Senate Education Committee should be.

A cardinal, a bishop and a rabbi walked into the Senate Education Committee this morning to talk lawmakers into passing a private-school voucher bill.

After last week’s decisive anti-voucher vote in the House, that might sound like the setup to a hilarious joke, but Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), the bill’s sponsor, was dead serious today. Calling his plan to divert business tax payments into private school scholarships a “noble cause,” he remained committed to private school choice as way to rescue poor children. He recognized that momentum isn’t on his side.

“I may go down fighting on this issue,” Patrick said, “but I will not apologize for trying to reach out and help families who are desperate for a future for their children that they didn’t have.”

Patrick looked awfully alone this morning as he laid out what, at one time, figured to be one of this session’s signature bills. Of the committee’s eight other members, only vice-chair Eddie Lucio Jr., Donna Campbell and Larry Taylor were there for most of the hearing, suggesting little interest in debating the finer points. Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), who’s not on the committee, sat in to carry the anti-voucher banner.

She and Patrick went back and forth over whether the tax credit program in Senate Bill 23—capped at a total of $100 million under a new version of the bill—would hurt public schools.

“It’s not public money coming out of public education, no matter how many times you say it,” Patrick told her.

“It’s not not,” Davis replied, “no matter how many times you say it.”

Davis pressed Patrick on the bill’s consequences for open records laws, school accountability or what the public might say about paying for schools with controversial principles. “What if the Nation of Islam wanted to open a parochial school in a community in the state of Texas and they wanted to be able to have access to this scholarship fund?” she wondered.

“Under this bill that would be allowed,” Patrick replied, “and I’m not going to play the religious game with you, senator.”

Had this been the religious game and not the politics game, Patrick could have fielded one heck of a team. Testifying this morning at his invitation: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Bishop Placido Rodriguez of Lubbock, Bishop Patrick Zurek of Amarillo, Rabbi Eliezer Langer of Austin and Cornerstone Christian Schools Superintendent Jerry Echelin.

Rodriguez reminded lawmakers that the Catholic Church runs the country’s biggest private school network, with more than two million students. All the invited speakers were enthusiastic about the possibility of a major new revenue source. The unspoken subtext is that the rise of charter schools—another side of school choice movement—has been especially rough on Catholic schools.

None said they were concerned about being accountable and transparent, if that’s what it took to get the scholarships, though they stopped short of volunteering to give STAAR tests or submit to open records laws. “In itself,” DiNardo said, “accountability is always good. I don’t know what all the ins and outs would be in terms of accountability.”

Zurek recalled the Catholic Church’s proud history of openness and transparency. ”We have never hidden any records,” he said, “in any diocese that I have been in.”

Fort Worth pastor Charles Johnson, with the Coalition for Public Schools and the Christian Life Commission, offered a dissenting view once testimony opened to the public. ”We don’t refer to failing churches,” he said. There’s no such thing as a failing church. and I’m not so sure there’s such thing as a failing school.”

“How’s this not a tax loophole?” he wondered.

“I give money to my Baptist church,” Patrick answered. “I don’t consider that a loophole, I consider that an opportunity to support God.”

“Well, I’m not trying to speak on behalf of God,” Johnson said, “just the Baptists.”

Former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff also turned up to oppose the bill. “I’ll take a back seat to no one on providing choice to the students of this state,” he said—as a senator, he authored the 1995 bill creating Texas’ charter school system. “However, that choice was in the public arena.”

Ratliff suggested vouchers were, at best, a distraction from the more pressing problems with the margins tax created in 2006 that continues to underfund Texas’ public schools. Given the limited money Texas raises to support its schools, he wondered, “Why in the world would we take that public money and send it to private schools?”

Patrick allowed that the “mountain is very high” for his bill to pass, but waxed poetic about the sort of victory it might be: “We are great enough in this state to do these things, if we just knock down some barriers of people who are against opportunities and competition and choice because they’ve always been.”

Patrick was framed by empty seats on his committee as he spoke, his barriers as absent as his support.

Patrick Michels

Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock (R-Killeen) introduces his big testing and graduation reform measure, House Bill 5, Tuesday morning.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Texas House is still hard at work debating Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock’s epic education bill, HB 5, which would retool Texas’ high school graduation requirements along with its testing and accountability systems.

But after a lengthy midday debate, lawmakers may have settled the most divisive question facing them today: should high school students should, by default, be placed on a pathway to college preparation? House members shot down that proposal by a two-to-one margin, signaling that they wanted a break from the college-prep focus in Texas high schools today.

Currently, Texas has a three-tiered path to graduation in which students are automatically placed on a path for college readiness, but kids who graduate with the minimum degree aren’t eligible for a four-year university. Aycock’s bill would flatten the degree options, so any Texas high school diploma would be good enough for a student to attend college.

Higher education leaders, minority student advocates and major businesses have worried Aycock’s bill would leave students less prepared for college, because it requires fewer courses commonly seen as signs of college readiness, especially algebra II.

An amendment by Reps. Mark Strama (D-Austin) and Dan Branch (R-Dallas) would have maintained a preference in the system for college readiness, suggesting students would default to a “distinguished” diploma path, which requires four years of math and science.

Under an amendment tacked onto HB 5 earlier in the day, students would need a parent’s signature to change their endorsement choice—and Rep. Joe Deshotel (D-Beaumont) focused on that scenario when he spoke up against Strama’s proposal. Deshotel asked lawmakers to consider how hard it could be for a student to tell their parents, “I can’t hack this, I have to drop down to a lower level.”

“If they don’t want to go to college, they shouldn’t have to get a permission slip signed by their parents if they want to do something else with their lives,” he said.

A long debate followed with a handful of lawmakers on either side, split not by party or urban-rural lines, but by disagreements over how to encourage students to attend college without creating a daunting system that leads to more dropouts.

Houston Democrat Sylvester Turner spoke up in favor of Strama’s amendment. “Let’s just be real,” he said. “If you set a low bar, many of our kids whether we like it or not are going to go for the low bar.”

Strama noted that under Texas’ current 4-by-4 program—which encourages all students to take four years of math, science, English and social studies—minority students are choosing the college-ready path at the same rate as white students.

Dallas Democrat Eric Johnson said that’s why he supported Strama’s proposal. ”I have a problem with the idea of taking a regime where we’ve seen African-American, Latino college participation rates going up … and undoing that,” he said. “I’d like to see them start in the pipeline. Put every child in the college pipeline initially and let them opt out.”

“This cuts to the chase almost to HB5′s premise. This is the big one here,” said Rep. Larry Gonzales (R-Round Rock), who joined Deshotel’s opposition. “How do you think Rep. Strama’s amendment differs from the status quo? It doesn’t change the status quo … what we have now isn’t working.”

Aycock finally stood to speak against Strama’s proposal. He said he was well aware of concerns about tracking minority students out of college, but his goal is to give students and parents control over what they learn in high school.

“I do not believe we should have an upper track, I do not believe we should have a lower track,” he said. ”If you want to create a pathway to failure, if you want to create a track, we have two right now. One is called ‘minimum plan,’ the other is called dropouts.”

With House members  yelling for a vote, Strama gave one last defense of his plan. Only students who graduate “distinguished” are eligible for automatic entry to a state university under Texas’ Top 10 Percent rule, he said, so there is, in fact, an upper track under HB 5. ”I don’t think we can argue that there’s not a difference in the pathways,” Strama said. “So the question becomes, what should be the presumptive expectation of children wehn they enter high school?”

Strama’s amendment went down 97 to 50. A diverse, bipartisan group supported Strama and Branch’s doomed proposal: Latino and African-American lawmakers mostly, but also such polar opposites as Fort Worth Democrat Lon Burnam and Tomball Republican Debbie Riddle.

We’ll have more later as the HB 5 debate continues.