Texans, divided on so much these days, are split on whether Republican Gov. Greg Abbott or Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke offers the best policies for the state’s more than 5.4 million K-12 public school students.
When asked which candidate respondents trusted to do a better job on public education, Abbott received 42 percent and O’Rourke received 41 percent, according to an August survey by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
From what and how to teach, who teaches and who pays for education, and how best to keep schools safe, Abbott’s and O’Rourke’s policies couldn’t be more divergent. Our education system — with its more than $64 billion price tag, policies and outcomes — affects every Texan, shaping the lives of generations, our future workforce and the economy.
During their Sept. 30 debate, Abbott and O’Rourke sounded off on funding, the teacher shortage and school safety. Abbott touted the new teacher incentive and passage of House Bill 3, the sweeping landmark school finance bill in 2019, which legislators and experts say made progress but isn’t a panacea. He argued that Texas’ per pupil funding is the highest it’s ever been.
Maybe so, but trailing the national average by more than $4,000 per student, Texas ranks in the bottom 10 states in per-student funding (42nd) and rates an F by Raise Your Hand Texas, a nonprofit that calls for an “equitable school finance system that, at the very least, funds Texas students at the national average.”
Texans are swamped with skyrocketing property taxes. Much of this is tied to school funding — and the state’s failure to fund public education. Local property owners pay more than 60 percent of the state’s public education bill. O’Rourke wants to increase the state’s share, and give raises to teachers and cost-of-living increases to retired teachers.
Abbott has a renewed focus on school vouchers, part of a GOP push for “school choice,” most notably in 2017, that waned because it wasn’t popular in rural Texas where schools are the largest employer.
School vouchers are a threat to all public schools. Abbott says the state can fully fund public schools and give parents choice. But in Texas, where school funding is based on average daily attendance, when students leave public schools, their funding follows.
Abbott’s school voucher push is based on the parental rights movement, which has been the vehicle for much of the culture wars and grievances that now burden schools. Think of disputes over mask requirements, sex education, social studies curriculum and library books. Have these disputes served our students and schools?
Since the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde on May 24 in which 19 students and two teachers were murdered by an 18-year-old with a legally purchased assault-style weapon, Abbott has been criticized for not doing enough to keep schools safe, such as calling a special session or pushing gun safety legislation.
Teachers remain fearful. In June, 90 percent of Texas school employees surveyed by the Texas American Federation of Teachers said they worried about a shooting happening at their school. Parents are worried, too; schools are no safer now than they were the day of the Uvalde school shooting and the one at Santa Fe High School in 2018.
Abbott said he worked to allocate funding to increase mental health services in schools. And four months after the Uvalde shooting, he appointed the first school safety chief, who will be responsible for ensuring Texas schools implement statewide safety policies and safeguard against school shootings.
Though there are now signs of progress in STAAR results, the achievement gap was exacerbated during the pandemic. Abbott was right to push for in-person learning, but we never understood his resistance to mask mandates at a time when children could not be vaccinated.
O’Rourke, who recently tweeted that teachers have donated to his campaign more than any other occupation in the past three months, has promised to end the STAAR test, which costs more than $90 million a year. This might generate applause, but schools are required to assess learning and track data, so eliminating all student testing isn’t possible. And while we have concerns about high-stakes testing, there is also a need to track learning through standardized testing.
But testing — or school — isn’t possible without teachers, and there aren’t enough of them. According to a 2021 Texas Teacher Workforce Report by the University of Houston and commissioned by Raise Your Hand Texas, of 13,373 new Texas teachers at the start of the 2010-2011 school year, only 6,664 remain in Texas classrooms. And surveys show young people have no interest in becoming teachers. Who can blame them?
On education we give the nod to O’Rourke. Abbott has had two terms to improve education in Texas, and while some notable achievements have occurred, too many festering issues remain, and he has allowed our schools to become politicized.
A safe, equitable and adequately funded and staffed public school system to serve all students is what Texas deserves. Regardless of the election outcome, Texas can afford to do better.
San Antonio Express News
