My son is 3 now. So in just one or two vanishingly short years, he’ll enter Austin’s public school system. That doesn’t make me special—there are 70,000 kids in the Austin Independent School District (ISD)—but it does make me, well, nervous.
Because public schools in the capital city and around Texas today are being roiled by an interventionist state government, one backed by out-of-state special interests. What’s happening now goes far beyond Texas’ historic financial neglect or legislative incapacity to properly finance the education system. What we have before us is a many-tentacled crisis, one that looks and acts like a colossal heist in broad daylight but whose full scope is hard to grasp amid the myriad particulars.
In other words, I needed to talk to someone. About private school vouchers, now in its first school year of implementation, which Republicans want to expand next session. About the growing number of Texas Education Agency (TEA) takeovers—whereby a single school’s failure on standardized tests can mean elected trustees are swept aside, soul-sucking pedagogical reforms are implemented, and campuses are parceled out to charter school operators (despite clear conflicts of interest)—one of which looms over Austin ISD as I write this.
So I spoke in late September (prior to the elections) to Carrie Griffith, director of the two-year-old nonprofit Our Schools Our Democracy, a group that has lately brought an energetic and nerdy zeal to watchdogging not just the matters mentioned above but the longer-standing problem of unchecked charter expansion. On balance, I felt a bit better afterward.
GB: The name of your group makes it clear that you’re linking together public schools and democracy. But what exactly is the threat to democracy that comes from expanding charter schools, private school vouchers, and state takeovers?
When we were brainstorming names, we really wanted to make the connection to what we are seeing privatization do in terms of truly being a vote steal. By that I mean that the three publicly funded systems of schools—independent school districts, charter schools, and now private school vouchers—only one of those is publicly governed. And so as we are expanding systems with public taxpayer dollars but removing the elected governance and the right of the community to have a say, it’s a direct steal of their democratic input into a system that they’re funding.
Something that we try to make clear is that charter schools are not public schools. They’re defined as being public in the Texas Education Code because the lobby worked hard to get that definition in there, but we define public as being both publicly funded but also publicly governed.
How exactly does a charter school affect overall public school districts—why is it a threat other than just that it’s not subject to as many regulations?
Charter schools are only just now beginning to be understood by the broad public as a threat. Whereas the voucher law is sort of the big bad wolf—it’s easy to understand that this is the diversion of public funds to private entities and that it’s a threat to our public schools—it’s much, much more difficult to understand why charter schools are also a threat, and so I like to call them the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
They primarily, like private schools, can selectively admit and artificially cap enrollment. They have to be a little bit sneakier in the way that they sort of shape their enrollment because they can’t explicitly deny admission in the way that private schools can, but they absolutely can de facto. And so we see this in ways like having uniform requirements, not providing transportation, coaching students out, not providing special education services. But I think the biggest thing that readers really need to understand is that charter schools happen almost entirely outside the democratic process. The only element in the entire process of approving a charter school is when the original charter can be vetoed by the elected State Board of Education.
Here in Austin, the pending takeover is a constant topic of conversation, and people seem a little confused about: Does TEA really have a choice in the matter at this point, given that we have the school ratings and that the statute seems to say the state “shall” take action?
So it is a “shall” statute, which is wrong. That needs to be changed. … My understanding is, in the Austin situation, there is kind of one final lever possible and that is if the parents of the schools that are triggering the takeover, if they themselves request that their schools be closed, then that could buy some time, which is a Sophie’s Choice and it’s really awful because those families don’t deserve to have their schools close.
Readers really need to understand that failure is being defined by the state, and it is being defined very, very narrowly, almost entirely based on standardized test scores.
Is it possible or have you seen with your own eyes a school with an F that you know, in reality, is a nurturing, well-administered institution?
Oh, 100 percent. I have three daughters in Austin ISD; my high school senior started kindergarten in our neighborhood public school that was rated F. She was a white minority, and I was an elementary school parent there for 13 years because of the age difference of my kids. Its accountability rating has increased because the demographics have changed; you’re getting more and more students who come from educated families. But the teachers are not different. The curriculum isn’t different. There were many years where the principals were the same. All three of my daughters had the same kindergarten teacher. The arts program is incredible. It’s an incredible, incredible school.
Thinking ahead to January, to the next legislation session, if you assume Republicans probably still have the Senate and House [November 10 Editor’s Note: lol], what are two or three things that are within the realm of possibility to achieve for public schools?
High-level, our legislative priorities will always, regardless of who is governing, be transparency, fiscal responsibility, and fairness. … Thinking about vouchers, even though the comptroller’s office has already requested that the program be expanded to $4.4 billion, including waitlists … our ask and the ask of many people on all sides of the conversation is that it be capped until there is better data.
In terms of takeovers, I think that this situation where one campus can trigger the takeover is low-hanging fruit that a lot of reasonable people are scratching their heads at and thinking this really doesn’t make sense. So that will be a pretty basic ask.
Charters … one thing that has consistently been on our agenda, we want that a charter school be required to provide notice that a campus or district is alternative accountability [i.e., uses different tracking standards] and what that means, because alternative accountability exists for very unique campuses like [those focused on severe special needs] and adult learning. But charters abuse it, and they identify as a part of the alternative accountability system way more and without there being a substantiated need.
Do you have any specific advice you give to Texas parents who are concerned or panicked about the state of their public education system? What do you recommend people do?
It’s sort of a long-term solution to a short-term problem, but vote. I mean, pay attention because it’s really important that people understand you can’t just assume that a Democrat on the ballot is going to be the candidate that’s best for education. There are so many well-funded Democrats that are infiltrating state boards and school boards to push these privatizing tricks on our districts. So really pay attention and stay connected to groups like mine and what the teacher unions are saying.
And I always like to share with frustrated families … there really is nothing happening at the local level anymore that is the fault of the local governance. Local control doesn’t even exist anymore. So every complaint that a family has about a school really can be tracked back to the state, and that makes us feel as parents like we have less of a say, and it feels like a harder problem to solve. But just really celebrate and support your neighborhood public schools and be willing to do the thing that the teacher or the principal is asking for until we can get out of this mess and we can restore local control and adequate school funding and quality curriculum and teacher autonomy and a system that measures quality as we define it and not as the state is defining it. So, patience, compassion, and activism—those are the three answers.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The post Texans Are Losing Their Democracy, School by School appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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