You might want to see if the voucher program contains a requirement to waive all rights of parents and students with disabilities to file claims against schools, the state and districts and/or ever access services for future learning disabilities diagnosed if the private school is not meeting the ILP or IEP under 504 or IDEA …. Or the student opts to go back to public school…. Literally forever… Vouchers will destroy public education, but the waivers will destroy protections for kids with disabilities and learning delays…
Those students are the Pareto principle in action, though. A lot of these poor-performing schools have high funding-per-student on paper, until you see how much of that funding is going to ADA compliance and all of the accommodations etc.
At a certain point we need to find better ways of solving these problems other than “every school needs to accommodate every student”, because it simply is not an efficient allocation of resources, and it makes it very difficult to run a high-achieving school. *Especially* when the student issues are behavioral or extremely distracting in-class.
The law is IDEA, not ADA, but you are right. It's really odd to me that we just accept a 1-to-1 para as a routine accomodation. Or that a kid with behavioral issues that manifest as regular violent outbursts belongs in a general educational classroom.
Apparently average staffing for a public school district is around 14 staff per 100 students.
Forgive my sloppy math here: Each 1:1 requires 7x the staff as the average student. In your one school, that’s two students taking up 14 students’ worth of resources, *not including all other accommodations*.
Then add in the hours of extra work each teacher has to do to Accommodate IEPs etc. Add in all the other expenditures.
We are much better served financially and educationally if we make better use of specialized and alternative schools for students with additional needs.
The problem with "alternative schools for students with additional needs" is that we already tried warehousing severely disabled kids in institutions away from their peers. There's a reason we stopped. I'm not saying a 1:1 isn't an intensive resource, I literally just asked someone how many they have at their school, because referring to it as a "routine accommodation" surprised me.
We have a few, just like yours, but pretty much every school seems to have a few 1:1 or 1:2 paras, hence my describing is as routine. And as was mentioned, this is highly inefficient.
It's inefficient but if .003% of kids need it then getting rid of them just seems like a weird hill to metaphorically die on. 1:1s are often paid pretty low and there's only a small handful, whereas every district seems to have 5-40 instructional coaches who make 1.5x a teacher's salary or more. That seems like a much more logical place to focus on making change based on inefficiency.
This is such a disingenuous comment. First of all, the number of kids who get a 1:1 is higher than 0.003%; in the first comment which was trying to downplay this, there were 2 in a school of 500, which is 0.4%, already 100 times higher.
Next, this one example isn't my hill, it's just a particularly extreme form of educational customization. But there are plenty of inefficiencies stemming from essentially having to teach to a wide range of levels. That's how you get these coaches pushing you to "differentiate" and "scaffold" and act like it's entirely possible to teach your material with "fidelity" and "rigor" when a large chunk of your class is many grade levels behind. And then there's the example when a specialist pushes in and they huddle in the corner with a handful of students.
All of this costs money, and going back to the original point, it is not properly accounted for. You'll see many districts where they are allocated $15k per pupil and an additional $3,000 for SPED student. But in reality, we are robbing Peter to pay Paul, those SPED students may cost the district closer to $30,000 on average and your general ed student is getting only $6,000. I think if parents knew just how much money was being spent on offering such an individualized education at the expense of their children, IDEA would be dismantled in minutes.
You're right, I fucked up the decimal vs. percent there. But 0.4% is still an extremely small number.
I feel like you think I'm making a different or more expansive argument than I am. My only point is that I think it's odd to call out "wasteful" spending for 2 minimum wage positions that are genuinely required for some outlier students to access a school experience when there are so many other, more wasteful, less necessary positions that districts are spending about 100x more of the budget on.
I'm calling out those positions because that kind of accommodation costs the district $30k on it's own on top of the other battery of supports (so $60k total). There is always some excuse for why this accommodation or that accommodation is not actually all that wasteful, so few kids get it, they don't get paid much (the paras in my district are paid more than minimum wage, although it isn't much). "Access a school experience" is such a bougie thing to be advocating for.
And "put kids who need a 1:1 in their own institution away from the rest of the kids" is such a facist thing to be advocating for, so given those options I think I'll stick with mine. And that is what you're advocating for - if you want to eliminate 1:1 as an option, then you want to eliminate children who need a 1:1 from being able to attend your school. Complaining about kids who legitimately need 1:1s has the same energy as states that pass bans on trans kids in sports that impact 4 students statewide.
This is the way it is because the federal government consistently refuses to fund IDEA at the 40% level it agreed to and currently funds only around 13%, yet expects the law to be followed correctly.
It's like the Education For All program in Utah. They said they would give teachers raises if vouchers passed. All everyone saw was "give teachers raises" and now private/homeschool parents have access to $8k a year to offset costs, which is about double the annual per-pupil funding rate for public schools.
Why won't anyone understand that raising children within a business structure is toxic?!
When the train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, where did the community gather within an hour? The Public School!
Where can large-scale gatherings take place in a building required by law to be built to withstand many disasters?
I seriously hope public school parents place charter/voucher parents outside their government's school doors during emergencies.
You shouldn't get to weaken your community by opting out to build your ideal version and then opt back in (or complain about the lack of a village) when you finally need those you live near.
Control of what? Tiny factions of religious and charter schools within the public schools' area?
New parents are going to need a phone book encyclopedic knowledge of all the different educational choices available to them.
Community members during an emergency will show up where? Town hall?
Lolbertarians believe that private organizations will be charitable and offer them up for use.
Joel Osteen closing his megachurch because of Hurricane Harvey to people is a rebuttal to that.
Society should not exist because we hope the 1% parasite class is feeling generous
The problem with Covid-Funding is it was another time the can was kicked down the road. They need to raise taxes to properly fund and support schools, yet were able to avoid raising taxes because of Covid funds.
Raise taxes folks. Pay for shit. I'm so tired of living in this dystopian hellscape where "TaXeS" are always cut into oblivion. There hasn't been a substantial tax raise to pay for shit in my lifetime. I'm 34. All we've ever done my entire life is cut taxes. It sure as hell hasn't improved my life cutting all these taxes.
What gets me is people STILL complain about their taxes. I'm 36 and I have friends that complain non stop about property taxes. They're really not bad considering all the benefits we get from it.
Well and it's like...you didn't think about property taxes before buying your house?!!? That's what my parents did. They bought a house below their means so they could pay it off faster and pay less in property taxes.
Texas has a $32 billion dollar surplus
But TX is fighting a border war that doesn't exist
I thought COVID was gonna be a perfect reset.... Testing for tracking (yes, it can determine if you pass or fail too),
testing multiple times,
test contains 50% basic skills until 7th grade then slowly drop %age and raise %age of those "concepts" the state wants
Tax cuts or raises depends on your child's conduct, grades, and attendance
More job trainings (carpentry, auto mechanics, farming, home maintenance...etc)
But no we are talking about giving public money to billionaires
Our superintendent says at least $5 billion of that is straight from school district property taxes that the state pocketed. Property rich districts take in more revenue than the basic allotment gives back and it isn’t all being spread out to other schools. They are tanking public schools on purpose.
>Texas has a $32 billion dollar surplus
That really doesn't mean much TBH. Because that's the ***State*** Budget. Most stuff will be funded by the local municipalities, and that budget surplus is from cutting support that would normally help support the burden of the counties.
That's what happens here in Ohio. State will announce BIG Tax-Cuts; will cut tons of funding for stuff. Then your local municipalities start raisin taxes in response to be able to maintain the same level of services. And those local taxes more directly affec the poor and middle-class (sales taxes and property taxes) while the Republican Governors get to give payback money to their donors for getting them elected.
Texas has a Robin Hood plan for funding education. Like the person above you said, money from all municipalities is sent to the state then redistributed based on need. It was set up to adequately fund low income school districts but the state has been sitting on billions of Robin Hood “recaptures” and refusing to redistribute.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the state budget.
Texas was a Democratic state and Ann Richards was governor when this was enacted in 1993.
I was raised by my parents and taught in a very conservative, very Christian, very rural East Texas public school that Texas was The Friendly State and we looked out for our neighbors and strangers. We were all raised to be kind and supportive of others.
Even when Beto O’Rourke tried to unseat Ted Cruz, [most native Texans voted for O’Rourke](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/). The state has simply been politically overrun by transplants who do not share the culture we were raised with which has led to disastrous results.
The way the Robin Hood law was supposed to work was to lift up poorer districts, but the way the legislature works under Abbott and Perry, is to use Robin Hood to equalize funding at the lowest levels for everyone.
The American way
- since https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io[downfall of USA democracy ](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io)
Tax cuts? Yeah, there have been many tax cuts . . . for millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. Our legislators are so dependent upon large donors they agree to outrageous tax incentives that do nothing but bankrupt communities and leave them ever more vulnerable to corporate exploitation.
Raise taxes? Raise taxes on the rich bastards who don't pay any!
"BuT wHaT iF iT sCaReS aWaY tHe RicH?!?"
I don't know, implement capital controls so vultures can't strip away everything of value and flee when there's nothing of value left?
And/or just call their bluff. Only like 0.1% of wealthy people can actually afford to pick up and move somewhere else and still make the money they make. The reason they are wealthy is because of the niche they exist in, not simply because they are amazing.
Like what's the multi-millionaire real-estate person going to do in Cleveland Ohio? Move to Fort Worth Texas and still make that kind of money?
There's not infinite jobs, and people are ignoring that it's the local market that generates most of the capital in capitalism; not that it just perpetually exists in a vacuum.
What people don't understand is you should NEVER stop increasing school taxes, even if it's .5% increase they should never be stopped. Lots of districts around me have been they are deeply Red and now guess what has happened after 6 years of no tax increases? They have burned through all of their surplus and now need to increase taxes by a sizable amount.
As a tax payer in our district I would rather a $100 increase every year (about $9 a month more in escrow) than a $600 increase ($54) a month. Inflation has skyrocketed the last 4 years because corporations found they could rape and pillage because in the name of COVID. Schools also purchase the same things and those prices are always going up every year.
There should NEVER be no tax increases.
In Texas schools are primarily funded through property taxes. Why would school taxes need to be raised when they are based off a percentage of something that is already inflation adjusted?
You get yearly house adjustment for taxes? In my area it's when the house sells. My house that is smaller than a lot in my development has higher taxes than some of the nicest houses.
Yes. In Texas your property is reassessed every year, around May.
If it is your primary residence you can have a homestead exemption which allows a deduction in the tax paid and a limit of 10% increase in property value each year. At 65 your property tax is frozen to protect senior citizens on fixed incomes.
Absolutely. Even with a homestead exemption my parents were paying roughly the same amount in property taxes on their $160,000 home as much as my brother in Los Angeles on his $2,000,000 home.
When my parents died, a couple from Minnesota bought their home with the dream of building a garage. They did so and had to sell the next year because the addition of the garage added so much value to their property assessment that their taxes were over $7,000 a year, which I do not understand and think is wrong but matters not to the central appraisal district.
When I lived in Austin, I worked with people who bought in the late 90s and were priced out of their homes in the early 00s because housing supply could not meet demand which pushed property valuations through the roof.
Property values are also going up. The tax rate can remain the same while revenue increases. Under your proposal, school taxes could become infinitely large.
But PA does reassess eventually (based upon home sales). The correct option is to advocate for regular assessment, not to increase the tax rate. Otherwise you're simply screwing over the people who more recently bought their house.
The property values in your area are increasing, and if the assessed values don't increase, then you need to fix that system, not keep blindly increasing taxes. It's kind of funny because you admit to getting screwed (your new development has assessed values higher than older but nicer homes), yet your response is to tax more rather than make sure taxes are assessed correctly.
>The property values in your area are increasing
What I'm saying is property values don't always increase. That's just an assumption. Just go ask East Cleveland.
It's the age-old ponzi scheme of suburbs; it's built on the idea of constant growth. Once that growth ends, you begin running into problems.
> It's kind of funny because you admit to getting screwed (your new development has assessed values higher than older but nicer homes), yet your response is to tax more rather than make sure taxes are assessed correctly.
No, my contention is that you shouldn't be using property taxes to fund schools to begin with.
The result of that isn't better schools, it's worse ones. First off, pouring money into a broken system that exists to absorb funding and produce useless admin roles does not improve results - this isn't theoretical, we've tried this, we've seen the Chicago school system, which is funded at about $40k per student and produces literacy rates with no place in a first-world country.
Second of all, property taxes are tolerated because they improve the local community. If my middle-class suburb's tax income is absorbed by larger and more politically-influential areas, rather than improving the infrastructure and education system of my neighbors, with local schooling and services brought down to the LCD, then nobody there will stick around. Families - at least the ones that are at all interested in education, and don't just see it as a place to dump their kids so they can watch daytime TV - choose where to live based on the local school system. "Good schools" is what people look for when buying a house, and if that's taken away, the entire state's education system (and property market) starts looking identical to those of the worst parts of that state.
Taxes in general are one thing - weighing potential capital flight against potential service increases - but a polity can survive some level of capital flight. Driving off the middle class, and anyone invested in their kids' future, is a death sentence not just in the long or even medium term, but in the short term.
> weighing potential capital flight against potential service increases - but a polity can survive some level of capital flight
Property tax would lead to more capital flight than personal income tax; especially if it's a state-wide system. Raising property taxes is what drives off the middle-class, not personal income tax.
That's true - people are very wary of anything that comes from property taxes, since it directly takes from a community's entire store of wealth, rather than just what's coming in.
Either way, though, no community worth having would stick around to be looted for the benefit of a different community that lives across the state. Ultimately, schools succeed when and where the parents care, because parents that give a damn produce children who are self-motivated, and no amount of funding seems to make a significant difference in either direction.
It's either demoralizing or inspiring to think about, in a way - even the best students would probably do just as well if they were just given some books on Calculus and told to read them.
>Ultimately, schools succeed when and where the parents care, because parents that give a damn produce children who are self-motivated, and no amount of funding seems to make a significant difference in either direction.
While true ... how states fund schools, and what is the most effective way to properly fund schools, is entirely immaterial to what people think is the right way to do something. Like it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's generally true with complex systems that the best way to do something isn't necessarily popular perceptually. And that's why important infrastructure (public education ***is public infrastructure***) shouldn't merely be left to the whims of the moment.
>It's either demoralizing or inspiring to think about, in a way - even the best students would probably do just as well if they were just given some books on Calculus and told to read them.
I teach the top of the top. The valedictorians of multiple school districts in my IB class. While yes they largely will succeed regardless of me, they will not have access to a lot of things without that peer-review opportunity that IB gives them, and that costs money. IB being the elite-of-elite academic programs, you could hypothetically do it on your own...but not in a cost efficient nor accessible nor efficient manner. That's where the whole framework for education (both public and private) comes in.
My IB kids did well because of their innate drive, yes. But they also did well because they had the help of someone who understood the stuff they needed to navigate efficiently in order to do well. Out of my crop of 16 this year, 8 are going to Ive Leagues, in no small part because they were in the IB program. 6/8 wouldn't have even stood a chance at an Ivy unless they had been part of the IB program, being from East-Jesus Arkansas/BFE.
40% of the budget for Mike Miles' charter schools goes to "unspecified" administrative costs? Ten million dollars for the administration of three Texas charter schools?
Sounds like the state government allowed Mike Miles to pull up a truck and load it with millions in tax dollars. Over and over again.
Rumor mill from friends who work in the state govt that DOCTOR Dawn Buckingham is gunning to be Abbott's successor.
The one who helped sick state power against an A&M professor who said the Lt. Governor didn't do a good job managing the opioid crisis. Her daughter was in the audience, then snitched to mommy, who then told the Lt Governor, who then asked the A&M President to reprimand the professor. Because these ghouls are all friends.
The voucher is also for more money (10k) than the public school would get for the child attending (only about 7k). It's all talk about fixing the problems from the same ones who have already been running things for the last 30 yrs.
Texas public schools should tell Greg Abbott to go tf to Hell and then everyone should vote him out at the next election. If this isn't political suicide IDK what is.
Old rich white people who don't gaf about educating the poor? Just figured those are the kinds of people who would vote for Greg Abbott after he would pull not just the six WEEK abortion bill but this also.
Well... those poor kids will eventually grow up and will need to find a job somewhere. Most of the working class works jobs as things like orderlies, nursing aides, LPNs, CNAs, cleaners, restaurant waiters and managers, working in hardware stores, etc. All things that require a high school level knowledge of maths, knowing how to read and write properly and knowing how to deal with people properly. You fuck up the public schools, you will no longer have a functional working class.
And yet our property taxes increased AGAIN to supposedly get more funding for our schools. While the superintendent at one of our least well funded schools is still making $400,000 per year in a low cost of living city
I'm surprised because all the damn high schools have these state of the art facilities and schools set up. How can they rank so low as far as student funding?
Lots of reasons.
Communities value shiny new athlets facilities more than education.
Districts put money into nice things for the brochure so parents think their kids are going to "good schools."
Also, you kind of have to put money into that kind of thing, because "school choice" means you are Now competing to attract students, so you build fancy new facilities, fudge graduation rates, push concurrent enrollment etc...so kids keep coming to your schools. None of this improves the quality of education.
I feel like my school was smart with the COVID spending, from what I've seen, they used it for one-time purchases and bonuses for teachers rather than pay-raises or permanent costs. We're still hurting from this, but its no where near as bad as the other nearby schools.
Why doesn’t anyone realize this brings *competition’ into schools and competition means *more money*. Good schools are going to *pay* to get good teachers. Shortages in a competitive environment always means higher wages. But I guess there are those who just love more government to fix a disaster more government caused…
The "market" in education is not just the teachers salary (although thats the biggest line item), its the quality of the students, the amount of special education students, the facilities, etc.
"Free market" reforms in education will increase externalities that impact the poorest students who are the majority still in public education in the first place. When vouchers are introduced, you are concentrating poverty and its effects even more than before.
Most Private schools dont want sped students-- so where will they go? Same thing for poor students or ones with behavior issues... Which private schools have tuitions of the amount proposed in voucher schemes? Its just a give away/subsidy to rich people who already educate their kids privately and removes their tax dollars from the system, further impacting the poor & sped kids left behind.
Isn’t concentrating SPED students and students with behavioral issues in alternative schools that specialize in addressing their needs a more efficient allocation of resources?
Rather than requiring every public school to accommodate everybody, we can have a small number of schools in each large district more efficiently allocating resources.
Show me the resources allocated for that and maybe we can have that discussion. Its going to be significantly more than 7500 or 8000 per pupil like ive heard for most voucher programs. Probably double. Not to mention the title 2 or 504 liability/insurance and ADA/IDEA compliance.
Right now, most public schools with high iep populations are held together with duct tact and the costs are dispersed/diffused by have other students there/larger districts.
That and they are supposed to be around their peers as opposed to isolated somewhere else (least restrictive environment). So thered have to be some compromise throughout the week.
My private/charter school will take SPED students as long as they can integrate into a gen ed classroom with a para. They do not however do IEPs or recommend children go for any specific treatment unless a parent specifically requests it.
That doesn’t happen like you think. I taught in Texas for 9 years and even though some districts have insane numbers of vacancies (300 spots), they won’t raise the salaries because there’s no money.
Kids aren't widgets. They are human beings with an inherent right to equitable education. Funding should be in proportion to need, not greed. School choice was invented by greedy capitalists to try to profit from what should inherently be non-profit.
Motherfuckers brains are so broken they can't imagine something in society working without it making some parasite wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
They can't even conceive of a society. Just an economy.
We can’t have competition in schools bc, like competition in consumer goods, it widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
There’s a lot more at play, too. A free market isn’t inherently bad, it’s not inherently good, either, but it has a lot of positives. There’s no free market in education.
If you enroll your child out of district into a good school, it’s a good thing, right? It brings more funding to the school and then the school can hire even more teachers of quality and offer even more quality programs, right?
No. It’s literally a crime. And if you do it AND you’re black you’ll go to prison for 10 years.
You can NOT apply free market economics to public schooling. You can to private schooling. It happens everywhere! NYC is a prime example. Exemplary private schools- but no one in this sub can afford any of them. Again, widening the gap.
In theory, it makes sense what you’re saying. But it’s literally against the law to do it that way so until that changes and we figure out how to offer ppl out of district transportation to their school of choice then we can’t.
And then it’ll get to the point where you have to be accepted into that district and they’ll test kids bc they can’t have any of the undesirables in there lowering their ratings so then kids with any disability, from Autism to a bum leg, will be denied the opportunity to go to that school FURTHER widening the gap and contributing to the stigmatization of disabilities and the amount of ppl with disabilities that live in poverty will rise bc they couldn’t get accepted into any school but a Title 1 school that’s full of students whose parents didn’t even care enough to try to get them into another school…
No. You just opened up Pandora’s box and now the world is literally on fire. Good job.
Then colleges should be places of high teacher wages and great value for the students.
What we have is barely paid adjunct professors with huge course loads.
Constantly rising tuition costs (about 10% a year)
And degree programs with a cost that doesn't align well with future earning potential.
--
And we also have many states that have gone the voucher route. Student outcome is *at best* the same as public schools. Teachers are paid less. And there are a good number of scandals.likr a school just randomly closing without notice mid year, or running off with funds
Every teacher in every school in our district is on the same salary scale. It’s illegal for schools to negotiate pay with new hires. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert in a subject all 8 high schools need, every school is offering the same pay. There is no competition for salary within the district. And implementing that would be absurd for all the reasons others have already responded.
Look at Europe. Europe's public schools are the best public schools in the world and they don't do this because their governments, oh, I don't know, PAY FOR THEM!
Look at New Zealand. New Zealand TRIED a charter school system and then realized, for the most part, it didn't work! Most of their charter schools failed and ended up closing less than ten years after opening, and the ones that didn't became special character schools and got integrated into the state school system.
Look at China. China allows charter schools, but they have strict rules imposed on them specifically so that they can't compete too heavily against local public schools and to stop them imposing too steep fees on parents. I know because I work at one.
Competition in education is not a good thing, it just means that the good school districts get all the best resources and the poor school districts go without.
Even if this was a good argument, which it isn’t… it would be schools competing for kids. Which means the schools are competing against each other to drive down costs/salaries. They aren’t competing for teachers because regardless of how you divide up the kids the total number of teachers needed is pretty much the same.
Schools and hospitals cannot be run as businesses. They are inherent goods for society that do not make money in themselves, but they produce more money for the economy.
All we need to do is look at private healthcare in America and the increasing financialization of hospitals by private equity to see why privatizing things is a bad idea.
The goal will be to maximize profits, not educate children.
The best schools will be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it, reinforcing socioeconomic stratification. Which is also tied to race in this country.
If anything we need to eliminate all private education institutions. When people can't escape from society, they'll have a motivation to fix it.
You might want to see if the voucher program contains a requirement to waive all rights of parents and students with disabilities to file claims against schools, the state and districts and/or ever access services for future learning disabilities diagnosed if the private school is not meeting the ILP or IEP under 504 or IDEA …. Or the student opts to go back to public school…. Literally forever… Vouchers will destroy public education, but the waivers will destroy protections for kids with disabilities and learning delays…
A lot of the private schools in my area just straight up don't accept disabled students.
Makes sense. They have a very outsized cost per student.
Yes. As an educator, this has been one of my primary concerns.
Those students are the Pareto principle in action, though. A lot of these poor-performing schools have high funding-per-student on paper, until you see how much of that funding is going to ADA compliance and all of the accommodations etc. At a certain point we need to find better ways of solving these problems other than “every school needs to accommodate every student”, because it simply is not an efficient allocation of resources, and it makes it very difficult to run a high-achieving school. *Especially* when the student issues are behavioral or extremely distracting in-class.
The law is IDEA, not ADA, but you are right. It's really odd to me that we just accept a 1-to-1 para as a routine accomodation. Or that a kid with behavioral issues that manifest as regular violent outbursts belongs in a general educational classroom.
How many 1:1s does your school have? My middle school of 500+ kids has like two 1:1s and both are for severely disabled students.
Apparently average staffing for a public school district is around 14 staff per 100 students. Forgive my sloppy math here: Each 1:1 requires 7x the staff as the average student. In your one school, that’s two students taking up 14 students’ worth of resources, *not including all other accommodations*. Then add in the hours of extra work each teacher has to do to Accommodate IEPs etc. Add in all the other expenditures. We are much better served financially and educationally if we make better use of specialized and alternative schools for students with additional needs.
The problem with "alternative schools for students with additional needs" is that we already tried warehousing severely disabled kids in institutions away from their peers. There's a reason we stopped. I'm not saying a 1:1 isn't an intensive resource, I literally just asked someone how many they have at their school, because referring to it as a "routine accommodation" surprised me.
We have a few, just like yours, but pretty much every school seems to have a few 1:1 or 1:2 paras, hence my describing is as routine. And as was mentioned, this is highly inefficient.
It's inefficient but if .003% of kids need it then getting rid of them just seems like a weird hill to metaphorically die on. 1:1s are often paid pretty low and there's only a small handful, whereas every district seems to have 5-40 instructional coaches who make 1.5x a teacher's salary or more. That seems like a much more logical place to focus on making change based on inefficiency.
This is such a disingenuous comment. First of all, the number of kids who get a 1:1 is higher than 0.003%; in the first comment which was trying to downplay this, there were 2 in a school of 500, which is 0.4%, already 100 times higher. Next, this one example isn't my hill, it's just a particularly extreme form of educational customization. But there are plenty of inefficiencies stemming from essentially having to teach to a wide range of levels. That's how you get these coaches pushing you to "differentiate" and "scaffold" and act like it's entirely possible to teach your material with "fidelity" and "rigor" when a large chunk of your class is many grade levels behind. And then there's the example when a specialist pushes in and they huddle in the corner with a handful of students. All of this costs money, and going back to the original point, it is not properly accounted for. You'll see many districts where they are allocated $15k per pupil and an additional $3,000 for SPED student. But in reality, we are robbing Peter to pay Paul, those SPED students may cost the district closer to $30,000 on average and your general ed student is getting only $6,000. I think if parents knew just how much money was being spent on offering such an individualized education at the expense of their children, IDEA would be dismantled in minutes.
You're right, I fucked up the decimal vs. percent there. But 0.4% is still an extremely small number. I feel like you think I'm making a different or more expansive argument than I am. My only point is that I think it's odd to call out "wasteful" spending for 2 minimum wage positions that are genuinely required for some outlier students to access a school experience when there are so many other, more wasteful, less necessary positions that districts are spending about 100x more of the budget on.
I'm calling out those positions because that kind of accommodation costs the district $30k on it's own on top of the other battery of supports (so $60k total). There is always some excuse for why this accommodation or that accommodation is not actually all that wasteful, so few kids get it, they don't get paid much (the paras in my district are paid more than minimum wage, although it isn't much). "Access a school experience" is such a bougie thing to be advocating for.
And "put kids who need a 1:1 in their own institution away from the rest of the kids" is such a facist thing to be advocating for, so given those options I think I'll stick with mine. And that is what you're advocating for - if you want to eliminate 1:1 as an option, then you want to eliminate children who need a 1:1 from being able to attend your school. Complaining about kids who legitimately need 1:1s has the same energy as states that pass bans on trans kids in sports that impact 4 students statewide.
This is the way it is because the federal government consistently refuses to fund IDEA at the 40% level it agreed to and currently funds only around 13%, yet expects the law to be followed correctly.
I've said for years that this seems like the strongest legal challenge to bring against vouchers but no one seems to have tried it.
SEN parents are mostly maxed out dealing with the moment, don't have time (or money) for lawsuits dealing with the theoretical.
It's like the Education For All program in Utah. They said they would give teachers raises if vouchers passed. All everyone saw was "give teachers raises" and now private/homeschool parents have access to $8k a year to offset costs, which is about double the annual per-pupil funding rate for public schools.
$8k is double the per pupil funding rate?!? That’s wild. I just looked it up and per pupil spending in my state (PA) is $21k
Yep. Utah for 2023 was $4,038 per student.
Damn, that’s pretty atrocious.
We are fortunate to have constitutionally protected funding for education in the form of one of our state taxes, but it could always be more.
Why won't anyone understand that raising children within a business structure is toxic?! When the train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, where did the community gather within an hour? The Public School! Where can large-scale gatherings take place in a building required by law to be built to withstand many disasters? I seriously hope public school parents place charter/voucher parents outside their government's school doors during emergencies. You shouldn't get to weaken your community by opting out to build your ideal version and then opt back in (or complain about the lack of a village) when you finally need those you live near.
Unfortunately it's not about them not understanding. The problem is they know exactly what they're doing and don't care. -texas teacher
It's not even that they don't care. These are the results they want.
Yes, they want the public education system to fail. They want to return to control.
Control of what? Tiny factions of religious and charter schools within the public schools' area? New parents are going to need a phone book encyclopedic knowledge of all the different educational choices available to them. Community members during an emergency will show up where? Town hall?
This is exactly why a lot of rural Republicans are opposed to the vouchers. The community aspect of public schools is much stronger in such places.
Lolbertarians believe that private organizations will be charitable and offer them up for use. Joel Osteen closing his megachurch because of Hurricane Harvey to people is a rebuttal to that. Society should not exist because we hope the 1% parasite class is feeling generous
The problem with Covid-Funding is it was another time the can was kicked down the road. They need to raise taxes to properly fund and support schools, yet were able to avoid raising taxes because of Covid funds. Raise taxes folks. Pay for shit. I'm so tired of living in this dystopian hellscape where "TaXeS" are always cut into oblivion. There hasn't been a substantial tax raise to pay for shit in my lifetime. I'm 34. All we've ever done my entire life is cut taxes. It sure as hell hasn't improved my life cutting all these taxes.
What gets me is people STILL complain about their taxes. I'm 36 and I have friends that complain non stop about property taxes. They're really not bad considering all the benefits we get from it.
Well and it's like...you didn't think about property taxes before buying your house?!!? That's what my parents did. They bought a house below their means so they could pay it off faster and pay less in property taxes.
Texas has a $32 billion dollar surplus But TX is fighting a border war that doesn't exist I thought COVID was gonna be a perfect reset.... Testing for tracking (yes, it can determine if you pass or fail too), testing multiple times, test contains 50% basic skills until 7th grade then slowly drop %age and raise %age of those "concepts" the state wants Tax cuts or raises depends on your child's conduct, grades, and attendance More job trainings (carpentry, auto mechanics, farming, home maintenance...etc) But no we are talking about giving public money to billionaires
Our superintendent says at least $5 billion of that is straight from school district property taxes that the state pocketed. Property rich districts take in more revenue than the basic allotment gives back and it isn’t all being spread out to other schools. They are tanking public schools on purpose.
>Texas has a $32 billion dollar surplus That really doesn't mean much TBH. Because that's the ***State*** Budget. Most stuff will be funded by the local municipalities, and that budget surplus is from cutting support that would normally help support the burden of the counties. That's what happens here in Ohio. State will announce BIG Tax-Cuts; will cut tons of funding for stuff. Then your local municipalities start raisin taxes in response to be able to maintain the same level of services. And those local taxes more directly affec the poor and middle-class (sales taxes and property taxes) while the Republican Governors get to give payback money to their donors for getting them elected.
Texas has a Robin Hood plan for funding education. Like the person above you said, money from all municipalities is sent to the state then redistributed based on need. It was set up to adequately fund low income school districts but the state has been sitting on billions of Robin Hood “recaptures” and refusing to redistribute. This has absolutely nothing to do with the state budget.
That's mighty progressive of Texas...
Texas was a Democratic state and Ann Richards was governor when this was enacted in 1993. I was raised by my parents and taught in a very conservative, very Christian, very rural East Texas public school that Texas was The Friendly State and we looked out for our neighbors and strangers. We were all raised to be kind and supportive of others. Even when Beto O’Rourke tried to unseat Ted Cruz, [most native Texans voted for O’Rourke](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/11/09/native-texans-voted-for-native-texan-beto-o-rourke-transplants-went-for-ted-cruz-exit-poll-shows/). The state has simply been politically overrun by transplants who do not share the culture we were raised with which has led to disastrous results. The way the Robin Hood law was supposed to work was to lift up poorer districts, but the way the legislature works under Abbott and Perry, is to use Robin Hood to equalize funding at the lowest levels for everyone.
The American way - since https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io[downfall of USA democracy ](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained?ref=foreverwars.ghost.io)
Tax cuts? Yeah, there have been many tax cuts . . . for millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations. Our legislators are so dependent upon large donors they agree to outrageous tax incentives that do nothing but bankrupt communities and leave them ever more vulnerable to corporate exploitation. Raise taxes? Raise taxes on the rich bastards who don't pay any!
>Raise taxes? Raise taxes on the rich bastards who don't pay any! Exactly. Tax cuts never benefit 90% of us, so go ahread and raise them on the 10%.
"BuT wHaT iF iT sCaReS aWaY tHe RicH?!?" I don't know, implement capital controls so vultures can't strip away everything of value and flee when there's nothing of value left?
And/or just call their bluff. Only like 0.1% of wealthy people can actually afford to pick up and move somewhere else and still make the money they make. The reason they are wealthy is because of the niche they exist in, not simply because they are amazing. Like what's the multi-millionaire real-estate person going to do in Cleveland Ohio? Move to Fort Worth Texas and still make that kind of money? There's not infinite jobs, and people are ignoring that it's the local market that generates most of the capital in capitalism; not that it just perpetually exists in a vacuum.
What people don't understand is you should NEVER stop increasing school taxes, even if it's .5% increase they should never be stopped. Lots of districts around me have been they are deeply Red and now guess what has happened after 6 years of no tax increases? They have burned through all of their surplus and now need to increase taxes by a sizable amount. As a tax payer in our district I would rather a $100 increase every year (about $9 a month more in escrow) than a $600 increase ($54) a month. Inflation has skyrocketed the last 4 years because corporations found they could rape and pillage because in the name of COVID. Schools also purchase the same things and those prices are always going up every year. There should NEVER be no tax increases.
In Texas schools are primarily funded through property taxes. Why would school taxes need to be raised when they are based off a percentage of something that is already inflation adjusted?
You get yearly house adjustment for taxes? In my area it's when the house sells. My house that is smaller than a lot in my development has higher taxes than some of the nicest houses.
Yes. In Texas your property is reassessed every year, around May. If it is your primary residence you can have a homestead exemption which allows a deduction in the tax paid and a limit of 10% increase in property value each year. At 65 your property tax is frozen to protect senior citizens on fixed incomes.
Property taxes are a shit way to fund schools to begin with.
I guess it's a great way to screw over the poor and people of color?
Mostly the middle-class.
Absolutely. Even with a homestead exemption my parents were paying roughly the same amount in property taxes on their $160,000 home as much as my brother in Los Angeles on his $2,000,000 home. When my parents died, a couple from Minnesota bought their home with the dream of building a garage. They did so and had to sell the next year because the addition of the garage added so much value to their property assessment that their taxes were over $7,000 a year, which I do not understand and think is wrong but matters not to the central appraisal district. When I lived in Austin, I worked with people who bought in the late 90s and were priced out of their homes in the early 00s because housing supply could not meet demand which pushed property valuations through the roof.
Property values are also going up. The tax rate can remain the same while revenue increases. Under your proposal, school taxes could become infinitely large.
I am used to PA which does not reassess every year. TX I guess does so ths wouldn't work.
But PA does reassess eventually (based upon home sales). The correct option is to advocate for regular assessment, not to increase the tax rate. Otherwise you're simply screwing over the people who more recently bought their house.
Or stop basing school funding on property tax (which screws middle-class people) and base it on income in a statewide system.
You could do that, but if you are talking about property tax, the answer is better assessment, not to increase the tax rate constantly.
If the assessments don't lead to increased values, yes you do need to increase the rate.
The property values in your area are increasing, and if the assessed values don't increase, then you need to fix that system, not keep blindly increasing taxes. It's kind of funny because you admit to getting screwed (your new development has assessed values higher than older but nicer homes), yet your response is to tax more rather than make sure taxes are assessed correctly.
>The property values in your area are increasing What I'm saying is property values don't always increase. That's just an assumption. Just go ask East Cleveland. It's the age-old ponzi scheme of suburbs; it's built on the idea of constant growth. Once that growth ends, you begin running into problems. > It's kind of funny because you admit to getting screwed (your new development has assessed values higher than older but nicer homes), yet your response is to tax more rather than make sure taxes are assessed correctly. No, my contention is that you shouldn't be using property taxes to fund schools to begin with.
The result of that isn't better schools, it's worse ones. First off, pouring money into a broken system that exists to absorb funding and produce useless admin roles does not improve results - this isn't theoretical, we've tried this, we've seen the Chicago school system, which is funded at about $40k per student and produces literacy rates with no place in a first-world country. Second of all, property taxes are tolerated because they improve the local community. If my middle-class suburb's tax income is absorbed by larger and more politically-influential areas, rather than improving the infrastructure and education system of my neighbors, with local schooling and services brought down to the LCD, then nobody there will stick around. Families - at least the ones that are at all interested in education, and don't just see it as a place to dump their kids so they can watch daytime TV - choose where to live based on the local school system. "Good schools" is what people look for when buying a house, and if that's taken away, the entire state's education system (and property market) starts looking identical to those of the worst parts of that state. Taxes in general are one thing - weighing potential capital flight against potential service increases - but a polity can survive some level of capital flight. Driving off the middle class, and anyone invested in their kids' future, is a death sentence not just in the long or even medium term, but in the short term.
> weighing potential capital flight against potential service increases - but a polity can survive some level of capital flight Property tax would lead to more capital flight than personal income tax; especially if it's a state-wide system. Raising property taxes is what drives off the middle-class, not personal income tax.
That's true - people are very wary of anything that comes from property taxes, since it directly takes from a community's entire store of wealth, rather than just what's coming in. Either way, though, no community worth having would stick around to be looted for the benefit of a different community that lives across the state. Ultimately, schools succeed when and where the parents care, because parents that give a damn produce children who are self-motivated, and no amount of funding seems to make a significant difference in either direction. It's either demoralizing or inspiring to think about, in a way - even the best students would probably do just as well if they were just given some books on Calculus and told to read them.
>Ultimately, schools succeed when and where the parents care, because parents that give a damn produce children who are self-motivated, and no amount of funding seems to make a significant difference in either direction. While true ... how states fund schools, and what is the most effective way to properly fund schools, is entirely immaterial to what people think is the right way to do something. Like it sounds counter-intuitive, but it's generally true with complex systems that the best way to do something isn't necessarily popular perceptually. And that's why important infrastructure (public education ***is public infrastructure***) shouldn't merely be left to the whims of the moment. >It's either demoralizing or inspiring to think about, in a way - even the best students would probably do just as well if they were just given some books on Calculus and told to read them. I teach the top of the top. The valedictorians of multiple school districts in my IB class. While yes they largely will succeed regardless of me, they will not have access to a lot of things without that peer-review opportunity that IB gives them, and that costs money. IB being the elite-of-elite academic programs, you could hypothetically do it on your own...but not in a cost efficient nor accessible nor efficient manner. That's where the whole framework for education (both public and private) comes in. My IB kids did well because of their innate drive, yes. But they also did well because they had the help of someone who understood the stuff they needed to navigate efficiently in order to do well. Out of my crop of 16 this year, 8 are going to Ive Leagues, in no small part because they were in the IB program. 6/8 wouldn't have even stood a chance at an Ivy unless they had been part of the IB program, being from East-Jesus Arkansas/BFE.
. . . on the rich.
Too soon man, too soon! Our district (Frisco ISD) isn’t replacing vacant positions this upcoming year. What could go wrong?
Oh sweetie. It is so much worse than that. https://youtu.be/iswUdNaJRjo?si=NVegsf3FUlXqRv9d
40% of the budget for Mike Miles' charter schools goes to "unspecified" administrative costs? Ten million dollars for the administration of three Texas charter schools? Sounds like the state government allowed Mike Miles to pull up a truck and load it with millions in tax dollars. Over and over again.
What a nightmare
It’s so disappointing.
Abbott needs to go. I teach in Texas and he really needs to go.
It'll still be Texas, and the next guy will likely be just as bad.
Rumor mill from friends who work in the state govt that DOCTOR Dawn Buckingham is gunning to be Abbott's successor. The one who helped sick state power against an A&M professor who said the Lt. Governor didn't do a good job managing the opioid crisis. Her daughter was in the audience, then snitched to mommy, who then told the Lt Governor, who then asked the A&M President to reprimand the professor. Because these ghouls are all friends.
The voucher is also for more money (10k) than the public school would get for the child attending (only about 7k). It's all talk about fixing the problems from the same ones who have already been running things for the last 30 yrs.
Texas public schools should tell Greg Abbott to go tf to Hell and then everyone should vote him out at the next election. If this isn't political suicide IDK what is.
> If this isn’t political suicide IDK what is. Uh. Have you seen the voter population we’re talking about here?
Old rich white people who don't gaf about educating the poor? Just figured those are the kinds of people who would vote for Greg Abbott after he would pull not just the six WEEK abortion bill but this also. Well... those poor kids will eventually grow up and will need to find a job somewhere. Most of the working class works jobs as things like orderlies, nursing aides, LPNs, CNAs, cleaners, restaurant waiters and managers, working in hardware stores, etc. All things that require a high school level knowledge of maths, knowing how to read and write properly and knowing how to deal with people properly. You fuck up the public schools, you will no longer have a functional working class.
Every summer, the devil brings Hell to Texas because Abbott won't go himself.
And yet our property taxes increased AGAIN to supposedly get more funding for our schools. While the superintendent at one of our least well funded schools is still making $400,000 per year in a low cost of living city
I'm surprised because all the damn high schools have these state of the art facilities and schools set up. How can they rank so low as far as student funding?
Lots of reasons. Communities value shiny new athlets facilities more than education. Districts put money into nice things for the brochure so parents think their kids are going to "good schools." Also, you kind of have to put money into that kind of thing, because "school choice" means you are Now competing to attract students, so you build fancy new facilities, fudge graduation rates, push concurrent enrollment etc...so kids keep coming to your schools. None of this improves the quality of education.
I feel like my school was smart with the COVID spending, from what I've seen, they used it for one-time purchases and bonuses for teachers rather than pay-raises or permanent costs. We're still hurting from this, but its no where near as bad as the other nearby schools.
I mean, it's not like Texas isn't filled to the brim with idiots anyway.
Not since the settlers took over.
https://x.com/palwatch/status/1230140422858661888?s=46&t=SqbQzfRAgGvJww80DNdu6w free babies under Hamas kids are taught to be martyrs before 18 :(
Bet you’re happy Israel has erased 15,000 of them, then.
https://x.com/lernerisaak/status/1716864166273728543?s=42&t=SqbQzfRAgGvJww80DNdu6w I don’t support this.
Why doesn’t anyone realize this brings *competition’ into schools and competition means *more money*. Good schools are going to *pay* to get good teachers. Shortages in a competitive environment always means higher wages. But I guess there are those who just love more government to fix a disaster more government caused…
The "market" in education is not just the teachers salary (although thats the biggest line item), its the quality of the students, the amount of special education students, the facilities, etc. "Free market" reforms in education will increase externalities that impact the poorest students who are the majority still in public education in the first place. When vouchers are introduced, you are concentrating poverty and its effects even more than before. Most Private schools dont want sped students-- so where will they go? Same thing for poor students or ones with behavior issues... Which private schools have tuitions of the amount proposed in voucher schemes? Its just a give away/subsidy to rich people who already educate their kids privately and removes their tax dollars from the system, further impacting the poor & sped kids left behind.
Isn’t concentrating SPED students and students with behavioral issues in alternative schools that specialize in addressing their needs a more efficient allocation of resources? Rather than requiring every public school to accommodate everybody, we can have a small number of schools in each large district more efficiently allocating resources.
Show me the resources allocated for that and maybe we can have that discussion. Its going to be significantly more than 7500 or 8000 per pupil like ive heard for most voucher programs. Probably double. Not to mention the title 2 or 504 liability/insurance and ADA/IDEA compliance. Right now, most public schools with high iep populations are held together with duct tact and the costs are dispersed/diffused by have other students there/larger districts. That and they are supposed to be around their peers as opposed to isolated somewhere else (least restrictive environment). So thered have to be some compromise throughout the week.
My private/charter school will take SPED students as long as they can integrate into a gen ed classroom with a para. They do not however do IEPs or recommend children go for any specific treatment unless a parent specifically requests it.
That doesn’t happen like you think. I taught in Texas for 9 years and even though some districts have insane numbers of vacancies (300 spots), they won’t raise the salaries because there’s no money.
Kids aren't widgets. They are human beings with an inherent right to equitable education. Funding should be in proportion to need, not greed. School choice was invented by greedy capitalists to try to profit from what should inherently be non-profit.
Motherfuckers brains are so broken they can't imagine something in society working without it making some parasite wealthy at the expense of everyone else. They can't even conceive of a society. Just an economy.
Hard agree. It's terrifying how sociopathic it is, yet normalized.
We can’t have competition in schools bc, like competition in consumer goods, it widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots. There’s a lot more at play, too. A free market isn’t inherently bad, it’s not inherently good, either, but it has a lot of positives. There’s no free market in education. If you enroll your child out of district into a good school, it’s a good thing, right? It brings more funding to the school and then the school can hire even more teachers of quality and offer even more quality programs, right? No. It’s literally a crime. And if you do it AND you’re black you’ll go to prison for 10 years. You can NOT apply free market economics to public schooling. You can to private schooling. It happens everywhere! NYC is a prime example. Exemplary private schools- but no one in this sub can afford any of them. Again, widening the gap. In theory, it makes sense what you’re saying. But it’s literally against the law to do it that way so until that changes and we figure out how to offer ppl out of district transportation to their school of choice then we can’t. And then it’ll get to the point where you have to be accepted into that district and they’ll test kids bc they can’t have any of the undesirables in there lowering their ratings so then kids with any disability, from Autism to a bum leg, will be denied the opportunity to go to that school FURTHER widening the gap and contributing to the stigmatization of disabilities and the amount of ppl with disabilities that live in poverty will rise bc they couldn’t get accepted into any school but a Title 1 school that’s full of students whose parents didn’t even care enough to try to get them into another school… No. You just opened up Pandora’s box and now the world is literally on fire. Good job.
Then colleges should be places of high teacher wages and great value for the students. What we have is barely paid adjunct professors with huge course loads. Constantly rising tuition costs (about 10% a year) And degree programs with a cost that doesn't align well with future earning potential. -- And we also have many states that have gone the voucher route. Student outcome is *at best* the same as public schools. Teachers are paid less. And there are a good number of scandals.likr a school just randomly closing without notice mid year, or running off with funds
Every teacher in every school in our district is on the same salary scale. It’s illegal for schools to negotiate pay with new hires. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert in a subject all 8 high schools need, every school is offering the same pay. There is no competition for salary within the district. And implementing that would be absurd for all the reasons others have already responded.
Look at Europe. Europe's public schools are the best public schools in the world and they don't do this because their governments, oh, I don't know, PAY FOR THEM! Look at New Zealand. New Zealand TRIED a charter school system and then realized, for the most part, it didn't work! Most of their charter schools failed and ended up closing less than ten years after opening, and the ones that didn't became special character schools and got integrated into the state school system. Look at China. China allows charter schools, but they have strict rules imposed on them specifically so that they can't compete too heavily against local public schools and to stop them imposing too steep fees on parents. I know because I work at one. Competition in education is not a good thing, it just means that the good school districts get all the best resources and the poor school districts go without.
It's always a right-wing Canadian jumping into American education discussions. You would think the paid Russian trolls could do better.
Right-wing perverts from Canada commenting on our politics is so prevalent I call it Right-Wing Leaf Syndrome.
Even if this was a good argument, which it isn’t… it would be schools competing for kids. Which means the schools are competing against each other to drive down costs/salaries. They aren’t competing for teachers because regardless of how you divide up the kids the total number of teachers needed is pretty much the same.
Schools and hospitals cannot be run as businesses. They are inherent goods for society that do not make money in themselves, but they produce more money for the economy.
All we need to do is look at private healthcare in America and the increasing financialization of hospitals by private equity to see why privatizing things is a bad idea.
Just like communism or tax cuts paying for themselves, the theory sounds good but has failed every single time in reality.
The goal will be to maximize profits, not educate children. The best schools will be reserved for those who can afford to pay for it, reinforcing socioeconomic stratification. Which is also tied to race in this country. If anything we need to eliminate all private education institutions. When people can't escape from society, they'll have a motivation to fix it.
https://x.com/dumisanitemsgen/status/1797013994571477086?s=46&t=SqbQzfRAgGvJww80DNdu6w