Raise Your Hand Texas Save Texas Schools & the Texas PTA
By George Scaggs
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas As the contentious state budget battle continues in a new Special Session of the 82
nd Texas Legislature funding for public education continues to dominate the debate.
Not surprisingly the education bureaucracy and teachers unions have proven adept at throwing their weight around exerting their influence to squeeze ever more dollars out of public coffers.
Teachers unions and their political allies have deluged the Texas Capitol during the regular session with rallies protests and advocacy campaigns all crying out for spending beyond our states means.
Among the more popular efforts is a campaign called
Save Texas Schools. Self-described as A state-wide coalition dedicated to preserving our Texas schools" interestingly the organizations name appears to provide an inadvertent yet tacit admission of its proponents real priorities.
For when we examine the realities of education spending it is not Save Texas Children" that this crowd is so much interested in as saving the publicly funded fiefdom known as the public school bureaucracy.
If truth in advertising applied to political advocacy Save our bloated publicly funded system from scrutiny" might prove more accurate but then the phrasing isnt nearly as catchy and would never fit on a bumper sticker. Nor do STS advocates have any interests in Save the Taxpayers". By all appearances it is the continuation of seemingly limitless spending that theyre after.
STS is far from alone. A similar effort
Raise Your Hand Texas is using star power to make their point featuring actor Tommy Lee Jones and former SBC CEO Ed Whitacre in a series of television commercials to bolster their case for more spending .
Whitacres involvement doesnt exactly lend credibility to the campaign. Earlier this year the former CEO of AT&T and GM willingly misled the public by appearing in commercials in which he claimed that GM had not only paid off its government loan but had done so ahead of schedule.
What Whitacre neglected to divulge was that GM had merely paid off one taxpayer backed loan" with another. Lest we forget this is the man that was
placed at the helm of GM by The Obama Administration and just last week the administration revealed that the GM bailout will end up resulting in an $18 billion loss for taxpayers.
Not to be left out the Texas
Parent-Teachers Association is in on the act too.
There was a time when the PTA was a vehicle intended to provide parents more opportunity to participate in their childs education. That was then and this in now. Today the PTA has been reduced to little more than a private lobbying and fundraising arm of the public education bureaucracy.
Although the claims by Big Education" proponents that Texas ranks 44
th out of 50 in per student spending are true enough the seemingly damning statistic overlooks Texas relatively low cost of living when compared with many other states.
The fact that Texas spends considerably less not only illustrates that were not as fool-hardy in padding bloated public education bureaucracies but that our state also enjoys a very appealing cost of living.
Putting more dollars into the classroom is one thing but as public education spending has ballooned over the last several decades the percentage of dollars spent outside the classroom has grown dramatically. Such that there is now a 1-1 ratio of teachers vs. non-teachers in Texas public school systems compared to a 2.5-1 ratio in the 1970s.
For all their gnashing of teeth notably Big Ed advocates fail to acknowledge two very telling statistics; over the last decade not only has public education spending in Texas doubled but per pupil spending has grown at twice the rate of inflation.
The math clearly indicates that spending is out of whack somewhere but rather than reasonable scrutiny even when government (at all levels) is out of money
the Big Ed crowd demands that the reckless pattern of spending continue unabated. They insist that anything less equates with not caring about children or the future of Texas.
Unfortunately they still make plenty of hay with such claims. Even with decades of empirical data which indicates otherwise much of an unsuspecting public remains convinced that spending more money results in children being better educated.
Big Ed advocates cant seem to be bothered with a myriad of commonsense reforms to reduce spending. For example they show little interest in scrutinizing counter-productive federal mandates that drive up costs. Nor do they object to an increasing over-emphasis on sports in public schools. Today massive sums are spent on programs and facilities to effectively coddle a select few students in preparation to enter the industry of college sports.
Alternative means of educating children for less money are off the table too. With a lack of enough money to go around one might think that an honest appraisal of charter schools which teach at a considerably lower rate per student would be in order. Instead Big Ed and teachers unions routinely work to prevent the expansion of charter schools.
Ironic considering that while insisting theyre particularly interested in providing opportunity for economically disadvantaged and minority students most of the parents clamoring for more charter schools at a recent rally in Austin were in fact poorer Hispanics who cannot afford the luxury of private schools.
Ever increasing demands for public education dollars are but a symptom of larger problems. As for the root causes that are driving demand many of the forces advocating seemingly unlimited spending on schools are the same people who have supported the destructive lassiez-faire attitudes our society has adopted over the last couple of generations.
Pretending that morality and fundamental family values or the lack thereof are inconsequential has created tremendous economic pressure on public coffers. When children are not properly cared for and taught right from wrong at home it results in increased demand for public services. Worse yet schools end up consequently distracted from their primary mission of education.
Similarly though Texas spent $1.6 billion in 2009 on education alone for the children of illegal aliens Democrats and their Big Ed allies appear utterly disinterested in halting the massive influx of illegals entering our state. Again resulting in ever increasing pressure on our ability to provide social services at all levels.
When taxpayers can no longer afford to pay for all the services government has promised the citizenry in essence the political forces behind Big Ed believe the public spigot should be opened wider for anyone who happens to be in our state legal or not.
Taxpayers will tell you there really is no mythical pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow. The sooner we effectively deal with that reality the better.
Its time for Big Education to call a new tune.
George Scaggs is a writer commentator voice actor & audio-video producer. You can find more of his work at American Thinker Ramparts360.com & Bargain Citizen Media.
