On One Elsewords: Texas’s Governor Is Trying to Destroy Public Education — and Dim Those Friday Night Lights
In which Nora De La Cour writes for Jacobin about Texas Governor Greg Abbotts attempts to put democracy aside for the purposes of gutting public education:
On a Friday evening in late September, Texas governor Greg Abbott continued his aggressive push for school vouchers at a high school football game in Dallas. At an event called Parents Matter Tailgate, he hopped on the bullhorn and said, “Tonight is a typical night in Texas — tonight is about football, family, fun, and freedom. One of the freedoms we believe in is the freedom of parents to choose what’s right for their child.”
It’s true that there’s nothing more typical of Texas than high school football. But the game Abbott chose to attend, between two private Christian academies, is not typical of a state where the vast majority of students are still enrolled in traditional public schools. If Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick succeed in enacting their radical privatization agenda, though, that could start to change pretty quickly. The policies they envision would siphon resources away from districts already weakened by underfunding, draining the lifeblood from communities — particularly among Texas’s large rural population. As one contributor to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted, subsidizing private education from the public coffers will shrink public school athletic budgets, and ultimately, extinguish those beloved Friday night lights.
After surviving a primary challenge bankrolled by the West Texas billionaires fueling his state’s hard-right turn toward Christian nationalism, Abbott announced that school choice would be a top priority for last spring’s legislative session. But like previous statewide voucher efforts, Abbott’s proposals died in the Texas House of Representatives, facing fierce opposition mainly from urban Democrats and rural Republicans, who appear to recognize the threat to their local districts.
“The governor’s been doing a tour now for the better part of the year, trying to drum up support for this issue,” Dr Chloe Latham Sikes, an Austin-based education researcher and deputy director of policy at the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA), told Jacobin. “But at hearings we continue to see dozens of people in support, and hundreds of people opposed.”
Abbott recently announced he’ll call yet another special session in October to force his plan over the line, promising payback for any legislator who stands in his way. It’s yet another example of a governor pulling out all the stops in order to realize an extreme minority goal: public dollars for private education. As deep-pocketed privatizers advance this aim across the United States, it’s worth considering what lessons we might learn from the Lone Star State.
Read the rest at Jacobin.com