OPINION
Every time Gov. Greg Abbott's posts about school vouchers pop up in my social media feed, I take to the comments to see how people are reacting to them.
Time after time, some of my most politically conservative friends are the first to pop into view, telling Abbott how bad they think vouchers will be for our state.
Some come from the perspective of being public school educators or public school parents who fear that the shift in funding will create larger rifts in public school education.
Others are homeschool parents who opted to instruct their children themselves because they liked the freedom that comes with not being tied into either the public or private school system.
Some have pointed out that private schools do not have to meet the same requirements public schools must.
Still more have attacked the governor, accusing him of being motivated by his family's connections to private school organizations, particularly his wife being a board member for the private Blaze School in the Austin area.
Others still have said they would rather have property tax relief instead of a taxpayer- funded voucher program.
I agree with the comments criticizing the push for vouchers.
The state government of Texas is in its third decade under Republican control.
The state also controls the purse for every public school district in Texas, even though it doesn't provide all of the funding.
It is the legislature that sets the finance rules by which each district must play, and those rules are at least tweaked if not utterly rewritten each time the legislature is in session. It stands to reason, then, that if Texas public education is failing, the responsibility lies with the people who drove it there. The solution to overcrowded schools with behavior issues and falling standards isn't to remove funding.
If anything, our state's children deserve more funding to help them have the resources they need to succeed.
One suggestion that has pretty unanimous support among everyday Texans, including this public school parent, is to reroute the funding spent on standardized testing into the classrooms.
There is a place for some standardized testing to ensure that students are getting a consistent level of education throughout the state.
However, that shouldn't be a multimillion-dollar business.
In 2021, the state agreed to contracts that totaled $338 million with Cambium Assessment and Pearson, according to the Texas Tribune for four years.
Simple math says new contracts will be on the horizon this year.
We don't need to take funding away from public schools.
We need to give them the resources they need to succeed.
Abigail Allen is the Editor & Publisher of the Post-Signal. She can be reached at [email protected].
