‘A colossal mistake': Abilene ISD superintendent criticizes Texas' new education voucher law

Yahoo

4 days ago

ABILENE, Texas () – Four days after Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 2 into law, allocating billions in public education funding and creating a new voucher-style program, Abilene ISD Superintendent Dr. John Kuhn is voicing serious concerns. Calling the move a 'colossal mistake,' Kuhn claims the new education savings account program threatens to weaken the state's public school system by diverting funds to private institutions and undermining decades of public education policy.
'I think it's really, really unfair to fund kids who go to private schools at $10,000 each out of the state treasury, while you're funding kids in public schools in Texas, $6,000 out of the state treasury. I think it doesn't pass the smell test,' Kuhn shared. 'The public school system was established to ensure that every kid in the state of Texas, no matter where they live, has access to free, appropriate public education, and that is the system that has traditionally educated 90 plus percent of the kids in Texas. It feels to me like the state is taking its eye off the ball, and rather than serving the majority of kids now, they've decided to spend a billion dollars covering the tuition costs that traditionally parents have covered when they chose private schools.'
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Kuhn pointed to other states that have adopted similar voucher programs, explaining that most recipients were already attending private schools prior to receiving state assistance.
'So the notion that these vouchers are going to be used to help public school kids escape failing schools, that's really not what pans out. I think it's Iowa, where only 13% of the voucher recipients ever attended a private school. So what it ends up being is a new entitlement. It's like reverse Robin Hood, where you're taking money away from the middle class to help offset expenses that traditionally, wealthy parents have covered for themselves,' Kuhn explained.
As this legislation rolls out, alongside efforts to eliminate the STAAR test, Kuhn believes public schools must begin to rethink how they present themselves to their communities.
'I think for a lot of us in schools, we had the mentality that we have to make sure that our students are being successful, so that when they take the STAAR test, we're getting a good accountability rating. I think a lot of us traditionally have thought that's really our marker of success, that we can show parents, hey, we're a high-quality school,' Kuhn said. 'What I've seen, especially with large charter school chains, is that they have huge marketing budgets that public schools have traditionally not had. With this new bill coming, I think it's really going to be important that public schools start to really more aggressively market themselves and really kind of aggressively compete for public eyeballs and for positive public perception.'
Kuhn noted that while public schools receive around $6,000 per student from the state, the $10,000 earmarked for voucher students is comprised of state funds, and there could potentially be more in federal funds soon. Programs like free and reduced lunch and Title I help bridge the gap in public school funding.
'The state is basically fronting these private schools' money that we get from the federal government, not from the state, right? ' Kuhn shared. 'There's a bill coming through the federal government right now that would add even more voucher dollars to students in the states that are in voucher programs. So ultimately, if and when that passes, which is pretty likely to pass at the federal level, voucher students will be getting more in state and federal voucher money than public schools get in state and federal money.'
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As for how the new voucher program will impact enrollment in Abilene ISD, Kuhn anticipates only modest effects.
'I think this is just another choice in an already choice-rich environment. I don't expect a devastating impact on enrollment, but I'm also not going to say we won't have any students who opt for a voucher,' Kuhn explained.
Still, he remains wary of how voucher programs will evolve in the future, especially as more private institutions become eligible to participate.
'To participate in the voucher system, a private school has to have been in existence for at least two years. The purpose of that part of the bill was to prevent, like fly-by-night operators, from just popping up a private school because they see an opportunity to make money,' Kuhn added. 'I don't disagree with the notion of parents having choices. I do completely disagree with the rhetoric that they didn't already have a lot of choices; they have had them, but I think for us in Abilene, we definitely have looked at our own system and kind of broken through some of those really old barriers of how things have always been done in public schools. And that's a good thing.'
Kuhn also kept a close eye on another major education proposal this session: the potential elimination of the STAAR test. Though the Texas House voted to replace STAAR with a national norm-referenced alternative, the bill ultimately died due to disagreements between House and Senate leadership.
'Some of those national norm-referenced tests we already use in public schools as a kind of diagnostic tool to see how our students are progressing through the year, so that we know they're going to be ready when it's time to take the STAAR…The other good thing about using a national norm reference test is that the Texas Education Agency can't get its fingers in it and adjust the scoring metrics, and so it's like it's an objective measure. There's no subjectivity to it. Thirdly, you can compare how Texas students are doing versus students in several other states. With the STAAR test, you can't do that,' Kuhn said.
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He added that over time, STAAR has lost its credibility due to politically motivated adjustments and unclear metrics.
'They constantly tweak all of these metrics, and it has resulted in a system that really nobody has very much confidence in. In fact, there were representatives who said nobody trusts the STAAR test. Well, the reason nobody trusts the STAAR test is that it pretends to be a school accountability system, but it's really a political narrative machine. When we need schools to look good because somebody's running for office and wants to say we had a Texas miracle, then they make schools look good, and when they need them to look bad so they can get vouchers passed, then schools look bad, and that has happened over and over and over again. It's not a trustworthy system, because these aren't trustworthy people,' Kuhn expressed. 'When you let the politicians control the school accountability system, it has all the validity of the Soviet crop reports. You know what you hear about from the old days, right? It's a completely moral and ethically compromised system that misinforms Texans rather than informs them.'
Even so, Kuhn sees value in using standardized testing as a tool when done properly.
'As soon as you take student test results and weaponize them, turning them into a battering ram to beat up teachers and beat up schools. Now there's a motivation to have those tests not be great… The first thing I would do is make it diagnostic,' Kuhn said. 'When we get our STAAR results back, I dig into them. I've maintained a spreadsheet going back to 2012, which is the first year STAAR was given. I did it for my last school district. I'm doing it for Abilene ISD, where I track trends, and have we improved year upon year? And then, how did we do in comparison to the state? Are we lagging behind the state? Are we doing better than the state? Are we catching up to the state? All of that is very useful information to me.'
Kuhn said that the challenges he faced during his time at Mineral Wells ISD mirror many of those in Abilene. His solution: advocate loudly and consistently for his district and the people within it.
'I'm going to fight for the reputation of my district. I'm going to fight for the reputation of my teachers, my kids,' Kuhn expressed. 'We aren't just building up kids. We're building up a city, we're building up society, we're building up the state and the world by giving these kids a fighting chance. The accountability system is just one quality marker that matters. That's why I talked earlier about marketing, right, like I think public schools have put all of our eggs in the accountability system basket as the way we prove that we're good. But if you look at universities, look at ACU, they market themselves with logos everywhere. You look around, there's purple all over the place… I think we've been a little too passive in really being forward with the fact that we are a great school, and here are all the reasons why. I think part of the reason for that is we're very busy just trying to teach kids and trying to feed kids and trying to transport kids and trying to make sure that the hallways are safe. I mean, there's so much to be done just to have a school, that we've taken our eye off the ball when it comes to marketing ourselves as public schools. The big charter school chains haven't made that mistake. There are charter school chains that have worse academic scores than the public schools around them, but they still draw quite a few kids from the public schools because they market themselves extremely well.'
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Still, Kuhn's primary concern remains the long-term fiscal impact of vouchers.
'The costs have exploded in the other states that have done universal vouchers. Currently, the bill they just passed is a billion cap over the next two years. The question is, are they going to remove that cap? When they do, there are states where it's now 10 times what they initially budgeted for it,' Kuhn explained. 'There's one state governor, Arizona, I think, who said, we're going to have to stop certain programs in our state just to pay for the voucher system. So I think that's what I would I would challenge people to watch over the next 5 to 10 years, what does this do to the state budget? Because I think they made a colossal mistake.'
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