State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio), candidate for lieutenant governor, laid out her vision for the future of Texas public schools today in terms that left no doubt how much she differs from her opponent, Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston).
Accompanied by supporters including Texas AFT members from San Antonio affiliates, Van de Putte spoke outside a San Antonio elementary school whose students are among the five million enrollees in our state’s public schools who would benefit under her plan.
Linda Bridges, president of Texas AFT, offered this comment today on that plan:
I don’t know how the contrast between Leticia Van de Putte and Dan Patrick could be any clearer after reading Van de Putte’s plans for education.
On the one hand, you have a proven leader who has fought for public education throughout her 14 years on the Senate Education Committee, while on the other you have a guy who spent his first term chairing that committee with the intent to dismantle public education via private-school vouchers and bills to help turn neighborhood schools over to private charter operators.
Patrick didn’t even wring his hands over the $5.4 billion cuts to education and resulting loss of 11,000 teachers in 2011. He twiddled his thumbs, then voted for the cuts, while Van de Putte fought to bring sanity into the budget and provide full support for the 80,000 new students that enter our schools each year.
Our teachers and the parents who support them understand that the best way to educate our kids is to give them full support, equal opportunity and proven policies like pre-K and smaller class sizes featured in Van de Putte’s plan. They know that further segregating our schools into the haves and have-nots—as Patrick proposes with his privatization efforts—is the biggest mistake we can make for Texas’s future.
Van de Putte’s plan as outlined today (see http://leticiavandeputte.com/texasfirst-education/) includes these key elements:
--restore full-day funding for quality pre-K programs;
--reduce class sizes in pre-K (because currently there’s no cap on class size in pre-K);
--invest in the schools, proven programs, and teachers our schoolchildren need to reach their potential;
--end the over-reliance on and punitive nature of standardized testing—return to diagnostic use of testing, reduce the number of tests, and make tests more timely so that early interventions can help students graduate and get a head start on college and career;
--promote access to blended learning for all students, expanding broadband availability to all, ensuring that digital learning is of high quality, and maintaining vital face-to-face interaction with teachers; and
--improving community-based control and accountability to parents and taxpayers—for example, by ensuring that parents have real access to the board members who determine curriculum and instruction for their children (in contrast to some charter s that have been allowed to open here without anyone physically located in Texas on their governing board).
In contrast, Sen. Patrick in his time in the Senate not only has embraced deep cuts in education funding, but also has sought to expand the misuse of standardized testing, and he has served as the enthusiastic pitch man for private, corporate takeover of public schools via private-school vouchers and other schemes.
Texas AFT represents more than 65,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, support personnel, and higher-education employees across the state. Texas AFT is affiliated with the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers.
