There are two kinds of education advocates in Texas – education reform advocates and anti-reform education advocates. Both groups will be active in 2013.
Anti-reform advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas recently produced a poll negatively portraying online education options.
Currently Texas spends more than $12,000 a year per student, a result of a steady and alarming non-teacher hiring inflation that has seen Texas public schools go from six teachers per non-teacher in the ’70s to a 1:1 ratio today.
Charles Butt of HEB sits on the advisory board of Raise Your Hand Texas. Butt also provides most of the money to Parent PAC, a group that actively opposed conservatives during the 2012 primary season.
In addition to its electoral efforts, Parent PAC has signaled it will work against efforts to reform our broken public education system, including opposing school vouchers, a measure that would afford parents options in educating their child.
Another anti-reform Raise Your Hand advisory board member is Kenny Jastrow. Mr. Jastrow has been very active over the last two years. In 2011 Jastrow helped mount a PR campaign to kill proposed accountability and cost savings measures for the University of Texas, where tuition inflation has become notorious.
During the higher-ed fight last year, the Texas Tribune reported with a decidedly anti-reform bent. The Jastrow Foundation and Butts are donors to the Tribune.
The school reform fight is coming. It will feature a bloated school bureaucracy on one side, protecting their positions of privilege and power, and Texas parents on the other side, demanding common sense accountability, cost-effectiveness, and choice in education.