02.13.07

Raise Your Hand For Common Sense

Posted in Around The Nation, Public Schools, Vouchers at 9:06 pm by wcnews

There were snippets about this earlier today. The Startlegram has this article, Leaders join anti-voucher group, about a new group created to help counter the pro- voucher crowd.

Former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff joined several high-profile Texas business leaders Tuesday to announce a public education advocacy group that’s opposed to private school vouchers and wants to replace the state’s standardized tests.

Called Raise Your Hand, the bipartisan group includes the chief executives of AT&T, Continental Airlines and H-E-B. Its other priorities include all-day pre-kindergarten and kindergarten for every 4- and 5-year-old in the state, as well as a lower student-to-teacher ratio.

This group will fit nicely I’m sure with Parent PAC. HEB was already helping them last election cycle. We need much more of this school finance debate:

“We don’t understand how it is that if you have a campus with 500 children and 100 somehow . . . take advantage of the voucher and go somewhere else, how does that affect the other 400?” Ratliff said. “If it’s a bad school and we take a hundred of them out with vouchers, it’s still a bad school. We believe a far better course . . . is fix the school. Don’t abandon 400 children for the sake of the hundred.”

The group wants to replace the high-stakes exit-level Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills with end-of-course exams.

Thank you Mr. Ratliff for helping to bring common sense and logic back into the forefront of this debate.

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