Cloaking Inequity

To add a little humor to the education and public policy debate, Cloaking Inequity is starting a new series entitled Los Chistes (Also check out The Teat, which examines where various school “reformers” derive their funding). Cloaking Inequity has discussed Sandy Kress and Pearson in earlier posts. I teach a course called Critical Policy Analysis on […]

Texas politicians continue to be interested in finding elegant ways to reduce funding for public schools. Now they are aiming at the gems of our educational system— our colleges and universities. No Child Left Behind is coming to a Texas college and university near you. Yes, the Legislature that birthed NCLB wants to apply their […]

Breaking News: One of the Harlem Shake YouTube sensation videos featured Michelle Rhee, Jonathan Alter, Jeb Bush and Rick Perry. Who knew!? Also for your viewing pleasure: UT-Austin Harlem Shake  

Jason Stanford wrote a BRILLIANT piece about Texas supposedly #4 in the nation graduation rates. This is journalist gold. In early January I conducted an analysis of the graduation data via a FOIA request. Clearly the Lone Star State is lying to the feds ala Atlanta and El Paso. Will the feds really allow Texas […]

There have been several articles describing the “Don’t Mess with Texas Revolt” against its own approach to high-stakes testing and accountability that was legislated in No Child Left Behind. Many Texans, regardless of their political stripes, are fed up with the current approach to high-stakes testing and accountability birthed here in the Lone Star State. There […]

Happy New Year 2013! I have often posted on school vouchers over the past few months. Why? There are factions in Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere that still argue they are efficacious educational policy and are pressing them into law. They are not. See CI’s thread on vouchers here. IUPRA will soon release a brief entitled […]

Written in collaboration with Dr. Jaime Portales Voucher supporters in the United States and elsewhere claim (including Sen. Dan Patrick) that vouchers will improve the educational opportunities of disadvantaged students (Sugarman, 1999), and contribute to the social integration of middle- and upper-class students. Voucher supporters argue that, since school choice is already available to upper-class […]

Written in collaboration with the students in my UT-Austin course School Law and Policy 11/7/2012 Guiding question for today’s post on the universal implementation of vouchers: Do they create challenges to the separation between church and state? Questions of the separation of church and state often swirl around conversations about school vouchers. What does the […]

Written in collaboration with Dr. Jaime Portales Guiding question for today’s post on the universal implementation of vouchers: Do they buttress or deconstruct the public school system? In the universal implementation of vouchers Chile, evidence shows that the competition for student enrollment throughout the country has been dominated by private-voucher schools at the expense of […]

Written in collaboration with Dr. Jaime Portales Guiding question for today’s post on the universal implementation of vouchers: Do they improve achievement? In the largest implementation of vouchers in the world, contrasting results appear to have been found on the impact of the Chilean voucher system on student achievement among public and private schools. According […]

Written in collaboration with Dr. Jaime Portales Guiding questions for today’s post on the universal implementation of vouchers: Do they intensify segregation? Do they create more access to high-quality education? If so, for whom? According to various researchers, the introduction of universal vouchers in Chile has exacerbated segregation between schools and between types of schools […]

The rumors are that Texas Governor Rick Perry plans to declare vouchers “emergency legislation.” Dan Patrick, recently appointed head of the Texas Senate Education Committee, is also pushing for “choice.” The Houston Chronicle stated: Patrick is a strong supporter of school vouchers, which would allow tax money to flow to private and religious schools. The […]