This came out yesterday.  The most recent, well-investigated review of peer-reviewed research evidence on school vouchers appears in a TCEP policy memo co-authored by University of Texas Professors Dr. Huriya Jabbar, Dr. Jennifer Holme & doctoral students—Melinda Lemke, A.V. LeClair, Joanna Sanchez and Edgar M. Torres, Education Policy and Planning, University of Texas at Austin.  

It is titled, ""Will School Vouchers Benefit Low-Income Families? Assessing the Evidence” and can be downloaded here. This framing and analysis is important because low-income, minorities are used to justify this direction in policy—as if these policy makers every really cared for our poor, minority youth...

With respect to SB4 specifically, this is an apt quote: 

“These proposals would divert corporate tax dollars owed to the state of Texas to subsidize vouchers for students to attend private schools, and would give these corporations a tax break in the process, with little or no accountability for what is taught, what is learned, or how taxpayer dollars are spent.”

  As scholars, our value added contribution is bringing the best of what we know in policy debates.  This policy memo is worth a peek as it is very germane to these very wrong-headed proposals that some of our state leaders are advocating for.

-Angela

#TxLege #LatinoEdu #EdPolicy #Vouchers #SayNoToVouchers

Texas Senate voucher bill specifics unveiled

Kiah Collier

American-Statesman Staff

3:19 p.m. Monday, April 13, 2015 | Filed in: State

MyStatesman

Last week, just after a key Texas House lawmaker unveiled the details of a plan designed to ease funding inequities among the state’s public schools, a Texas Senate education panel quietly approved the new version of a divisive bill that would allocate taxpayer money in an effort to help public school students switch to private or religious schools.
At a lengthy public hearing late last month, Senate Education Committee Chairman Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, indicated his Senate Bill 4 may eventually contain a modified version of one of two other private school voucher-type bills — Senate Bill 276, a more traditional voucher bill that would give state money directly to students in the form of grants to help pay tuition, or Senate Bill 642, designed to give tax credits to Texas businesses that donate to a non-profit scholarship fund to help them.
The latest version of Taylor’s bill, made public for the first time Monday, shows it now contains a modified version of the latter bill — filed by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt — which opponents describe as a “back door voucher” program.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston

“This is a great concept, tax credit scholarships, that has successfully worked in 14 other states,” Bettencourt said in a statement last Tuesday, the day the Senate Education Committee voted 8-3 to send Taylor’s bill to the full Senate. (Three of the four Democrats who serve on the panel opposed it).
Under the program, businesses would be allowed to donate up to 50 percent of their yearly franchise tax liability to one of 25 pre-approved “educational assistance organizations,” according to Bettencourt’s statement. Those non-profits would then be allowed to provide public $500 scholarships and private school scholarships worth up to 75 percent of the average amount the state currently pays per public school student — or about $5,927.
The bill includes several provisions critics have demanded, including one to ensure students who receive scholarships are needy and others requiring that private schools receiving public money be accredited and administer annual “nationally norm-referenced” exams.
But some education groups still oppose the program, contending it is “school vouchers by another name.”
“What do you get when you marry taxpayer subsidies for private schools to taxpayer-funded corporate tax breaks? A voucher in disguise called the ‘scholarship tax credit,’” wrote David Anthony, a former Houston-area superintendent who now heads educational advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas.
“These proposals would divert corporate tax dollars owed to the state of Texas to subsidize vouchers for students to attend private schools, and would give these corporations a tax break in the process, with little or no accountability for what is taught, what is learned, or how taxpayer dollars are spent.”
Texas’ new lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who now presides over the Senate, pushed similar legislation as a Republican state senator and has made it one of his top education issues during his first term. He has described the goal of the legislation as helping poor kids to escape failing, inner-city schools.
“Senate Bill 4 is a landmark piece of legislation that provides school choice to low-income students and students with a disability,” he said in a statement last week. “It answers the call for school choice that I have heard from parents across the state.”
The bill faces an uncertain fate in the Texas House, though, which voted overwhelmingly in 2013 to ban state money from being spent on voucher-type programs. More recently, the lower chamber’s lead public education policymaker, Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, has indicated he still is not enthusiastic about the idea.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 13 states and Washington, D.C., have voucher-type programs with more than half offering benefits only to low-income or special needs students or both. On its website, the non-partisan group cites a 2011 study by the Center on Education Policy that found that the programs “have had no clear positive effect on student academic achievement, and mixed outcomes for students overall.”