Latinos Won’t Turn Texas Blue Anytime Soon

The gerrymandered Latino vote is trending, but slowly as conveyed below in this informative Texas Monthly piece by R.G. Ratcliffe.

While Hispanic voting was at its highest level ever in 2016, it was an incremental increase to 19 percent of the total turnout, up from 17 percent in 2012. The long-term demographic trends favor Hispanic voting strength over white voters, but at last year’s level of increase, it would take about two more presidential election cycles to close the gap between Republican and Democratic votes. 

Dr. Rogelio Sáenz, dean of the College of Public Policy at the University of Texas at San Antonio, had already researched and explained all of these things in a December 31, 2016 piece published in the San Antonio Express-News titled, "White births, migration explain why Texas remains a red state" where he also mentions that whites face fewer blockages to their vote relative to Latinos and minorities, generally.

Dr. Saenz also calls out Republicans' deliberate attempts to limit the political power of both Latinos and African Americans, such as through the passage of voter ID laws and gerrymandering, as well as through the "slashing of public education funding in public schools that are majority non-white and mass incarceration, which has taken away the vote of many persons of color."

Our policy and legal challenges are significant, but with good research and information such as that which is provided in these and other publications, provide excellent guideposts for the future.

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

TexasMonthly

By R.G. RATCLIFFE

FEB 21, 2017

Latinos Won’t Turn Texas Blue Anytime Soon Growing Latino vote may be years away from deciding statewide elections.

For the past twenty years, Texas Democrats have entered every election saying demographics are on their side. They’ve been hoping that the state’s burgeoning Hispanic population will carry the party back into power. If the 2016 election loss of Democrat Hillary Clinton in Texas proves anything, it is that the state’s Latino vote is less the Sleeping Giant than a growing adolescent who has not yet come of age. And probably won’t anytime soon.

Last fall I reported that there was a surge in Texas of about 530,000 Latinos who had registered to vote amid the anti-Mexican, build-a-wall rhetoric of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. That registration increase apparently played a major role in the spike in Latino voters who showed up to vote in Texas last November. About 395,000 more Latino voters went to the polls than did in the 2012 presidential election. But it was still far too little to make a difference for Democratic candidates statewide. That trend—increasing numbers of Latino voters, but not enough to help Democrats win consistently in Texas—seems likely to continue for the next few elections cycles.

The caveat to that is whether President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants might motivate a group of voters who usually don’t vote, no matter the ethnicity: young voters. A Pew Research Center report estimated that 32 percent of the 2016 eligible Hispanic voters in Texas were between the ages of 18 and 29. Because the great migration of undocumented immigrants from Mexico to Texas occurred before the year 2000, that means many of these young voters were born here and are citizens even if their parents or older siblings are undocumented immigrants fearful of deportation. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies could prompt these youthful voters to flock to the polls next year.

Short of that kind of sea change, Texas Republicans can feel confident of holding the advantage in statewide elections for years to come. Non-Hispanic whites may constitute just 43 percent of the state’s population, but in 2016 they represented more than 65 percent of all the votes cast, according to state voting results provided to me by the Legislative Council. And Anglos gave about 69 percent of their votes to Trump.

To get an idea of how much Hispanic voting will have to grow to offset the white vote, consider this: If the Spanish surname votes of Bexar County, Corpus Christi and all the counties of South Texas and along the Rio Grande to El Paso were added together, they would account for almost half of all the Spanish surname ballots cast in 2016. However, all those ballots together are still outnumbered by the votes cast by whites just in three heavily Republican counties combined: Collin, Denton, and Montgomery.

While Hispanic voting was at its highest level ever in 2016, it was an incremental increase to 19 percent of the total turnout, up from 17 percent in 2012. The long-term demographic trends favor Hispanic voting strength over white voters, but at last year’s level of increase, it would take about two more presidential election cycles to close the gap between Republican and Democratic votes. But elections for governor and most other statewide offices occur in off years, and the gap is even wider. The number of Hispanic votes cast in the past two off-year elections was almost stagnant, increasing only by 14,500 from 2010 to 2014. The Republican advantage in the 2014 off-year elections was close to a million votes.

One thing that might make a difference is a major voter registration drive. The state’s Hispanic population is estimated at 10.4 million, but there were only 4.8 million Hispanics eligible to vote last year, according to Pew estimates. After children too young too vote and non-citizens are winnowed out of the population, Hispanics only make only up 28 percent of the eligible voters. The Texas Secretary of State’s office reported that there were about 3.5 million Spanish surname registered voters in 2016, so the 1.7 million turnout accounted for close to half of all the registered Hispanic voters. But that means more than a million eligible Hispanic voters are still not registered to vote.

Matt Barreto, a University of California Los Angeles political scientist and pollster with Latino Decisions, told me that if Texas Democrats want to increase voter turnout, they first need to increase voter registration. “You’re never going to get a humongous increase unless you get a humongous increase in registration,” he said. “That’s the first thing that needs work in Texas: voter registration drives in the big cities and the Valley.”

Barreto, who has been an expert witness for the Texas Democratic Party in redistricting cases, said the state party also needs to encourage more minority candidates to run for statewide office—even if the prospects of winning are not good. “They won’t all win. A lot of them will run and lose. That’s how you turn a state. You run and lose. That will bring more people into the system. … If you don’t think the system cares about you, there’s almost nothing we can do to get you to vote.

“They need to be encouraging candidates who look like the future of their party to be running for every single office. That will eventually lead to a belief among the voters that the party actually cares about them. If you look up and every year you just have more white candidates running, it creates an idea that the party doesn’t care much about you.”

In fact, the last two Democratic Party nominees for governor were white—former Houston Mayor Bill White in 2010 and former state Senator Wendy Davis of Fort Worth. Barreto said Davis never fully connected with Latino voters and in some San Antonio precincts that are heavily Hispanic, Davis was out voted by Democratic Lieutenant Governor candidate Leticia Van de Putte, a Latina.

A test that may be brewing involves Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who will stand for re-election next year. Cruz appears vulnerable after his failed 2016 presidential campaign and reluctance to endorse Trump for president. He’s mostly vulnerable to a Republican primary challenge. However, he likely will also face a challenge in the general election from either Joaquin Castro of San Antonio or Beto O’Rourke, with a base in heavily Hispanic El Paso. Both are current members of the U.S. House. Cruz is of Cuban heritage, while Castro is Mexican-American.

The greater likelihood is that the growing Hispanic vote will affect local elections first, as they did in Houston last year.

Harris County had the biggest spike in Hispanic voter turnout in 2016. The county saw 73,000 more Hispanic voters than in 2012, and the percentage of the vote grew from 16 percent to almost 20 percent. (For comparison, the number of Spanish surname voters in Bexar County increased by 45,500 over 2012; Dallas County, 33,000 votes; and Travis, about 17,000; even very Republican Tarrant county had an increase of 20,000 Spanish surname voters.)

University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said the impact of Hispanic voting in Harris County could be seen in how poorly Trump performed there. He received 40,000 fewer votes than 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, while Clinton gathered 120,000 more votes in the county than Obama. “Trump’s weakness with urban Hispanics hurt the Republican ticket badly as one can see from precinct level data from Harris County,” Murray said. “That wiped out all down ballot Republicans, despite the fact that the most reliable Democratic voters in Harris County, African Americans, turned out at only about 90 percent of their 2012 vote.”

OK, now, every time journalists write about the growing Hispanic vote and the Democratic Party, the instant response is that not all Latinos vote Democratic. And that’s very true. Latinos who live in predominantly Anglo neighborhoods tend to vote like their neighbors. Wealthier Hispanics are more likely to vote Republican. But Latinos predominantly vote Democratic. How much so is often a point of dispute, and one reason is that exit polls get it wrong.

The first time I really encountered the exit poll problem was 1998, when George W. Bush won re-election as governor, claiming an exit poll showed him receiving half the Hispanic vote. The television networks’ Voter News Service said Bush had won 49 percent of the Texas Hispanic vote. However, exit polls by the William Velasquez Institute set Bush’s margin at 39 percent. In effort to settle the question, I used the Texas Legislative Council’s redistricting computer to look at 180,000 votes cast in 426 urban precincts that had a Hispanic voting age population of more than 70 percent. The result was that Bush received 39 percent of the vote. The big difference, my study was based on tens of thousands of actual votes while the television network’s exit poll was based on interviews with a mere 201 Hispanic voters.

Barreto told me the big problem with using exit polls to tell you much of anything about Hispanic voting in Texas is that the exit surveys usually are set up in swing precincts because the networks are more interested in calling a race than giving an accurate demographic picture of an election. Barreto said in 2014 there were no exit polls south of San Antonio and the surveys were only done in English.

That prompted me to take another look at the 2014 exit polls that showed Governor Greg Abbott receiving 44 percent of the Latino vote over Davis, and U.S. Senator John Cornyn capturing 48 percent. Looking at mostly Hispanic counties of South Texas, it appears that Abbott’s real Latino vote probably was somewhere between 25 and 35 percent. (If anyone knows of a more accurate precinct level study, please let me know.)

A pair of political scientist, Francisco Pedraza and Bryan Wilcox-Archuleta, in a recent Washington Post article challenged the notion that Trump received 34 percent of the Latino vote in Texas. In a study of 4,372 precincts across Texas covering 75 percent of the state’s Hispanic population, they determined that Clinton had won 77 percent of the Hispanic vote to Trump’s 18 percent—very different from the exit polls that showed the results at 61/34 percent.

(For those who want to challenge my analysis or explore further, click here for the 2012/2016 spreadsheet. SSTO means Spanish Surname Turnout. TO is Total turnout of all voters. The Spanish surnames are compiled by the Secretary of State’s office from a list of common surnames in the United States. And, of course, it is possible for someone to be Hispanic and not have a Spanish surname.)

The bottom line is that Democrats will continue to benefit disproportionately from increases in Hispanic turnout, but barring a major change in current trends, it won’t be enough to turn Texas blue for years into the future.

Abbott & Texas GOP History of Discrimination

November 21, 2016
Contact: Matt Angle / Lone Star Project
972-885-9440 

Abbott & Texas GOP History of Discrimination

Evidence of intentional discrimination by Greg Abbott and current Texas Republican leaders is no surprise.  Federal Courts have ruled that Texas Republican leaders have discriminated against Texas citizens over a half-dozen times since 2011.  Congressional, State Senate and State House redistricting plans were all ruled discriminatory, and the Texas voter ID law has been found discriminatory after every court review.  Three findings of intentional discrimination by Abbott and other State leaders are linked below:

2011 Congressional Redistricting Map
2011 State Senate Redistricting Map
2011 Texas Voter ID law

Statement from LSP Director Matt Angle:
“Greg Abbott is the point in the spear of intentional discrimination in Texas.  He should have spent his time at the memorial ceremony apologizing for his sorry and shameful record of intentionally attacking and undermining basic civil and voting rights of millions of Texas citizens."

Presidential candidate Donald Trump has galvanized the Latino vote and we know that this vote makes a big difference in national elections.

"[M]ore than 2 million Latino voters — may head to the polls in November because of the “Trump effect.” Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks against unauthorized Latino immigrants have angered most Latinos because of their family immigrant histories — many of them are second- or third-generation Americans. And many Latinos may know someone dear to them who is or was an immigrant."

 It has gotten personal.

-Angela

‘Trump effect’ may fuel Latino voting

Mercedes Olivera oliveramercedes@ymail.com

Published: 12 December 2015 05:45 AM

 It’s a common refrain, heard repeatedly before elections: “Latinos don’t vote.”
Increasingly, however, it appears the reverse may be true, according to a new study released by the William C. Velasquez Institute in San Antonio last week. And local elected Latino officials are seeing the same trend.
In the 2014 midterm elections, more than 1 million Latinos turned out to vote in Texas. That translates into 48 percent of Latino registered voters — a considerable percentage when their numbers had gone down by 300,000 since the 2012 elections.
In addition, total voter turnout in Texas and around the country was anemic — 28 percent in Texas, and 36 percent nationwide.
“Never have we seen such a stunning turnout when a state loses so many voters but still performs in the turnout better than in the last two midterm elections,” said Lydia Camarillo, vice president for the Southwest Voter Registration Project in San Antonio.
“The narrative that Latinos don’t vote is just not true,” she said.
She cited other barriers to voting that still may play a role in depressing turnout, such as voter ID laws and a cumbersome electoral system that inhibits rather than encourages easy access to the polls the way same-day registration does in other states.
“You cannot blame Latino voters anymore,” she said. “If you want to change voting patterns for all groups, then you have to change the system.”
Nevertheless, the institute is projecting that a record number — more than 2 million Latino voters — may head to the polls in November because of the “Trump effect.”
Donald Trump’s disparaging remarks against unauthorized Latino immigrants have angered most Latinos because of their family immigrant histories — many of them are second- or third-generation Americans. And many Latinos may know someone dear to them who is or was an immigrant.
Fort Worth City Council member Salvador Espino said he has already seen it at work.
He said he has seen Latinos more engaged early in the presidential election cycle than in past years because of “frustration and concern” about comments by Trump.
He saw a similar situation when Ramon Romero ran for the District 90 legislative seat in 2014.
“There was a concern with Austin and the lack of diversity in the Tarrant County delegation,” Espino said.
Today, it is Trump who is lighting a fire under Latinos to become politically engaged.
“We take Donald Trump very seriously,” he said. “The more outrageous his statements, the more he rises in the polls. If he is not the nominee, no one is going to forget that many in the GOP did not call him out.”
Laura Barberena, president of the political consulting firm Viva Politics, echoed Espino’s sentiment.
“To what extent does his rhetoric define the Republican brand and is shaping it is the question,” said Barberena, who was present at the Velasquez Institute’s briefing last week.
“If they embrace Trump, then they’re embracing these politically charged positions that can be detrimental to the GOP brand in the long term with Latinos.”
The bigger question, though, is will Latinos still turn out if Trump is not the GOP presidential nominee.
Camarillo said that, either way, if Democrats want to win in Texas, “they can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and not invest in turning out the Latino electorate.”
Twitter: @molivera79

Fatal Attraction: America’s Suicidal Quest for Educational Excellence, by Yong Zhao

I am a fan of Yong Zhao who just came out with a new book titled, Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World, that is already getting rave reviews as a good, critical text on standardized testing in China and the impact that it's having on creativity and innovation—let alone mindsets that acquiesce to authoritarian rule.  Here is his post on the matter that he links up to the Atlanta and El Paso cheating scandals and beyond:

High-stakes testing is America’s Faustian bargain, made with the devil of authoritarianism. Under the rule of authoritarianism, which gave birth to high-stakes testing in the first place, disrespect of teachers as professional colleagues and intrusion into their professional autonomy are praised as characteristics of no-nonsense, tough leadership with high expectations. 

Those of us here in Texas that have been fighting high-stakes testing since the beginning are well aware of this authoritarianism that is actually also conveniently related to the right's intention to ration opportunity here in Texas and to underfund public education in great part because of their unwillingness to educate to a high level a growing Latino demographic.  That this system is additionally profitable to the testing, tutoring, and test-prep-material private sector and the corporatization and privatization agenda related to it through the shaming and blaming of public schools, is an added—indeed, lucrative—bonus.

To use Michael Apple's term, the "authoritarian populists," like the skills that public schools provide, but they do have issues with a curriculum like Mexican American Studies (and Black and Native American Studies) that they not only see as inferior, but also as a political capitulation to a community that when educated well, threatens the incumbencies of those in power.  Let no one fool you, a long history of under- and mis-education is part and parcel to the curtailing, and denial, of the franchise.  This is of course coupled with a new Voter ID law that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled on that stands to disenfranchise 600,000 voters
in the November 4, 2014 elections.  This law was passed in the Texas Legislature under the rationale of wanting to address voter fraud even though evidence to this effect was never proffered. None of this was lost on folks here in Texas keeping tabs on this.  Check out this helpful Christian Science Monitor piece on Voter ID here in Texas.

Stated differently, the first Faustian bargain was to accede to the systematic underfunding of public education at all levels because after all, to cite Lisa Delpit, these were (and are) "other people's children" for whom a deep investment must seem "dissonant" for those in power wanting to preserve the status quo.

Implications for China?  A similar rationing of opportunity and ultimately, a mitigation of any expectation that our schools actually can be not only sites of innovation and creativity, but also vehicles for the democratic impulse of education for liberation and emancipation.

-Angela

P.S.  Readers of this blog, remember to vote in the Nov. 4th elections.  And vote in candidates that both oppose high-stakes testing and are known supporters of public education.

Fatal Attraction: America’s Suicidal Quest for Educational Excellence
by

Creative, Entrepreneurial, and Global: 21st Century Education

13 September 2014

 

[This is the introduction to my latest book Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World published by Jossey-Bass in September 2014. Also available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.]


In 2009 Dr. Beverly Hall, former superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools, was named America’s National Superintendent of the Year for “representing the ‘best of the best’ in public school leadership.”[1] Hall was hosted in the White House by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In 2010, the American Educational Research Association honored her with its Distinguished Community Service Award, which “recognizes exceptional contributions to advancing the use of education research and statistics.”[2] Also in 2010, President Obama appointed Hall to the elite National Board for Education Sciences.

In 2013, Hall was indicted by a grand jury in Georgia for “violation of Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act, false statements and writings, false swearing, and theft by taking.”[3] The Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act is a law typically used against Mafia leaders. If she is convicted, Hall faces 45 years in prison.

What made Hall a national hero is precisely what brought about her downfall. She earned national recognition by significantly improving tests scores in the Atlanta Public Schools, one of America’s largest urban school districts, and one with a large proportion of minority students. These higher test scores, as it turned out, were not the result of improved student learning, but rather, of a conspiracy of teachers and school leaders. Together with Hall, 34 top administrators, principals, and teachers in Atlanta were indicted for “improving” student test results through cheating. And the total number of individuals involved in the scandal was even larger: Some 178 principals and teachers at nearly half of Atlanta’s schools were reportedly in on the scam.

The case of Beverly Hall is just one of many unfolding national scandals in the United States. Celebrated heroes have been graced with honorary titles and rewarded generous cash bonuses for dramatically improving test scores—then exposed for “cooking the books.”

In 2012, Lorenzo Garcia, former superintendent of the El Paso Independent School District in Texas, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for “improving” his schools by preventing low-performing students from taking the state test. Garcia had twice been nominated for Texas Superintendent of the Year.

Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, was implicated in cheating scandals soon after the district’s dramatic improvement sent her to national stardom—with a prominent spot in the influential documentary Waiting for Superman, on the covers of Time and Newsweek, and backed with millions of dollars for her new organization StudentsFirst.

Cheating scandals have been discovered in almost every major school district that has reported great improvements: Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York[4]. The most obvious victims are the hundreds of thousands of innocent children directly affected by the unethical, immoral, and illegal activities of the adults working in their school systems. But millions more are affected. What about those students, teachers, and school leaders who did not cheat and were adversely affected by their lower test scores? Even the instigators of these cheating scandals are victims, in a sense. Sure, they may have been driven by greed for the cash prizes and promotions associated with improved test scores (or by the desire to avoid punishment for reporting poor test scores). But it’s unlikely that these people entered the education profession intending to hurt children for their own gains.

The villain behind these cheating scandals is the accountability system itself, which is based on high-stakes testing. Ushered in by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 and reinforced by President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative in 2009, test-based accountability that directly links student performance to educators’ livelihood has become the yardstick of American education. By attaching lavish rewards and harsh punishment to student test scores, the system provides powerful incentives for cheating. Educators have far less control over student performance—and far less impact on its quality—than policy makers presume. And that’s especially true for teachers working in impoverished communities.

When it comes to the harm done by high-stakes testing, rampant cheating is just the tip of the iceberg. As Sharon Nichols and David Berliner point out in their book Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools [1], this “cooking of the books” is but one of many damages done by testing reported by parents, teachers, and researchers. Education historian Diane Ravitch warns in her book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education[2], that high stakes testing is one of the many symptoms of a virus threatening America’s future.

That virus is the rising tide of authoritarianism in the United States. In exchange for the comfort of knowing how their children are doing academically and that their schools are being held accountable, Americans welcomed high-stakes testing into public education. Without the benefit of historical experience with these kinds of high-stakes tests, however, Americans failed to recognize those benign-looking tests as a Trojan horse—with a dangerous ghost inside. That ghost, authoritarianism, sees education as a way to instill in all students the same knowledge and skills deemed valuable by the authority.

Despite cheating scandals and stressed-out students, America doesn’t seem ready to be rid of its villain. Many Americans still believe standardized tests are needed, and that problems like widespread cheating can be fixed through superficial means. Since the cheating scandals went public, most of the attention has gone to the crimes committed by a few individuals and technical fixes that would have prevented them—everything from prescribing more severe punishments to increasing testing security and inventing better tests. Political leaders have pushed aside the call to abandon high-stakes testing altogether. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that while he was “stunned” by the Atlanta cheating scandal, the problem “is an easy one to fix, with better test security.”[5] Most parents support standardized testing and the use of test scores in teacher evaluation. Even some educators and school leaders support standardized testing. The two largest education unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, both accept standardized testing as part of American education.

Herein lies the tragedy for America—and reason for my writing this book.

The tale told by Chinese education illustrates the full range of tragic events that can happen under authoritarian rule. As one of the perfect incarnations of authoritarian education, China has produced superior test takers who have maintained a great civilization for millennia–but have failed to cultivate talents to defend against Western aggressions backed by modern technology and sciences in the 1800s. Since then China has struggled to retreat from its tradition of authoritarian education. Although China has already benefited from a gradual withdrawal from central dictation, as evidenced by its recent miraculous economic growth, authoritarianism still rules.

Technical fixes won’t stop the damage and embarrassment of cheating scandals. Reducing the amount of high-stakes standardized testing does little to limit its destructive influence. The damage done by authoritarianism is far greater than the instructional time taken away by testing, the narrowed educational experiences for students, and the demoralization of teachers. The deeper tragedy is the loss of values traditionally celebrated by American education—values that that helped make America the most prosperous and advanced nation in the world. Erase those values, and you lose the creative power of a culture that celebrates diversity and respects individuality. You also lose the time, resources, and opportunities you need if you are to invent a new education that will continue to lead the world.

High-stakes testing is America’s Faustian bargain, made with the devil of authoritarianism. Under the rule of authoritarianism, which gave birth to high-stakes testing in the first place, disrespect of teachers as professional colleagues and intrusion into their professional autonomy are praised as characteristics of no-nonsense, tough leadership with high expectations. Beverly Hall became national Superintendent of the Year for having “demonstrated a commitment to setting high standards for students and school personnel.”[6] That commitment turned out to be authoritarian rule, as a 2012 New York Times report[7] points out: “For years, Beverly L. Hall, the former school superintendent here [Atlanta schools], ruled by fear. Principals were told that if state test scores did not go up enough, they would be fired—and 90 percent of them were removed in the decade of Dr. Hall’s reign.

“Underlings were humiliated during rallies at the Georgia Dome,” to set an example of Hall’s “rule by fear,” the New York Times report continues. “Dr. Hall permitted principals with the highest test scores to sit up front near her, while sticking those with the lowest scores off to the side, in the bleachers.” Moreover, “she was chauffeured around the city, often with an entourage of aides and security guards. When she spoke publicly, questions had to be submitted beforehand for screening.”
Lorenzo Garcia, the former El Paso superintendent, was another action-oriented leader praised for his miracles. He kept almost half of students eligible for 10^th grade from taking the 10^th grade exam by not allowing them to enroll in the school, retaining them at 9^th grade, or rushing them into 11^th grade.

Although what he did was reported and investigated by both the U.S. Department of Education and the Texas Education Agency, twice, he got away “because he held people’s careers in his hands . . . If you said no to him, you were gone,” said El Paso director of student services Mark Emmanuel Mendoza on NPR[8]. El Paso has a large population of Mexican immigrants, and Garcia also exploited the community’s fear of the courts, fear of Border Patrol and trust in the school system. The students excluded from the 10^th-grade exam “were made to feel like they did something wrong,” said Linda Romero, the drop-out prevention counselor who blew the whistle[9].

Under the spell of authoritarianism, the Obama administration has consistently disregarded the law, not to mention the checks and balances of American democracy. Instead of reworking the expired No Child Left Behind Act, President Obama and his Secretary of Education have given out waivers to states, exempting them from the law in exchange for their willingness to accept the administration’s wishes. States have responded favorably, and Congress has largely forgiven, if not condoned, the administrations’ actions.

Under the spell of authoritarianism, 50 million American children are being taught a de facto national curriculum, then subjected to a de facto national standardized test. The Common Core State Standards Initiative, created with little input from the people or their representatives, is now enforced with tax dollars in nearly all states. Although the federal government did not technically pay for its development or officially adopt its standards, the billions of dollars in the Race to the Top program—which required the adoption of common standards and assessment—undoubtedly helped the CCSS spread.

Under the spell of authoritarianism, Americans have willingly surrendered their beloved local governments to state and federal control. Locally elected school boards have turned into bureaucratic branches of state and federal government, for in effect, they only collect local taxes. They then use that tax money to implement the wishes of the state and federal governments in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment.

Authoritarianism has driven America to admire, glorify, and emulate other authoritarian education systems because they seem to produce “results”—defined as test scores. Instead of valuing what their own educational methods can produce, American leaders envy countries with top test scores in a narrow set of subjects—which is simply a sign of how successfully those countries have homogenized their students. Mistaking China’s miseries as secrets to success, for example, American education pundits and political leaders have been eager to learn from the quintessential authoritarian education system. Ironically, they’ve condemned China’s authoritarian political system in the same breath.

A survival strategy the Chinese people developed to cope with thousands of years of authoritarian rule has been glorified as China’s secret to educational success. The belief that the Chinese attach high values to education is widespread in the United States[1, 2]. That belief has been used to explain the educational success of Chinese students; it has also been used to condemn Americans in general, and some racial and cultural groups in particular, for their poor test scores.

The belief is, however, an illusion at best; a cruel glorification of authoritarianism at worst. The Chinese people were deprived of any other means to succeed in life, both spiritually and materially. Their only option was to pass the exams dictated by the absolute authority—emperors in the past, and the government today. When people are convinced that there are no worthy options to pursue in life except the narrow path prescribed by an authoritarian government, they are forced to comply, accept indoctrination, and be homogenized. For this reason, Chinese parents have to invest generously in their children’s education and test preparation; their efforts mitigate the lack of sufficient investment from the government. When onlookers praise the efficiency of the Chinese educational system—in which minimal government investment begets huge gains in test scores—they ignore the resources Chinese parents throw into the pot.

The Chinese have also been praised for emphasizing effort and diligence instead of inherent intelligence or social conditions. Again, this is no more than a mistaken romanticization of an authoritarian ploy to deny the existence of individual differences and unequal social conditions. Emphasizing effort is a convenient way for the authority to evade responsibility for leveling the playing field for those with diverse abilities and talents. It is an excuse for not providing programs for children with disabilities or those born into extremely unfavorable social circumstances. It also serves as a seductive marketing slogan, persuading individuals to welcome homogenization.

Admirers also glorify Chinese students’ inability to question and challenge authority. For instance, Andreas Schleicher, in defending China’s top PISA ranking, noted how much more likely the Chinese students are to blame themselves, instead of their teachers, for their failure in math, compared to their counterparts in France[10]. While the finding is correct, Schleicher fails to notice its cause: an authoritarian culture that tends to shift the blame from the authority, which no one dares question, to the students. This is true in other authoritarian education systems as well; just look at Russia, Indonesia, and Singapore.

The Chinese national educational system has won high praise as an efficient system with national standards, a national curriculum, a high states test (the college entrance exam), and a clearly defined set of gateways to mark students’ transitions from one stage to another[3]. Admirers note that every Chinese student has a clear and focused goal to pursue; Chinese teachers and parents know exactly what to do to help their students; and the government knows exactly which schools are doing well.

What those admirers ignore is the fact that such an education system, while being an effective machine to instill what the government wants students to learn, is incapable of supporting individual strengths, cultivating a diversity of talents, and fostering the capacity and confidence to create.
I wrote this book to show how China, a perfect incarnation of authoritarian education, has produced the world’s best test scores at the cost of diverse, creative, and innovative talents. I also tried to illustrate how difficult it is to move away from authoritarian thinking, by showing how China has struggled to reform its education for over a century. The book is intended to warn the United States and other Western countries about the dangerous consequences of educational authoritarianism.

Education in the West must go through transformative changes. A paradigm shift will be necessary, if we are to prepare children to live successfully in the new world. (I wrote about this shift in my previous book, World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students [4]). As traditional routine jobs are offshored and automated, we need more and more globally competent, creative, innovative, entrepreneurial citizens—job creators instead of employment-minded job seekers. To cultivate new talents, we need an education that enhances individual strengths, follows children’s passions, and fosters their social-emotional development. We do not need an authoritarian education that aims to fix children’s deficits according to externally prescribed standards.

If the U.S. and the West are concerned about being overtaken by China, the best solution is to avoid becoming China. The empire that led the world for over two millennia was shattered by Western technological and scientific innovations in the 1800s. Its education represents the best of the past. It worked extremely well for China’s imperial rulers for over 1,000 years, but it stopped working when the modern world emerged. The Chinese system continued to produce students who excel in a narrow range of subjects. Only 10% of its college graduates are deemed employable by multinational businesses[5], because these students lack the very qualities our new society needs.

China’s achievements over the past thirty years should be no reason for America and other Western nations to panic, as forewarned by French historian Nicolas Boulanger more than 250 years ago:

All the remains of her ancient institutions, which China now possesses, will necessarily be lost; they will disappear in the future revolutions; as what she hath already lost of them vanished in former ones; and finally, as she acquires nothing new, she will always be on the losing side. [8, p. 134].

References
1.         Tucker, M., Chinese Lessons: Shanghai’s Rise to the Top of the PISA League Tables. 2014, National Center on Education and the Economy: Washington DC.
2.         Cheng, K.-m., Shanghai: How a Big City in a Developing Country Leaped to the Head of the Class, in Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems, M.S. Tucker, Editor. 2011, Harvard Education Press: Cambridge, MA. p. 21-50.
3.         Tucker, M., ed. Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems. 2011, Harvard Education Press: Boston.
4.         Zhao, Y., World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students. 2012, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
5.         Farrell, D. and A.J. Grant, China’s looming talent shortage. 2005, McKinsey and Company: New York.

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[1] Press release of American Association of School Administrators on February 29, 2009 at http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=1592 [2] http://www.aera.net/Portals/38/docs/News_Media/News%20Releases%202010/Annual%20Meeting%20Awards.pdf
[3] http://www.11alive.com/assetpool/documents/130329074503_APS-Indictment-Announcement.pdf
[4] A USA Today investigative report in 2011 revealed over 1,600 cases of cheating in six states and Washington DC http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-06-school-testing_N.htm
[5] http://www.11alive.com/news/article/196896/40/Secretary-of-Education-stunned-by-scandal?__hstc=215845384.d6c6693f407f802334dab4314f40436c.1365186589630.1365186589630.1365186589630.1
[6] Press release of American Association of School Administrators on February 29, 2009 at http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=1592
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/education/scarred-by-cheating-scandal-atlanta-schools-are-on-the-mend.html?pagewanted=all
[8] http://www.npr.org/2013/04/10/176784631/el-paso-schools-cheating-scandal-probes-officials-accountability
[9] http://www.texasobserver.org/faking-the-grade-the-nasty-truth-behind-lorenzo-garcias-miracle-school-turnaround-in-el-paso/
[10] http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.com/2013/12/are-chinese-cheating-in-pisa-or-are-we.html

Analysis: A Missing Piece in the Voter ID Debate

We have a long history in Texas of movements on the right working to disenfranchise poor, communities of color and that's what this piece is about.  But do also consider that this is happening, simultaneously, too: Record 14M Texans register to vote. Folks know quite well that Texas is changing and so racialized politics are part of our landscape.  It's encouraging to see these record numbers of folks registered to vote.  Now, they just have to get out and vote.

All else equal, things are a changin'...

-Angela

Analysis: A Missing Piece in the Voter ID Debate

• by Ross Ramsey
• Oct. 24, 2014
• 140Comments

Republican state officials working to pass a voter photo ID law in 2011 knew that more than 500,000 of the state’s registered voters did not have the credentials needed to cast ballots under the new requirement. But they did not share that information with lawmakers rushing to pass the legislation.

Now that the bill is law, in-person voters must present one of seven specified forms of photo identification in order to have their votes counted.

A federal judge in Corpus Christi has found the law unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the state can leave it in place for the November election while appeals proceed.
The details about the number of voters affected emerged during the challenge to the law, and were included in the findings of U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos.

During the 2011 legislative struggle to pass the voter ID law, she wrote, Republican lawmakers asked the Texas secretary of state, who runs elections, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which maintains driver’s license information, for the number of registered voters who did not have state-issued photo identification.

The answer: at least a half-million.

Continue reading here.

Interactive: A state-by-state look at voter ID laws for 2012 elections

Check out the interactive map of the states where voter ID laws go into effect in 2012here

This is crazy!

-Patricia

By Mary Mahling and Carla Uriona
Friday, November 04, 2011

When Mississippi decides on Initiative 27 next week, voters will determine whether or not they’ll have to show photo identification the next time they go to the polls. The election on Nov. 8 will be the final act of what has been a dramatic year for voter ID laws. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, dozens of states considered either passing new voter ID rules or tightening existing provisions to require not just an ID but a photo ID. In the first category, Kansas, Rhode Island and Wisconsin enacted new laws. In the second category, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas tightened laws already on the books. The voter ID push came largely from Republicans, who say the rules are necessary to prevent voter fraud. Meanwhile, Democratic governors in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and North Carolina vetoed voter ID laws, calling them an unfair burden on voters who may not have driver’s licenses or other forms of government-issued identification.

It is important to note that even in some states where identification is required, voters without the requisite ID can still cast a ballot that will be counted. In Michigan, for example, a person without an ID can vote on the spot if he or she signs an affidavit, and several other states have similar failsafe systems for voters without ID. Voters who lack the requisite ID are advised to check with their state or local election officials to confirm whether they can still cast a ballot.

Disenfranchising the Elderly and the Minorities of Texas

For Immediate Release: January 16, 2009

Contacts: Lydia Camarillo SVREP Vice-President - 800--404-VOTE
Patricia Gonzales, WCVI Senior Vice President - 210- 922-3118

SVREP and WCVI Call on the Texas Senate to Reverse 2/3 Rule

Rule Change Made to Allow Partisans to Pass Disenfranchising Voter ID Law San Antonio, Texas - Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) and the William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI) call on the Texas State Senate to reverse the 2/3 rule it passed to move the Voter ID legislation. The Senate, in its first act, voted to deny the minority legislative opinion, a rule suspended only when applied to the voting of the Voter ID legislation. "The Texas State Senate is acting counter to America's principles by adjusting their voting rules," said Antonio Gonzalez, SVREP and WCVI President. "The Senate is changing its rules to blatantly disenfranchise citizens with the discriminatory Voter ID legislation and silencing minority opinions in the legislative process." The Senate majority has made its main focus of this legislature the passage of the Voter ID bill. SVREP, WCVI, and many other national and statewide civil rights organizations, oppose Voter ID laws as they create extra barriers for citizens to participate in elections, and would disproportionately affect minority voters. SVREP and WCVI further oppose the rule change as it creates dangerous precedent for future Senate deliberations. Any Texas State Senate majority could use this example to override the rules on important legislation rather than force Senators to work together, compromise, and form laws that are inclusive of more Texan representatives. "Today's action by the Texas State Senate is a mockery to democracy", said SVREP Vice President Lydia Camarillo. "The Senate sent a message to Texas and the nation that it planned to play dirty-partisan politics by voting to suspend the 2/3 rule to promote the Voter ID legislation, which dilutes the voting rights of Latino and other communities of color. SVREP calls on the Senate to reverse the rule and work towards representing all Texas citizens." SVREP is a national, nonpartisan organization committed solely to the political empowerment of Latino communities. SVREP was established in 1974 by the late Willie Velásquez to encourage civic and political participation in Latino and other underrepresented communities. Since its inception, over 2.3 million Latino voters throughout the southwest and Florida have been registered. The William C. Velásquez Institute (WCVI) is a tax-exempt, non-profit, non-partisan public policy analysis organization chartered in 1985. The purpose of WCVI is to: conduct research aimed at improving the level of political and economic participation in Latino and other underrepresented communities; To provide information to Latino leaders relevant to the needs of their constituents; To inform the Latino leadership and public about the impact of public policies on Latinos; To inform the Latino leadership and public about political opinions and behavior of Latinos.

This message was sent to valenz@mail.utexas.edu by:
William C. Velasquez Institute
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COMMENTARY: ARNOLD GARCIA

Garcia: State senators should tackle the real problems facing Texas

Arnold Garcia Jr., EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Sunday, January 18, 2009
Now that the Texas Senate has shown strength and resolve in fixing a nonexistent problem, let's see how they handle real ones.

On Wednesday, Texas senators, led — in the loosest sense of the term — by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, spent the second day of the session rearranging the rules to bulldoze through a voter identification bill. The bill died last session only to be resurrected this go-around by the hand of state Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands.

Before we go any further, let's note for the record that voter fraud is a bad thing. That's why existing statutes prohibit it. Let's also note that after spending most of a $1.4 million grant and investing two years at investigating voter fraud in Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott and his crew came up with a whopping 26 cases of voter irregularity — 18 of them involving ballots legally cast but improperly handled.

Williams declared with all seriousness that voter fraud is a top concern of the state's voters. Maybe it's a top concern with the voters he talks to, but I'd wager that many more are worried about paying for their tickets to the economic horror show now in progress.

Some of the more visionary voters might even worry about how Texas can regain the economic vigor Gov. Rick Perry and other Republican leaders brag about if post-secondary education gets so expensive that working families can't afford it.

Education is a proven escape hatch from poverty or portal between economic classes, so broadening rather than restricting access to learning would seem to be a prudent economic development strategy. Democrats tried to amend the bill to put that concern on the same footing with voter fraud, but the Republican majority wouldn't hear it.

Voters who aren't multi-millionaires might also be concerned about their access to health care. But you only need health care if you're sick, so what's the problem?

The fact that one out of two Texas men will be diagnosed with cancer in his lifetime, according to health experts, takes a back seat to voter identification. The leading cause of death of Texas women between the ages of 35 and 74 is cancer, but that can wait. Cancer is the leading killer of Texas children ages 1 through 14 who die of a disease. But why rush to do something about that when Texas senators have this epidemic of voter fraud to wrestle to the ground?

No doubt that the last words to cross the dying lips of Texans in the final throes of cancer will express gratitude that voter fraud is now history in Texas or soon will be if House members rush to the ramparts to join their Senate colleagues in this epic battle.

According to the Republican majority in the Senate, voter fraud is more important than Texas veterans, Texas health care, higher education tuition costs or even the estimated $9 billion drop in revenue.

Given that, Texas senators may well turn their attention to prostitution — if there's any left after the state's officialdom shut down the famous Chicken Ranch in La Grange back in the 1970s.

The debate on Wednesday reminded me of Larry L. King's "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," the hit play and move inspired by that episode. When the governor is breathlessly informed that "Texas has a whorehouse in it," he springs into action to correct that stain on the state's honor.

Critics of the voter ID bill note that asking voters to present photo identification at the polling places can be used to intimidate older and minority voters, and that may be true.

But speaking as a voter who has used a driver's license to vote in all of last year's elections — I never got my voter registration card — it wasn't that big a deal. Of course, I'm not easily intimidated.

I question why senators of one of the most important states in the union spent an entire day and stepped all over a history of bipartisanship fixing a roof that the state's Republican attorney general says doesn't leak.

I asked a Republican friend of mine to explain the wisdom of this maneuver. His reply? "There is no wisdom in a stupid act."

agarcia@statesman.com; 445-3667