Texas SB176: Trap for Government Control of Private Education
By Carole Hornsby Haynes February 16, 2023
Texas lawmakers are considering a bill that will allow government control over private and homeschools. Currently private schools in Texas have no government requirements for registration, licensing, or approval requirements and accreditation is optional. If the state legislature passes school choice bill SB176, that will change.
Private schools that accept students using the education savings account (ESA) must be accredited by an organization recognized by the Texas Education Agency or accreditation by Texas Private School Accreditation Commission. The school must submit documentation about its curriculum, student-to-teacher ratio, assessments, and annual administration of a nationally norm-referenced assessment instrument.
SB176 also requires that private tutors, therapists, and teaching services are 1) certified; 2) licensed or accredited by a state, regional, or national licensing or accreditation organization; or 3) teaching or tutoring at an institution of higher education.
Texas parents can use their ESA only with state approved education service providers and vendors, including companies selling online courses. Homeschool curriculum also must be state approved for state funding.
The Texas bill sounds eerily like the 1990s federal legislation which mandated that, to receive federal funding, state were required to develop state curriculum standards and standardized testing. More government strings came with the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) which required states to demonstrate they have adopted standards aligned to “College and Career Readiness Standards” – a euphemism for Common Core which was codified in ESSA.
What Texas government requirements will come next for private and homeschools? Texas requires Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) for public schools, despite the fact that it is the vehicle for fusing Critical Race Theory, Diversity Inclusion and Equity, and transgenderism into academic lessons and throughout the school environment. What about a curriculum that aligns to College and Career Readiness?
For years critics have warned that publicly funded school choice is the camel’s nose in the tent of government control over private and homeschools. State control of private education is clearly the vision of the communist United Nations of which the United States is a member. According to a 2021 report commissioned by UNESCO, the U.N.’s educational agency, governments should use tax subsidies, including vouchers, education savings accounts, and scholarship tax credits, for private schools to impose government control and regulations for requiring “equity” and other goals.
The report, “Regulating Public-Private Partnerships, governing non-state schools: An equity perspective”
assumes that the State is primarily responsible for a child’s education – not parents who are described as “stakeholders” and “vested interests.” Citing the U.N.’s “Sustainable Goals,” thereport claims the “State remains the duty bearer of education as a public good.”
It is argued that the “State should play a more important role in establishing stricter rules and concrete goals, as well as in actively monitoring private providers” as well as establishing “appropriate governance and regulatory frameworks.” Any “collaboration with the private sector requires regulatory and accountability measures to ensure it is in line with the principle of education as a public good.” Regarding accountability, the “OECD tends to emphasize traditional forms of bureaucratic and administrative accountability, rather than managerial or market approaches.”
Citing UNESCO’s concern for potential risks of private schools regarding the U.N.-backed goal of equity, the report claims government funded private education must be regulated to ensure that equity is achieved.
Because of the increasing global demand for education and government commitment for a universal system, public funding through taxes is no longer realistic. The solution is Public Private Partnerships (PPP) between private educaton and the state. These will not be “exempt from complying with centrally defined curricula, learning standards or student admissions criteria, among other public regulations.”
States will be expected to develop accountability systems for personal student data collection to analyze how private providers are ensuring educational “equity.” This will allow the collection of social and emotional data to ensure student compliance for a future social credit score system.
Government control of private education through regulation and accountability is the linchpin for global control of all education and all of civilization.
On the surface, public funding that follows the child sounds like a fantastic solution for parents who want to exit government indoctrination centers. Yet, given the strings attached to state funded school choice and the U.N.’s scheme to impose global control over all education, how will state funded private schools really be any different from public education?
Instead of accepting government money and control, parents should access one or more of the truly free market options to educate their children without government intrusion.