February 23rd, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin,

the Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one part. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity

in America. It’s called the problem is these departures from the constitution.

They have become the norm

point. Must’ve female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized. Over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And we’ll come back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Glad to be joined again today by Josh blank research director for the Texas politics project. Good morning, Josh. Good morning. We thought what we would do today is pull out another topic that we’ve put a pin in a couple of times, it’s a reference for repeat listeners, the two of you, and that’s the, the attempted reboot of public education by both national, but especially Texas Republicans.

Now, for those interested, you can browse the polling results. We’ll be referencing in the podcast in a post@thetexaspoliticsprojectblogattexaspoliticsdotutexas.edu slash. Now this topic has come up a few times in the podcast. And I, you know, I was thinking, as I was preparing for this, we have drilled down into this a little bit, a couple of times, maybe

[00:01:29] Josh Blank: I said the issue has inserted itself into the podcast a few

[00:01:32] Jim Henson: times, but to be honest, we’ve been waiting, I think, to really delve into it because we knew.

For a few weeks that we’d have some new Texas pulling data shed some light on the subject, hopefully.

[00:01:44] Josh Blank: And also I think, you know, what? We also knew instinctively and it turns out to be true that the ground is shifting a little bit on this topic. And so a lot of the questions we’ve run in the past and sort of what we think we know about education.

It informs where we are now, but it doesn’t tell us the whole story. Yeah.

[00:01:56] Jim Henson: I mean, I think it’s, you know, it’s, it’s in fact that underlines how nice it is to have the data, because. You know, it’s both evidence as well as being fodder. It’s also evidence and the evidence suggests that there are interesting things going on.

I think that’s right. So, so let’s do it again. So like, you know, should we start. Overall quality and then go down from there.

[00:02:15] Josh Blank: Get more specific. Yeah, I think this is a good place just to start this discussion because I think it’s one of the set pieces and we’ll kind of come back to it. I think a couple of points of sir, what are we think of as some of the set pieces to public opinion and how that informs them of these new issues.

And then I think that the political maneuvering around and

[00:02:29] Jim Henson: also underlines the theme that we have Darren on the show last night, last week, which was very fun. If you didn’t listen to last week, we had Darren Sean, the show. It’s always a good time. It’s always good in a, uh, an interesting injection to have Darren, but it’s, as Darren says, echoing many other people in, in the polling business trend is our friend trend

[00:02:46] Josh Blank: is our friend.

You know, it allows us to make comparisons, not just in the moment and among groups, but over time. So it gives us some good quality, uh, in sort of understanding things. So let’s start, let’s start at the big picture here. You know, one of the big sort of tropes about Texas public education, I think. Mostly, I would say it’s less prominent in Texas than outside of Texas is to say that the Texas education system is not very good.

The public education system here, where I’m at K through 12 public education, we’ve asked about Texans, you know, ratings of the overall quality of, of the public education system here in Texas. It’s remarkably stable, remarkably lukewarm. I would say, right. So we say is that you would you rate it as excellent.

Good, not very good, terrible or down now, going back, uh, let’s see. 2, 4, 6, 8 surveys going back to 2013. And as most recently in our just released poll in February, uh, no more than 8% of Texans in any one of those polls has said that the Texas public education system is excellent.

[00:03:40] Jim Henson: There was a little bit of it

[00:03:41] Josh Blank: internally, then there’s internal consistency.

You know, most people, the plurality say it’s good. So 41%, uh, again, February 30% of. Very good. 10% said it’s terrible. You know, ultimately I say, that’s why these are lukewarm. So negative, but it’s, but generally, you know, Texans don’t necessarily look at the Texas education system and say, this is, you know, this is leading the world.

This is top notch. This is high quality,

[00:04:04] Jim Henson: just amazingly stable. As I’m looking at this column of numbers. I mean, you know, the, the good, the good varies between what, 39 and 45 and 45 is a one-time. It’s a one-time score for on the good, you know, and as you say, I mean, excellent has never been higher than 8%.

Never been lower than five. And so on all the others are, you know, even the terrible numbers, you know, between eight and 14 and 14 was in 2013 and it’s never been quite that low sense.

[00:04:35] Josh Blank: Some

[00:04:35] Jim Henson: circumstances. A rough year for public yet.

[00:04:39] Josh Blank: Right, exactly. So, and, but the other thing I think, I mean, you bring this up too, is, you know, this is despite the fact that legislature has made attempts to improve the public education system to address the issue in the way that voters would notice, especially, uh, in the 2019 session.

Right. But there’s no indication here that voters fundamental sort of, you know, view of the quality of the education system has changed now

[00:04:59] Jim Henson: to the departing Dan puberty there who led that fight in 2019 on the house side.

[00:05:03] Josh Blank: Yes. Anyway, so that brings us to today. Right. And sort of the, the topics. So we, we asked, you know, in addition to asking her about the quality of public education, there was a recent poll, you know, we tried to get into sort of the discussion that we’re seeing now take shape around public education, or at least begin to look at it.

And so one of the things that I think, you know, that we, we looked at, I think that really touches on. I think that sort of, I think what’s the emerging axis of conflict in some ways, or at least the framing of this is this question of parental input in, in education. So we asked basically whether or not Texans agree or disagree that the parents of children in Texas public schools have enough say, or have enough influence on what their children are taught.

[00:05:43] Jim Henson: I want to ask you like, You know, we worked hard on the phrasing of this question.

[00:05:48] Josh Blank: I’m still not a hundred percent happy,

[00:05:51] Jim Henson: neither am I, but I, you know, I mean, I, you know, it’s a podcast. We can air this out a little bit. I’m still not sure how I do it differently, but there’s still, when I look at this, the there’s still something about this.

Well, I don’t want to ask, you know, in the N the million different message, Westy tits testing, ways that we could ask this. But I mean, I just want to, it’s a hard question too. Well,

[00:06:16] Josh Blank: I think if somebody is listening to this right now, a very simple reaction might be, why don’t you just ask about CRS? Why don’t you just ask about critical race there and whether or not parents support it being taught in the school or not.

And this is, I think one of the ways that our, you know, I think our survey and the work that we do with this poll in this time series is a little bit different. We want to get down to the fundamental attitude here. And even though there are definitely plenty of anecdotal examples of extremely, I’ll say on the one hand you have anecdotal examples of very upset.

At school board meetings, you also have, you know, on the other hand, you know, anecdotal examples of bad lesson plans, but we don’t have, you know, the sense that this is a systematic problem. So we want to, before we get into this, we, you know, I think this is the way we approach this. We want to take a step back and say, Hey, real quick, everybody, do you think that parents have enough say in what their children are taught?

Yes or no? No. And what we find is it basically Texans are pretty much split on this 41% say, get parents, do you have enough influence 41 period? Since late parents don’t have enough influence, 15% say, I don’t know, which is not surprising. I’m sure not 41%. I take that back. It’s 44 41, right? 44 41. So basically two.

But to me, that’s, that’s basically an even split. And not only that, when we look at the intensity, is it, you know, somewhat agree with that? Somewhat disagree strongly. Yeah. The majority, uh, about half of the voters are in the middle there kind of thing. Yeah. I store my degree and I think to me, as someone who looks at public opinion, this is one of the fun things I think about us doing more frequent public opinion, polling, as we’ve been in increasing, the number of surveys we do is we get to look at some of these kinds of, you know, I would say we get to look at, you know, the nuance of these things a little bit more closely.

And when you look at an issue like this, what this tells me, if nothing else is that this is number one, a pretty new issue. There is some pars and structured. Overwhelming 57% of Democrats think that, you know, they have enough saying their children’s education, but 29% said that.

[00:08:04] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I think in looking at it in looking at, I mean, two things about that, and we’ll put these graphics on the web page.

I mean, what you’re saying, I think is a really good way of looking at this in terms of saying this is not one of those issues. Like some that we have in the poll where the strong agreement and strong disagreement are the two towers, and there’s a little bit of a valley in between. This is the. Right by then.

It’s just, and it’s readily apparent. I think when you look, when you look at the graphics, I mean, on the party ID, I mean, I think what’s interesting in the politics of this moving forward is that, you know, the Democrats are a little, are more lopsided on this. They’re not, as you know, they’re not, again, it’s not super skewed.

You still see that basic kind of structure, but where the decision is still where the, where the opinions are still. I have still not gotten intense is mostly among Republicans. The Republican graphic looks more like the overall graphic where the democratic graphic is much more in the direction of a, of a green with the statement that parents have enough.

Right. But still only 57% of Democrats. I mean, that’s the majority, but you know, you have a pretty big 15% of deaths of Democrats. I don’t know yet,

but

[00:09:12] Josh Blank: I think the point, yeah, I think the point to take away from this as if you’ve been watching coverage of turf, you know, a lot of, some other issues we’re going to get to some results in a minute.

You know, you would think that this is something that is roiling, you know, the public school system in some way, and the parents, and there’s all these conflicts with her and what this data indicates is. Probably not. And also, you know, to the extent that, you know, I mean, I think the way your, your suggestion here about how this differs from other results we’ve seen is great, because I think that also speaks to the fact that it, everything else we probably pulled on that was, you know, sort of at least reasonably salient over the course of the last year, around the legislative session, much of which was extremely conserved legislation.

You do see. Extreme democratic disapproval. And in a lot of cases, in a lot of issues, you see extreme Republican support, and this is one of these issues, again, not the case, but that’s also, and we’ll get to this. There’s a reason that this is probably a good framing and why it’s a good political issue.

The sort of transitioning to that is look at the response to this by geography. Yeah. So here, what we find is, you know, we ask urban voters, you know, again, do the parents have enough say, or not 48% say yes, 36% say no again, I think, you know, if that’s the issue that you’re fighting on an education in the urban areas and you’re Republican, I think you’ll take it.

Uh, but the more importantly, if you look at suburban voters among whom, you know, you have a lot of parents with kids in school, it’s basically a split issue. Yeah. 43% say they have enough say 42%, so they don’t have enough say, and that’s really where I think this messaging is, is targeted and being focused.

Right. And so again, if you’re a Republicans and you’ve been seeing Democrats make increasing gain in the Texas suburbs, and you’ve seen that they’ve been successful using the education issue, all of a sudden this framework. Really complicates that matter a little bit because ultimately in the end and we’ll come back to this, I think, but you know, even among Democrats, are you, what, what is the expectation that 90% are going to say that parents have enough say in their children’s education?

I mean, it really, there’s sort of a normative problem here in terms of a ceiling, right?

[00:10:58] Jim Henson: Yeah. And what this tells me too, from a practical point of view is that, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing campaign consulting, polling, you’re going to be making some money, running some message testing polls on this stuff.

Oh yeah. Between now and. August.

[00:11:12] Josh Blank: Right. So we also have some lots of other things that are related to that are related to this, but I think are a little bit more specific. Uh, we asked about, you know, attempts by legislators, parents, and some parent groups and other sort of hopeful elected officials to remove books from public libraries, sort of short version of this, not terribly popular, at least at this point, yet 62% of Texans, opposed this 78% of Democrats, 69% of independents.

And even among, you know, Republicans for whom. Alleged. This is where the issue is bubbled up

[00:11:43] Jim Henson: and what do we call it? Conservative. Plus, you know, groups and parents,

[00:11:47] Josh Blank: we’ve got, you know, 41% support, 44 per oppose. So it’s, you know, I’d say probably basically a net even issue this idea of removing books. We talk about.

You know, basically limiting the extent to which teachers can emphasize the role of racism in us history in public schools, um, 50% oppose efforts to limit what teachers can say. 37% support it. I get a little more partisan structure here. Um, you know, 30, but not as much as you’d think again, these are new issues for a lot of people.

So for Republicans, a plurality 47% oppose. These efforts, which I think might be surprising to people 42% supported, similarly surprising, well, 55% of Democrats oppose efforts to limit the discussion of race and public school classroom. 33% support it.

[00:12:30] Jim Henson: Right? This is where if you’re somebody from outside the state, you know, they start wagging their finger, then going see those, those conservative Democrats in Texas right now that’s becoming less and less true.

Yes. But I think this also under. They’re not all completely gone, but also I think, I don’t know that this is, I guess the point is that, is this ideological or not because there’s a lot of cross pressures

[00:12:51] Josh Blank: here and that’s

[00:12:54] Jim Henson: the issue. I mean, we’d emphasize the newness of the issue, but also the cross pressures are pretty massive in both of these.

I think. Yeah,

[00:13:02] Josh Blank: I think, well, I think are we can get to the crossroads. I’ll just say, you know, other evidence real quick before we jump into that, uh, you know, the newness of the issue and how this has moved is we can look at, you know, we’ve asked about this question about, you know, the teaching, you know, basically the emphasis of racism and the teaching of public school students.

Uh, before we asked it back in June, uh, sort of in kind of the, let’s say in the middle of the legislative session, I

[00:13:21] Jim Henson: guess it’s a very hot ripe session for this because of this was, you know, the legislature was debating this and they passed the legislation during the.

[00:13:29] Josh Blank: Right. And so, and so we found is that, you know, when this issue came up, it was pretty much, again, unsurprisingly split issue, 44% of, you know, supported the, this idea of, you know, restricting the discussion of racism, 45% opposed it, here we are now again in February.

So. Seven months later, 37% support, 50 posts. So you see that there’s been some movement, but the underlying movement is really surprising and it’s surprising in a couple of different directions. So, whereas back in, in June 69% of Republican supported these efforts, 21% expressed opposition, jump ahead into February it’s 42, support 47 oppose.

That tells you something about, you know, the potency of this issue and how it’s a little bit, in some ways I would think a little uncontrollable

[00:14:12] Jim Henson: well, and independence are interesting on this, right? Because in the, in the current, in the most current poll, it was, you know, 30, you know, independence where 32 supports and 50 oppose.

And, you know, I, you know, if you went back into the podcast archives, she’d find us. A little dismissive of independence or maybe, maybe dismissive as even LA not so interested, but I think I’ve come to find independence a little more useful because of the things that I think people that are politically engaged, kind of look down on them for, which is they’re not super engaged, not super informed, but they’re a good heat check.

They’re

[00:14:49] Josh Blank: picking up things in the environment. Yeah, and they’re not, and they’re picking them up in a way that’s not necessarily filtered in the way that partisans filter every bit of information. Right. So you do get kind of a sense, I think, to, you know, at least a different version of how is this playing, right?

Yeah. But I was gonna add one other thing here, which is, you know, we saw a lot of movement among Democrats too, and in the opposite direction. So we’re a 75% express express opposition, uh, back in June. 55% of expressed opposition in February. The share who were, is supportive of these efforts, went up from 17 to 33.

Now I don’t, I always say you can’t make a line through two points, so we have to wait and see, but you can make a line. It’s not a trend line. Well, you can’t make it. Yeah. You could make a line. That’s all right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. But you want to, but to make a trend line three points, I think we need to wait and see, but these results also indicate the extent to which, you know, even within the parties, it’s not as though this is necessarily.

I would say, you know, activating partisans and sort of a traditional obvious way. There’s not an orthodoxy law. Yeah. So, okay. So there’s still a lot to learn here. You know, we should expect these, these, this, the shift, right. And this is also obviously in a broader context and the, you know, in the public education environment, right.

Highly visible fight over all kinds of issues. Right. So let’s go back to the cross pressures, I guess. Okay. You know, go ahead. You want to start? I mean,

[00:16:09] Jim Henson: you know, I mean, I think this is an interesting. One of the things that’s a set piece of us talking about how people use poll results is to caution against over interpretation.

Yes. And I am real. I mean, I really want to over-interpret this, I want to, I want to look forward to over-interpreting it almost in the sense that. You know, per an op ed that you and I wrote that we have hopefully coming out in Texas newspapers in the next couple of weeks, you know, we’ve been keeping our eye on this sense of like what’s going on with democratic political culture, with the norms of democracy.

And I do think that one of the cross pressures on this, I think we’ve we referred to in the podcast either last week or the week before. Referencing somebody’s tweet, which is that made me somebody that talked about, you know, banning books from libraries or banning books, writ large, that came out looking good in history.

Right. And I do feel like some of that is going on in. The library piece. And then there’s the other piece that is a little less pegged to this democracy sort of subject, but is kind of deeply rooted or it has a lot of precedent in that is people’s kind of reflexive, positive view of teachers. And I think both of those things are at play here and I’m going to be tempted, you know, if the trend lines go and this begins to look more partisan to see this, as you know, on the library side, as part of it.

Sign that those norms are not those democratic norms are not what they used to be when it comes to censorship. The teaching thing is less tied up in that, but is also, I think, pointing in the direction of another area where we’re watching cross pressures, which is this thing that we’ve talked about on here before the subject that we’ve talked about on here before of, you know, Democrats attempting in a way to sort of rest education from democratic ownership or Republicans looking to take the ownership of this issue away, reflect.

And work on it as a Republican issue from a very different perspective. But part of that, I think the question then do you have to loosen people’s trust faith, attachment to teachers for that to happen? I

[00:18:18] Josh Blank: think that’s already happening, right? I mean, I think, and you know, and you know, I think you’re, you’re talking in a sort of a longer, I’m not even terribly long-term, but a sort of a bigger, a bigger picture, you know, version of this.

I do think. You know, you are seeing this across society, you know, and you’ve seen it sort of work its way down from, you know, first we’re, you know, we’re questioning, you know, scientists and academics. Sure. That’s been going on for awhile. We, we question our elected officials, you know, of course, right.

We’re questioning business leaders because of, you know, the engagement, especially of certain businesses with, with some very touchy issues in society. So we questioned them. Certain segments of society are questioning police officers and other search traditional sources of authority. And it was only kind of a matter of time.

And I think the pandemic is a big factor in this. And this says that it gave parents a much greater insight into what was going on in their children’s classrooms and part of the difficulty. And there’s sort of two things I want to, I wanna say I to say on this point, I’m gonna go somewhere else, which is the difficulty of Democrats to deal with this.

But I mean, Localize in time and space sense. I mean, I would sort of repeat what you said, but in a slightly different way, just not boring now, but traditionally I said as being, and when we talk about like, you know, when we’ve, we’ve been pulling on education as for a long time here in Texas, right? I mean, as you said, we’ve been pulling back, you know, around the big education cuts after, uh, after the, the last great recession we’re pulling, you know, going into 2019, we’ve pulled.

School choice, which we’ll get to and all kinds of other things related to education, what people think would improve the education system, how it would be effective. And generally, you know, when we’re looking at attitudes on education, you know, really what we’re generally finding is, you know, people don’t like the education system or they rate it poorly, which we already talked about.

But if we ask them about mediocrely mediocrely, but if we asked them about the local schools, or if we ask parents about their children’s schools, they love it. They love the parent. They love the schools. They love the teachers. They think they’re great. They just think the system could be better. You know, and what that is generally, men is also that people thinking that teachers are paid too little, they think there needs to be work more resources in the system.

Uh, and generally, you know, when we’re talking about education issues in a, in a campaign season, we’re talking about either spending money on education, closing educational achievement gaps, or, you know, basically how we’re going to spend that money, paying teachers more getting, and ultimately that’s a good democratic terrain, you know, put yourself in a thought experiment, right?

I mean, what Republican candidate is gonna go out and pledge to give more money to the public education system than a democratic candidate is willing to play. Right full stop. And that’s why Democrats have an advantage on this. Now you see, and this has taken a little bit of time. I think, you know, we’re at a point where what we’re really talking about, the question about education as well.

Who’s defending the interests and rights of. Right. And that’s a very, very different discussion and we didn’t get there directly. I think, you know, we saw with critical race theory, something that popped up, but as you can see in the attitudes, you know, we’re going to say that the majority of public school students just like the majority of adults are non-white.

So to say that teachers shouldn’t talk about the history of racism in the us, it ultimately is going to just, it’s going to have a bit of a problem. There’s going to be a bit of a ceiling

[00:21:07] Jim Henson: versus do a lot of heavy Dean D loosen what people that are or get people beyond. Fairly intuitive in reflexive response to that.

Right. And

[00:21:17] Josh Blank: I would say there’s also a

[00:21:18] Jim Henson: fair wishing that doing. I think that’s, I think that’s why there’s so much character about this because I think it’s almost conscious, I think in the effort that people aren’t, you know, nobody will. There’s a lot of, you know, again, we are going to bring this up later.

This was something that was good in the John Oliver segment. Uh, John Oliver did a segment on his HBO show Sunday night on critical race theory. And we’ll talk about another piece of it, but one of the elements he did have in there was. A pretty funny montage of people quoting the Martin Luther king, you know, it’s a famous Martin Luther king line from his, I have a dream space that we’re going to judge people, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character and how ironic it was that that was, you know, he, I think he, he referred to it as almost kind of a talismanic chant or something that people would say that so we can just move on.

Right. And, and, and I think that’s why. You have to have the kind of hyperbole in the discussion of critical race theory that we see that we see in that so-called critical

[00:22:18] Josh Blank: risks. Well, right. And I mean, it ignores the fact that the reason that these discussions were going on in classrooms throughout the country was because of the very high profile public deaths of African-American men at the hands of police and the social justice protests that followed whether the weather.

You know, the kids in the classroom, you know, came down on this issue, whether or not they thought they had questions can now. And so these things are, so the idea of just like, well, we’re just not going to talk about that. It just doesn’t ring as through sort of an educational principle, same thing with banning books.

Not generally, as you said in history, Well looked upon, but if we shift that to, let’s not talk about the specifics, but let’s talk about whether or not you as a parent have enough say in what is going on in your child’s education. Not only one is there, you know, I think, you know, history of that kind of rhetoric that’s generally just sounds right to people.

Of course, I should have a say in my kids’ education, but two there’s already constituencies for this. In the homeschooling movement, the charter school movement, there are allies in the legislature around this private school move

[00:23:19] Jim Henson: right in the high school in industry has a.

[00:23:23] Josh Blank: And this is right, and this is organized.

And this is an issue that especially around vouchers that has not been able to gain a lot of traction in Texas for a lot of reasons. But ultimately if we’re talking about education and selection, but we’re really talking about, we can’t talk about education is not funding, but about parental control over their child’s education and parental control over educational decisions.

That really is a pretty good framing to start talking about

[00:23:44] Jim Henson: vouchers in particular. And I think, you know, you introduced this and I want to make sure we, you know, we flag it enough. You know, we always talk about. The stable pattern of attitudes on an issue and the tissue terrain. And then. Uh, again, uh, exogenous shocks, right?

Or some, some, some mark of discontinuity that changes the regular terrain. And clearly there are a bunch of things about the pandemic that helped activate this conversation. And, and, and it’s the, you know, in the experience that people had during the pandemic is kind of the connective tissue. I mean, you know, experience with alternatives to classroom teaching.

Dissatisfaction with the cautious approaches towards managing the pandemic in some schools, um, you know, the, the, the public role of teachers groups, and in other parts of the state and unions in seemingly slowing down the return to the classroom, in some cases, Fair enough to say, you know, the inherent, you know, the inherent difficulties writ large of managing public education during the pandemic.

And then on top of that, all these ugly, ugly fights over masks, vaccination requirements, you know, fisticuffs and school board meetings, rude language, all of that really. I mean, I think you can’t underestimate that as a catalyst here that then raises the question, you know, as we move into like what, where this political debate is going to go, what the degree of.

Planning on the part of some advocates was and what the degree of opportunism is. And I say to political opportunism in a very, you know, one can take that as, as derogatory, but not, not here. Yes. I mean, certainly I, you know, I applaud opportunism in many, in many ways and, and embrace it for the, for that fact.

But I think you can’t underestimate that as like the

[00:25:34] Josh Blank: catalyst here. Yeah. And I think, and I think, you know, whether whether it was planned or whether it’s opportunity, you know, Democrats have a real problem on their hand because on any one of these issues, um, you know, I think, I think critic, I mean, you know, critical race theory, writ large, whatever that means has a certain power of its own as a watchword, I think among Republicans and conservatives at this point, and it’s messy enough and unknown enough about Democrats that is going to take some amount of work that they do not.

To be spending their campaign time on clarifying this for their voters. And there

[00:26:03] Jim Henson: are, you know, then there’s plenty of documentation now that there were, you know, again, entrepreneurs and opportunists to. I don’t want to say engineered because I searched too much control, but certainly recognize the potential for a campaign based around the language, the very phrase, critical race theory that they have leveraged very effectively and have it in part through the use of conservative media outlets, but in parts through recognizing that this was a good, a good moment for this.

Yeah. And

[00:26:32] Josh Blank: I think what it’s done is it’s frozen Democrats in their tracks on an issue that they usually can win on because ultimately whether you’re talking about critical race theory, you know, then it becomes an instance of, well, let’s find the worst, you know, the worst example that we can have of a lesson gone awry.

And then that becomes what you’re defending as a democratic candidate. Let’s find the most learned passage. Within, you know, hundreds of books on a list. If you’re a Democrat, who’s defending, keeping these books in library, you’re defending that further again. Are you the Democrat? Who’s going to say that, you know, parents should have less say in their kids public school.

Well, you can try, but it didn’t work for ever. It didn’t work in Virginia did

[00:27:08] Jim Henson: it. And I think that the John Oliver, I keep wanting to call John Oliver, Jon Stewart. So I stuttered every time right before I, um, I know I’m not anti British. Um, You know, but that was one of the interesting illustrations. And I think they did it from a kind of expose that they wanted to make a point, but they also, I mean, it also raised how complex this is the way that they handled the inevitability that yeah, some of these lessons are absurd and they don’t work.

And they use a black woman on his writing staff who told, you know, simultaneously told horrifying stories. And I’ve been a funny way about being one of two black kids in a school with teachers trying to implement, you know, quote unquote kind of race, sensitive lessons, and just how, like ridiculous it was,

[00:27:57] Josh Blank: where she somehow always ended up being the freed

[00:27:59] Jim Henson: slave.

Right. Exactly. And in a historical mind experiment. So, you know, I think. You know, that was both rhetorically smart on their part for the argument they were making. But also, I don’t want to say unintentionally, but also had the consequences of illustrating that. Yeah. You know, look, this goes wrong all the time and it goes wrong.

Not just for, you know, per the language of the model legislation, the anguish of kids that are made of white kids, essentially they’re made to feel bad about themselves, but for the black kids kind of sitting there. What right. I mean, I thought it was, it was pretty effective. You know, if somebody was willing to look at this from a complex point of view, now there’s another element that we want to get to as we, as we wind down.

But you know, these attempts to focus, discussion on public ed on issues of content. You know, have also coincided and have also been accompanied by this is where the opportunism planning piece comes up by the revival of the, until recently relatively dormant issue of using public funds for parents to use for private education.

You know, the shorthand bean vouchers. And for a while though, The folks that advocated this use of funds and, and wanted, you know, state funds to give parents their, their term of choice was their term of their preferred term was school choice rather than vouchers. And I think that was almost certainly after some message testing research with.

We’re all adults here. So we’ve seen stirrings on vouchers in Texas, certainly in the interest group universe. And, and this was part of the, the argument of the, one of the sub arguments of this John Oliver thing that, you know, the, they didn’t quite say it. I rewatched it again last night. They don’t. Say this is a Trojan horse for this, but they come pretty close.

Yeah. That CRT basically is, uh, you know, whether intended to certainly at this point in time is to become a vehicle for raising the issue of school choice as the solution to parents, not liking how their children are being taught in school.

[00:29:59] Josh Blank: I know how to say this exactly. But I’m going to try, I was thinking about the intersection of these things and I was thinking, you know, if there is one way that you could get liberals on board, With school vouchers, it’s critical race theory, laws.

I mean, in some way, what’s your basic, I mean, it’s true truth. If you think about this, you know, the issue has always been well, what are we talking about? We’re talking about education. We’re thinking about these big picture issues about funding in the school districts. We’re talking about the closing of achievement gaps of which, you know, vouchers are not a systemic risk, like response to anything in the education system.

But now if, basically that is, well, you know, we can pass all these laws to make the school look like what, you know, basically conservative legislators running the state. Want them to look. Or we could just, we could just take these kids. So we have very different, you know, their parents have very different views about educate, educate.

And let them take the money elsewhere. I mean, as, I don’t think that’s actually the habits a little bit cynical and I’m joking, I’m half joking here, but I also think it does pin

[00:30:53] Jim Henson: in that to be raised that possibility come about April of 20, 23, but it

[00:31:00] Josh Blank: really does change the train of the way you think about something like that.

And again, there’s still some struggling. Yeah. There’s definitely, there’s still, I mean, the question is, I mean the real, there’s a couple of things here, right? I mean, one is by all indications, the Lieutenant governor said, this is going to be his last session. He could change his mind. Vouchers has been a pet issue for him, if not a primary issue, since he was a state Senator, he has tried to get this across the line.

So there’s no reason to not expect a push here, but, you know, have the underlying fundamentals of this change, which is the, you know, ultimately for most rural legislators and most rural legislators are Republican rent legislators. There isn’t really a purpose for school choice when you don’t have a range of educational institutions that the potential taking money out of the system is just not as attractive.

Well,

[00:31:40] Jim Henson: here’s another piece to that that, you know, you, and you re you know, you kind of, you touched on, you know, discussions of spending and spending years into this a few minutes ago, but here’s another piece of this as we look forward and we jump over the election, that it’s nice to not be talking constantly about the elections.

I know we’re coming back, but, but there’s one thing I would say about this. Another factor that is also just hovering over all of this. And I think is going to fundamentally affect this issue. Should the, you know, and I don’t see any reason. I mean, the Senate governor obviously wants this. It’s going to be an issue before the legislature in, in 2023.

The question is, you know, and here the model that I would follow is border security, which is the state is a wash and money. Yeah. Comptroller Glen Hagar report. You know, in the light, you know, the last, the last revenue report was, you know, and I almost, I can almost see the, the controller looking a little pain to have to say this to the legislature, but yes, we’re a wash in money.

Right. You know, revenue is much higher than pretty. He keeps updating the, you know, uh, moving the revenue, projections up, bringing in lots of money. We’re a Washington federal money. There is going to be a lot of money to throw at this issue in the spring in ways that I think. Inform the kind of possible strategies or a million other variations that you’re talking about, because it will be very easy if people want to use this as, and they’ve tried this in the, if, if the, if the voucher advocates will want to do this and they try to do this in the past to say, you know, we want a pilot program, we just are looking for some money that, so that we can say doesn’t come out of the existing public education.

You know, it’s going to be a lot of money laying around it. And when we say a lot of money, you know, these kinds of pilot programs have often been discussed in the ranges of millions of dollars. You know, there will be billions of dollars next time. And so I would look for creative funding solutions that enable this to happen, or these ideas to at least move a little farther than maybe they have in the past.

Because of the funding, you know, because there will be more money to do it with in a way that enables you to fight off the idea that you’re taking money away from public education. Now we know what public education advocates will they say. They will say, well, look, we’re still underfunded. You know, you’re still, if you’re willing to do that, then you should be putting that money back into the constitutionally mandated public education system

[00:34:17] Josh Blank: that raises the issue.

But, I mean, it does raise the issue of what does the leadership look like? And we’ve seen a lot, we’ve seen a lot of departing members with experience in the public education space in which you’re, you know, what you’re kind of sketching out is if, if leaders want this, there certainly seems to be, you know, an opportunity here to make, to make a deal, to have a grand bargain that both expands access to vouchers and also deals with some of these other issues in public education.

If they choose to do that,

[00:34:41] Jim Henson: there are logs to be rolled in money to roll them. If, if we’re

[00:34:45] Josh Blank: willing to do it, if people are willing to do. And I would say, and you know, and if, you know, I mean, like we saw this last time you’ve been around him, you know, important Republican priorities. And if the right people are put in the right positions to make it happen.

Right.

[00:34:56] Jim Henson: Okay. Well, what a nice chat about policy and politics. Um, we’re here, uh, early voting continues through Friday in the primary election. So if that’s your jam, uh, don’t forget early voting ends Friday, and then you can vote in person on Tuesday. Uh, thanks to Josh, into, to our excellent production team and the audio studio in the liberal arts development studio at UTR.

Um, thanks for listening. And remember, you can find all the data we referenced today and much, much more the texas politics project website that is texaspolitics.utexas.edu. We’ll be back again soon with another second reading podcasts. Thanks for listening and have a good rest of the week. Second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.