Democracy for Houston

Framing Template for Education The Message is..

Our message: The Democrats of Harris County fight to restore the middle class by promoting opportunity for all. Applied to education: The Democrats of Harris County demand the restoration of quality public education and the opportunities it creates for all our children. Our story: Our unrelenting passion is for access to education that creates better jobs; fair taxation and living wages that stimulate the local economy; healthcare and environmental protection that foster quality of life; a tough but fair judicial system that creates safety and security and eliminates injustice ; and full access to all qualified voters so every voice is equally heard. Applied to education: Our unrelenting passion is for access to education that creates better jobs. That education is founded upon the restoration of a quality public education system adequately funded and staffed with dedicated teachers and administers. Our schools have been the victim of clueless politicians and greedy corporate lobbyists more interested in selling worthless tests and useless teaching aides than in our sons and daughters. They have rigged the test scores, dumbed down the teaching and created failure factories throughout our state. As long as their profits rolled in , they didnt really care. Their time is over, it is time to again put first priority upon those students who work hard, to reward their effort with a real chance at future success. Our motto: Making Better Lives For All. Not Just the Privileged Few
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Applied to education: Quality public education makes Better Lives For All. Not Just the Privileged Few The application of the general message to the specific issue: (our specific message/story)

Since 1836, Texas has stood as an icon of the American dream. Blessed with land, rivers, oil, and other abundant natural resources, early Texas welcomed everyone from cattle ranchers to braceros, from cotton farmers to Chinese railroad workers. These pioneers built a great state, and together we fulfilled a destiny. From humble beginnings, we built a state with the firm belief that every Texan might rise as high and as far as their spirit, hard work, and talent might carry them. With education and determination every Texan might achieve great success home ownership, reliable healthcare, safe neighborhoods, and financial prosperity. In Texas today, the American dream is distant. Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation. Texas is dead last in the percentage of residents with their high school diploma and near last in SAT scores. Texas has Americas dirtiest air. If we do not change course, for the first time in our history, the Texas generation of tomorrow will be less prosperous than the generation of today. Without the courage to invest in the minds of our children and steadfast support for great schools, we face a daunting prospect. Those who value tax cuts over children and budget cuts over college have put
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Texas at risk in her ability to compete and succeed. Let us not forget that the business of Texas is Texans. To Close the Gap in Texas, we must graduate more of our best and brightest with the skills to succeed in a world based on knowledge. If we invest in our greatest resource our children Texas will be the state of the future. If we do not, Texas will only fall further behind. Texas is on the brink, but Texas can do better. The choice is ours. http://texaslsg.org/texasonthebrink/texasonthebrink.pdf

Keep in mind as you frame this issue:

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PROBLEM TO SOLVE The majority of voters vote for Republicans against their own self interest Application to this issue: Public support for charter schools and vouchers comes at the expense of funding for public schools. COMPETITION The local, state and national Republican Party with a very persuasive message of low taxes and small, efficient government which they betray in actual performance Relevance to this issue? Promise of lower taxes , which really means shifting tax burdens from the corporate sector to local property tax payers and regressive sales taxes. As for smaller government, the state school board , under Republican domination has attempted to use state power to inject religious dogma into science classrooms, to mandate how teaches should teach by means of worthless high states testing. Because they cannot even measure what , if anything, the educational policies of the last 20 years have achieved, they reward the wrong people and drive quality teachers and administrators out of the system. TARGET Loyal county Democrats and persuadable independents Other specific key groups? Property tax payers, teachers who vote Republican, Positioning the Republicans Republicans are bullies They claim to support freedom but in actions coerce and physically punish people by meddling in their private lives, deny basic human necessities for citizens in need of help, reward the wealth and tax the middle class, dismantle public services to hand over to private companies and are bent on creating a permanent underclass to serve the rich.
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Relevance to this issue: Republican education policy ends up creating unequal schools, where the working and middle classes struggle in overcrowded, under resourced classrooms and the affluent students have all they need. They promise lower taxes, but simply hide the higher taxes by shifting them to the local level. Texas ranks at the bottom in national standardized scores, only above states like Mississippi and Louisiana. The dropout rate, especially for minorities, is among the worst in the nation. Moreover, running schools like factories using quality control testing methods has produced falling achievement, bored and under challenged students and a workforce not ready for the 21 st century competition from China, Japan and Europe. We have attempted to document all talking points. To avoid too much clutter in the main text, the footnotes link a Talking Point with supporting materials to be found online. DFH will be happy to respond to questions on our work. Email democracyforhouston@gmail.com. Put xxxxx in the subject line. General Resource: Texas on the Brink: http://texaslsg.org/texasonthebrink/texasonthebrink.pdf Cartoons Resource Their Frame: Summary statement Public schools are a failure. They are bloated with administrators and waste money by educating illegal aliens. They need the competition of private sector and charter schools. Additionally, we need to hold teachers accountable for the dismally low student performances on standardized tests. We should use public monies and allow parents to send their children to the more successful charter and private schools. We should let the individual districts decide upon how much they wish to charge in property taxes, after all , they are the ones in charge of the schools.

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Our Frame: Summary statement All of our children deserve a chance to pursue their American dream. This means access to a quality public education. The Texas Constitution calls for it and our future economic wellbeing demands it. Going forward, restoring the quality of our public schools is the single most important thing we can do to create a sound economy and create good, middle class jobs.

I believe in (see immediately below) 1-Minute In the right of every child to pursue their American Dream. I believe in the free, quality public education that Statement: alone can make that possible. It is not only fair to hard working students, but essential for Texas future prosperity. Quality education, American dream, fairness, quality public schools, our schools, dedicated teachers, restoration Our Key of public schools. Words: Further Reading: The last part of your framing work is to anticipate their talking points and have properly framed responses. A properly framed response uses the values and key words you developed above, but applies them in responding to their talking point. Remember, if you dont get the frame right, they wont hear your facts, no matter how good they are. Try to research and develop the top five you can find.. They say Public schools are wasteful because they are top heavy with administrators. We say Our students deserve every chance to succeed and that means the support of dedicated professional staff. Those administrators you lump together and accuse of waste are really crossing guards, librarians, counselors, cafeteria staff, secretaries, speech therapists, teachers aides. You get the picture. But Notes/ specific groups addressed According to another report, released in November, instructional aides accounted for about 12 percent of all full-time public school staff nationwide, instructional coordinators and supervisors made up 1 percent, guidance counselors (2 percent), librarians (1 percent), student and support staff (23

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dont take my word for it, check out percent), school administrators (3 what Politifact i has to say. percent), school district administrators (1 percent) and administrative support staff Moreover, compare the staffing for a (7 percent). business with several thousand clients with the staffing of a school with Where does all this leave Sullivan's comparable numbers. I think you will statement? find them quite efficient by comparison. He correctly cites the number of teachers and non-teachers, per the education As for top administrators, like any agency's latest snapshot report. More specialist, we have to offer to pay what recent data available from the agency the market will bear if we want quality shows both have increased; still, the ratio employees. Unless maybe you believe of teachers to non-teachers is about the we should rig the market and fix same. salaries? Is that what you propose? But Sullivan's online call to action doesn't do justice to the state's actual mix of school workers. The majority of non-teachers aren't administrators or paper shufflers; they're people who work directly with students including counselors, librarians, therapists and bus drivers.

Teacher tenure means that we are forced to keep bad teachers.

Most teachers do what they do out of love for their students. Why would you presume that those teachers who have

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spent most of their professional lives helping children are incompetent? Second, there is no tenure in Texas, we have continuing contracts. iiAnd teachers can be fired for cause. They only get a continuing contract after they have demonstrated their competence for at least 3 years. The job security it represents is partial compensation for the low pay and arduous hours the job demands. I guess if you paid them more and improved their working conditions you could legitimately ask them to renounce their security. Is that what you propose? Any solution to our educational problems must provide for educating all our children, not just the most affluent, gifted or motivated. Privatization means that these types of students are siphoned off by charter schools etc. and the public schools are left to educate everyone else. The privates can shed troublesome students for any reason, poor home support , bad attitude, whatever. The public schools cannot. Comparing

Charter schools & vouchers (privatization) is the solution to our educational problems.

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them then is comparing an elite, self-selective students with a cross section of the whole population. In the end, it is literally blaming the victims ( the students, the public schools) . Worse we are bleeding the public schools of the best students and money and talented teachers and then blaming them for being weak. We should support public schools mission to teach all our children, to give them all a fighting chance, not punish them for having the courage to try and educate all students. In fact, if a private school HAD to serve EVERYONE who showed up with say ,a voucher, it would have the same issues as public schools. Nobody eats the seed corn in bad times, it just means more hardship down the road. Education is the seed corn, the foundation of our economic well-being far beyond this year and this crisis. If you think it is costly , consider the price of ignorance, of a workforce that

We are in an economic crisis, we must cut spending even in education!

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drives employers away because they lack the necessary basic skills and knowledge to be profitable employees. Besides there was money to avoid the harsh and crippling cuts to public education. Its called the Rainy Day fund and our governor refused to support its use. iiiHe is running for president and had to prove how stingy he was with public money. He did so by beggaring our children and mortgaging our future quality of life Its simple: no educated workforce, no future economic prosperity. My tax money just goes to educate illegal aliens in those big urban districts. Bright, hard working young people are a resource we cannot afford to waste. It doesnt matter what the status of their parents or of themselves. They are here, they can help pay for themselves, IF they are educated. Moreover, you got your facts wrong. The Texas Comptrollers office estimates that no more than 3% of public school students are undocumented . iv That means that our tax monies spent on education is spent on our sons and daughters. What matters is whether or not our sons

We have increased spending on public education!

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and daughters have the resources they need . The fact is that the so called increase in spending is totally wiped out by the fact it does not account for the increase in enrollment. Think about it. If your family added two new children and your income went up by less than 1% , is that increase really meaningful? It is more than a little deceptive to cite a miniscule increase in the raw dollar amount and ignore the fact it does not cover enrollment growth. v vi vii viii

iiii

http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/may/27/empower-texans/pac-says-texas-public-schools-employ-one-non-teach http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/public-education/bu and http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/teachers/the-myth-of-teacher-tenure.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/15/rick-perry-rainy-day-fund_n_836339.html

iii

iv v

http://capitolannex.com/2010/12/05/dallas-morning-news-numbers-on-illegal-immigrants-in-texas-schools-appear-grossly-inflated-flawed/ http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2011/jun/03/wendy-davis/wendy-davis-says-texas-not-funding-enrollment-grow/ vi http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2011/jun/04/michael-sullivan/michael-sullivan-says-lawmakers-increased-public-s/ vii http://shapleigh.org/system/reporting_document/file/219/PublicEdBorderlands_4.pdf

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viii

http://www.moakcasey.com/articles/viewarticledoc.aspx?AID=1810&DID=1910

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