HOUSTON DOGOODERS WANT THE STATE (YOU) TO PAY FOR PRE-K:

A bunch of Houston "dogooders" want the State to fund full-day Pre-K for all "disadvantaged 4-year-olds."  Tuition would be required from "wealthier families."

Got that?

The rest of us get to provide free day care for people who bore children they cannot afford to support and who need free day care paid for by the rest of us while they earn a living!

This is more Obama stupid stuff.

The Greater Houston Partnership is leading the way.  Retired fellows with nothing else to do are hopping on the band wagon, mouthing platitudes that are not true. They call their effort "Early Matters."

The estimated cost of this boondoggle is $700,000,000 in start up funding to provide full day Pre-K to "hundreds of thousands of 4-year-olds from disadvantaged families in Texas." The state already covers half-day tuition for these children! We all knew that once they got their foot in the door on this issue, it wouldn't be long before they wanted more money and time.

Even the state Republican gubernatorial candidate has been snowed by this issue. We knew his opponent would be, but it's hard to believe that Greg Abbott would be so foolish.

The facts are there are no facts supporting any benefit of this program. The Feds have had Head Start for a gazillion years, and the RESEARCH SHOWS that it may have a benefit initially, but there is no long term benefit. Someone also needs to look into the duplication of effort between Head Start and what the GHP is proposing.

They want 20 students in a class with one teacher and one aide. (Ever notice how many aides have accumulated in Katy ISD? Way more than they need.)

What these fellows who seem not to have anything else to do SHOULD have done when they were a CEO somewhere was insist that women in their employ who have children take time off to raise them.  Perhaps they should also be as generous with THEIR money as with that which belongs to all of us and subsidize their female employees while they raise their children for a few years.  I guarantee the results for the children would be far better than what these fellows are proposing.

This idea got started with Obama in his State of the Union Address last January. You'd think self-proclaimed Republican businessmen would have more sense than to fall for another Obama scam.

This group tried to fund their effort by sneaking in a one cent tax under the aegis of the Harris County Department of Education last spring, but people got wise to that and cut them off at the pass.

Now they are going straight to the legislature. 

I hope all of you who aren't inclined to pay for day care for other people's children will notify your state legislator of your opinion on this matter.  You can bet all the lobbying groups from teachers' organizations, principals' organizations and all the others will be at all the committee meetings on this bill to testify in favor of it.

[The article regarding this initiative appeared in the Houston Chronicle on September 26, 2014, but as usual with education articles, it has not been posted on line yet.]

The following URL is another article on the same subject that appeared a couple of days later as more dogooders jump on the bandwagon.  (This issue is a nationwide one, and any attempt to act like it is a Houston or Texas initiative is bogus.)

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Powell-others-praise-local-pre-K-effort-5783561.php