Newly appointed Commissioner of Education Shirley Neeley wasted no time climbing on board Gov. Perry’s ideological bandwagon, using her address last week to the Texas Public Policy Foundation to endorse abandoning teacher certification (“We don’t need it. … You can trust the administrators to do the right thing”); the guv’s proposed financial incentive plan (“Don’t listen to the negative rhetoric. … It’s a neat little carrot”); and even “school choice” (that is, vouchers). Neeley said her own experience as Galena Park ISD superintendent had taught her that “motivational” incentives will work to raise student test scores. And although published reports have featured many administrators very skeptical of Perry’s incentive plan, Neeley insisted she’s certain that most of the superintendents are now calculating “how much money their districts could make under this plan.”
Neeley’s flamboyantly “cheerleader” manner is more than a little breathless, but all of this was predictable. However, the Texas Freedom Network released a document showing that Neeley has not always seen the wisdom of giving away public school dollars to subsidize private school education. In December of 1997, then Superintendent Neeley wrote to then Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, strongly questioning Bullock’s support for the Putting Children First voucher program promoted by the San Antonio-based CEO Horizon Foundation. “With public education on the brink of excellence,” wrote Neeley, “why do you want to pull the plug and start over with a new program that will experience the same kinks and growing pains which public education has overcome? … If you sincerely believe that public education is failing Texans,” Neeley continued, “then it is all too obvious that you have not spent real, quality time in our schools.”
What a difference a promotion makes. Asked about the 180-degree turnaround, Neeley said the issue in 1997 was accountability – although that word goes unmentioned in her letter to Bullock – and that “a lot has changed in seven years. … Voucher proposals that have been discussed in the last several years contain testing and accountability requirements. Seven years later, I have much more knowledge of and experience with private and charter schools.”
The new commissioner said those who run good public schools “have nothing to fear from vouchers,” and specifically rejected the implication that her appointment had been conditional on changing her position. “That’s totally false. … Governor Perry has never asked me to support vouchers. He has never even asked me what my position might be regarding vouchers.”
This article appears in February 6 • 2004.
