The expected backlash against the cuts to public education during the last legislative session have not materialized. This suggests that the cuts may only partially restored by the 83rd legislature.
Polls suggest education is not an especially salient issue for most Texans:
The guarded optimism over the partial restoration of the 2011 cuts
comes after two years in which critics awaited an outcry that never
quite reached the volume many predicted at the time. Polling over the
last two years from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune suggests that
education has not become more salient to Texas voters, nor have
perceptions of school quality suffered significantly.
Education has remained static in voters’ assessments of the most
important problems, remaining the choice of between 8 and 12 percent of
Texans in each of the last seven polls that we’ve conducted since May
2011. As with many issues, party identification frames voters’
perceptions of the importance of education. While Democrats appear
somewhat more concerned about education than Republicans, fewer than one
in five Democrats chose it as the state’s most important problem in
those surveys, while the percentage of Republicans choosing education
has consistently remained below 10 percent.
Public perceptions provide an ambiguous gauge of whether and how
reductions in per pupil funding affected the efficacy of the state’s
education system. But what is clear is that education is
actually only one among a whole host of priorities competing for oxygen
this session. That competition isn’t limited to transportation, water,
tax cuts, health care and everything else with an advocate: 32 percent
of voters support continuing to limit government by approving no new
spending and no new taxes.
The polls also state that opinions are not that negative about public education overall:
. . . the results don’t overwhelmingly suggest widespread perceptions of a
crisis in public school classrooms. In October 2012, 45 percent of
respondents said that the education system was “about the same,”
“somewhat better” or “a lot better” compared to a year ago, while 43
percent said it was “somewhat worse” or “a lot worse”. When we asked
again in our most recent survey, 47 percent said it was the same or
better, 38 percent it was worse — a notable decline in the negative
responses and, while not a glowing endorsement, not exactly a sign that
end times have arrived, either.
When we look only at parents with children in school, 58 percent said
public education was the same or better and 36 percent said it was
worse in October 2012, while in February, 57 percent said it was better
and 36 percent said it was worse. Contrary to the expectations of
critics of the 2011 funding cuts, parents with kids in the public
schools appear to be somewhat more positive about the system compared
with the public at large.
With these results, its highly unlikely the full cuts made in the 82nd session will be restored.
