The House Public Education Committee will meet Monday, May 15, to consider the committee substitute for Senate Bill 8, the Senate's major piece of voucher legislation. The committee will hear invited testimony only, but it's critical that committee members hear the voices of educators. ATPE opposes SB 8 for the following reasons:

• SB 8 has always included a voucher program. The member-written ATPE Legislative Program includes a longstanding position opposing vouchers of any type.
• The committee substitute for SB 8 contains a comprehensive overhaul of the state's accountability/standardized testing system—the sort of changes that normally result from interim studies and multi-year commission reviews.
• The  changes are hasty and far-reaching, and the promise of changes to standardized testing is being used as a "spoonful of sugar" to make the "medicine" of a voucher go down.
• The committee's initial plan to vote on this bill without a public hearing—which was stopped by a House vote Wednesday, May 10—and its subsequent plan not to hear public testimony do a  disservice to Texans. The changes in this bill will  remove taxpayer oversight from public dollars and affect 5.4 million public school students, their parents and guardians, and Texas educators. It's safe to say the testing changes in this bill would have an impact on at least a third of the state's population. So why the rush?

Sign the petition to urge the House Public Education Committee to withstand immense political pressure and  say NO to Senate Bill 8.