Our coalition is working toward accountability that makes the program stronger, without being so restrictive it prohibits good private schools from participating.

Many private schools are willing to be accountable for their performance in educating scholarship recipients. The challenge will be in moving the debate away from politics and back to education and the students, where it belongs.

Unfortunately, politics have gotten in the way. These bills have become political pawns.

We even have a couple of elementary schools coming to do their little plays.

I'm quite proud of them. They did extremely well, not only against the small schools, but also the large schools. Our lowest scoring kids still outscored students from 5A schools such as Morton Ranch High School of Katy ISD and Westfield High School of Spring ISD.

It is not inevitable that our schools have incidents like this. We can make our schools even safer,