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ONE OF MY FAVORITE POLITICAL NEWS SITES sends out
e-mails to subscribers when new political intel is gleaned and ranks
the new information by a cooking heat scale ranging from “warm”
to the rarely used “boiling.” When I think of the upcoming year,
there are numerous issues that are currently politely simmering,
but could easily heat up to a boil in the months to come. Here’s
a preview of some of the things we may see in 2010.
Any year that includes a governor’s race is bound to be one in which information is spun regularly, and education is front and center. Speculation is rampant about whether Kay Bailey Hutchison really intends to stay in the race through the primaries and who the Democratic nominee will be, with candidates including Farouk Shami, a self-financed businessman and entrepreneur, Houston mayor Bill White, Dallas teacher Felix Alvarado, and Kinky Friedman, who at the time this was written was considering whether to stay in the race.
Interestingly, candidates in races from the top down to local races frequently focus on what needs to be done in public education, though few are making promises this time around with regard to resources. Comptroller Susan Combs just announced that revenue projections for the current budget biennium suggest that there is barely enough money to meet planned expenditures, and economists both nationally and internationally seem fairly bewildered about what to expect in the near term. Given the mood of the populace, which feels a little meaner, no doubt due to the high unemployment rate and fear about the economic outlook, some of the traditional support teachers and retirees enjoy may have eroded a bit, if the online comments to news stories are an indication. New money for public education in the next legislative session is far from a sure thing.
Despite the need to “reform” education that we can expect to hear much about in the months to come, you really are doing a phenomenal job. The National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) results this year were proof. Often referred to as the “gold standard” for measuring educational achievement, the NAEP is a favorite of mine because nobody drills for this test that is given every two years to a randomly selected percentage of the school population. NAEP scores are generally considered to be a much better
indicator of student success than state-developed tests, and as a norm-referenced test, the NAEP gives us an opportunity to see how our students measure up compared to those
in other states. On the NAEP math exam, Texas’ 8th grade African American students
tied with Massachusetts for first place nationally, while Texas’ 4th grade African American
students ranked third in the nation. Our 8th grade Hispanic students ranked fourth in the nation, and our 4th grade Hispanic students ranked eighth on the same exam. Our 8th grade Anglo students came in fourth and our 4th grade Anglo students tied for fifth place nationally. These figures are particularly impressive when you consider that Texas is third in the nation in the percentage of students living in poverty, which is widely considered to
be the best predictor of education achievement. Why this information isn’t disseminated
more widely and the hand-wringing replaced by applause is a mystery. This is not to suggest
that there aren’t improvements to be made in public education along with virtually
every other state endeavor I can think of, but it seems inappropriate not to celebrate the successes when we have them.
School finance is definitely simmering, as districts throughout the state continue to struggle
to get by with revenue that has not increased significantly in recent years, coupled with a relatively recent requirement to get voter approval for many tax rate increases, which is not an easy task in this economy. A select committee on school finance and funding weights
was approved by legislators last session to study the issues and make recommendations when the Legislature reconvenes in 2011. This undertaking, if like that of most select
committees, is likely to result in a series of
hearings held at locations around the state
(often the areas from which committee
members come) and recommendations that
are more guiding principles than a specific
school finance fix. Interestingly, school
finance debates traditionally devolve from a relatively lofty start in which good practices and goals like equity are enunciated, to an “every man for himself ” sort of scramble when the economic reality hits that some districts would be losers and others winners if those principles were actually applied.
The pivotal moments in any school finance debate are when the appropriations and finance committees decide how much money is to be cumulatively available, and when the computer models of how a school finance would affect each district appear. Legislators understandably want their districts to gain rather than lose funds and to be winners in the school finance process, so the horse trading generally gets serious at this point. Part of the reason that legislators so often seem interested in keeping their school board members happy is that school board members are potential candidates for legislative seats, having already demonstrated political aspirations and a willingness to run. A fairly significant number of current legislators got their start on local school boards, and it seems the number of candidates coming from school boards is on the rise. This issue could sizzle or fizzle, depending largely on the state of the economy and future prospects in 2011.
The tension between the state’s role in
issues like public education and the desire
of districts to have lots of funding and
little oversight is also rising. It appears that the bill passed last session to prohibit
districts from requiring a minimum grading policy may turn out to be ground zero in this fight. At the time of this writing, several Houston-area school districts have sued the Texas Commissioner of Education, asserting that he does not have the authority to interpret or to enforce his interpretation of the grading bill. Districts and their
representatives have asserted that grading policies should be a matter of “local control,” the rallying cry that has been used for the last couple of decades to suggest that districts would prefer that the state let them make the decisions. Oddly, local control seems to me to be a concept that would best be defined as allowing the individuals who have the most information about a situation to determine how that situation should be handled. Arguably that may not be legislators in Austin in some instances, but it’s not always going to be school board members or superintendents either. The grading bill provides a perfect example - who better to decide whether a student should get a grade of 60 or a zero or something in between than the teacher who knows whether the student even made an effort on the assignment or ignored it completely?
The local control issue almost reached a
boil prior to the last legislative session,
when a small, wealthy, central Texas school
district announced its intention to ignore
the recapture (“Robin Hood”) provisions
in law and to keep all of the money generated
by its tax effort, essentially daring
TEA to do something about it. The district
was talked off the ledge prior to the
deadline and ultimately chose to comply
with the law, but the ability and desire of
TEA to enforce the law is going to have to
be addressed at some point. Many years
ago Texas hired a commissioner, whose
tenure was not long, from out of state. He was clearly “not from around here” and
didn’t understand or care about the good ol’ boy approach to oversight of school
districts that has been the standard for
many of his predecessors and successors,
most of whom have been former superintendents from Texas.
Since that time, TEA and the commissioners who head it have often enunciated the approach that TEA is not a “gotcha” agency, and that their mission is to serve as a resource rather than an enforcer. This seems an odd concept to me, since other state agencies (like the Public Utility Commission or the State Board of Insurance) are quite overt about and apparently comfortable with their role as watchdogs, and don’t hesitate to sanction the entities they oversee. Regardless of how the grading
bill litigation goes, the issue is likely to be one that is addressed legislatively at some point – whether it will come to a boil before 2011 or not remains to be seen.
An issue for TCTA for the upcoming year and beyond has to be addressing the serious threat some students pose to their teachers, fellow students and themselves. We were stunned at the recent killing at school of a special education teacher in
Tyler by a student. Worse yet, though
initial indications were that the student’s
actions were completely unexpected, a
subsequent article in the Dallas Morning
News indicated that the child arrested
had a long history of violence and was
processed out of the Texas Youth Commission
because they couldn’t handle him.
In other words, all indications were that
this student posed a significant risk to others,
yet he was attending school. I don’t
know if the problem of students who pose
serious risks has escalated in recent years because of incidents like Columbine and Virginia Tech, or because the settings where these students might have gone in
years past have been closed by the state
in favor of community care, or whether we have just gone too far in the service
of the concept that no child must be left behind in any way. Regardless, the issue of dangerous students simply must be
addressed in a meaningful fashion. Too many teachers are behind closed doors in
classrooms with students who pose a real and significant threat – and are given too
few options to deal with that risk. Just because we don’t want to expel dangerous students to the street doesn’t mean we can continue to pretend that they can do just fine in the regular classroom.
The one certainty about 2010 is that it will be, like 2009, an interesting year. Though the core issues of public education remain similar over the years, they manifest differently and the responses often vary. There are also, inevitably, flare-ups that we didn’t see coming. We will continue to advocate on your behalf and to keep you informed as 2010 and the political and legislative preludes to the next legislative session start to heat up.
Posted: 12/17/09 ("The Classroom Teacher," Winter 2009)
