Weekly Summary
Federal budget cuts, called sequestration, will go into effect unless Congress and the Obama administration reach a fiscal compromise. The state will see nearly $70 million in education cuts and up to $500 million over the next few years. Read the full White House report on how the sequester will affect education funding.
Gov. Perry has been busy this week assuring parents that legislators hear their frustration with high stakes testing. At a luncheon for the Texas Business Leadership Council Education Summit, the Governor outlined his agenda for education reform. He reiterated the importance of evaluating testing methods to help determine the best mix of STAAR testing for Texas students, school choice, charter expansion, and transparent accountability ratings.
He also encouraged legislators to:
- make school accountability ratings more transparent for parents and communities, like the adoption of an A-to-F rating system
- give students more flexibility in the courses they take in high school, so they can meet their own goals, whether that’s going to college or directly entering the workforce, but he stressed that “the flexibility must not sacrifice any of our rigorous academic standards,”
- expand online education, especially when it’s used to give students access to courses not taught at their own schools,
- institute a four-year tuition freeze for college students, so students can pay the same rate throughout college, provided they graduate in four years,
- tie at least 10% of a an institution of higher education’s funding to the number of students that graduate, not how many students attend,
Education Commissioner Michael Williams also spoke at the Texas Business Leadership Council’s Education Summit. He said that closing the racial achievement gap should be the state’s top education priority. He stressed the need to continue testing students. Williams said the state is in the situation it is in because this is only the second year of the new accountability system.
Commissioner Williams added, “college OR career are false choices. We need to prepare everybody for everything. The default curriculum still needs to be college-ready.” He pointed out that there are four and one-half elective credits and up to six additional credit options (totaling 10 credits) that can be traded out for career and technology courses within the current 4×4 system. He concluded by predicting that if the state back-tracks on 4×4 and standards, the students selecting a career and technology path will be predominantly minority students (to their detriment).
Sen. Patrick’s push for vouchers might be sizzling out as parents and legislators push to restore funding for public schools. Committee workgroups appear ready to approve putting $1.5 billion back into the budget for education.
Over 2000 parents rallied in front of the Capitol, urging legislators to re-fund education and to reform the STAAR accountability system.
The session is hitting its halfway mark as the last day to file a bill is March 8th.
News of the Week
Sequester cuts would land heavy on Texas
The White House estimates the state would lose $67.8 million in federal funds for education and see reductions in staff and furloughs for thousands of federal employees.
-Read full article-
Bill White says Texas lagging in skilled jobs
Former Houston Mayor Bill White, defeated by Republican Rick Perry in a 2010 bid for governor of Texas, said the state is falling behind in preparing workers who can meet the demands of a resurgent U.S. energy industry.
-Read full article-
Senate Panel Approves More Money for Public Schools
A panel of senators voted to put $1.5 billion in additional funding for public education in the two-year state budget on Thursday — including $40 million for pre-kindergarten programs, $20 million for the state’s Virtual School Network and $4 million to support Teach for America.
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Big school reforms should be the goal, Jeb Bush says
Often mentioned as a Republican presidential candidate, Bush testified before the Texas Senate Education Committee and said overhauling public schools is a bipartisan issue, with supporters and detractors from both parties. “I would advocate that when you have a chance to reform, it ought to be big,” he said. “Be big or go home.”
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Testimony on four-year fixed tuition details good and bad for two UT campuses
University administrators who have experimented with four-year fixed tuition at their colleges testified Wednesday on the pros and cons of a statewide implementation.
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Sen. Patrick Asks For Moratorium On Certain Tests
Meanwhile Patrick wants to expand a different kind of test in high school, the SAT. Patrick says every high school student should take the college entrance exam.
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Testing in Texas has gone too far, say key insiders
Four of the state’s past education commissioners, now free from political backlash, agreed Monday that Texas needs less high-stakes testing in its public schools, an increasingly common theme among parents, educators and some lawmakers.
Are House members smarter than a 5th grader?
Gene Wu, a Democrat from Houston, sent a letter to all House lawmakers and staff last week that included sample STAAR questions provided by the Texas Education Agency hoping to exemplify the frustration that students and parents have expressed to him about the cloudiness and confusing wording of the test.
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Teachers, Parents Stage School Rally At Capitol
The 2013 Save Texas Schools rally at the Capitol turned into a call for lawmakers to restore the billions of dollars in budget cuts from the last legislature. About 2,000 teachers, students, parents and school administrators rallied on the south steps of the state Capitol on Saturday, demanding that the Legislature reverse $5.4 billion in cuts to public education amid new data that Texas now spends less per-pupil than almost anywhere else in America.
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Texas AP participation and success rates continue to climb
Texas ranks 13th in nation in the percentage of 2012 graduates participating in AP. Over the last decade, AP participation and success in Texas has increased steadily.
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Weighing Prospect of Changes in Graduation Requirements
Following backlash over the rocky institution of a new student assessment system last spring, Texas lawmakers are scrambling to scale back the requirements they passed four years ago. As the Legislature tackles such reform, attention is also focused on another area of education policy: high school graduation requirements.
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Texas Legislators Vent Over STAAR Testing Fallout
There’s been a lot of attention paid over the last month to school financing in Texas and how its fate now rests in the hands of state Supreme Court justices—but the state’s relatively new testing regimen, called the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, is also causing a lot of stress among state lawmakers. Even the subject of a test question involving ice on the sidewalk has cause irritation in Austin.
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Editorial: Patrick’s bill could improve charter schools
Let’s make this clear at the outset: There’s no magic formula for raising the achievement levels of Texas’ 5 million students, but state legislators and school districts can take various steps to give young Texans greater opportunities for a better education. One way is providing enough high-performing charter schools.
-Read full editorial-
At Capitol Education Rally, Tough Words for Legislature
At a rally at the Capitol on Saturday, public education advocates accused lawmakers of strangling public schools with out-of-control high-stakes testing and funding cuts.
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Is voucher idea fizzling?
“If you are rich enough, you can send your child to a private school. And if you are mobile enough, you can move to the suburbs to a great school district.” Those options don’t exist if “you’re poor, and you’re a hard-working single mom in an inner city,” said Patrick, R-Houston. He said he wants to change that, while contending his plan wouldn’t take public money away from public education.
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End historic tax breaks that are diverting money from public schools
Austin district schools would benefit by tens of thousands of dollars if school trustees end big subsidies for mostly high-end historic properties. Such tax breaks — granted at the public’s expense — are usurping money from public schools.
-Read full editorial-
Disturbing unknowns hand over Pre-K 4 SA
Three school districts are already aboard, but the city says the chief executive officer will not be chosen until mid-March. Since this person will develop the educational program, no one will know its vision, strategy, teacher trainers, or curriculum until the CEO is hired and develops the program.
-Read full editorial-
School districts united: Home rule districts – a Trojan horse
Proponents for Home Rule Districts (HRDs) claim that, along with individuals, communities as a whole deserve school choice. This option allows the voters of a community the ability to convert their local traditional public school district to a Home Rule District charter school. For the record, converting to an HRD has been available since 1995 when the Texas Education Code was revised. HRDs are exempt from some but not as many of the state regulations and mandates as open-enrollment charter schools.
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Jeb Bush Talks Education Reform With Texas Lawmakers
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told Texas senators “to go big or go home” when it comes to pushing changes to public education policy on Wednesday.
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Texans petition Dewhurst to return Davis to Senate education committee
Petitions calling for state Sen. Wendy Davis’ reinstatement to the Senate Education Committee were presented to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s office Friday on the eve of an Austin rally calling for the restoration of billions of dollars in state education funding.
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Austin school board to decide on $883 million bond
The bond would cost the owner of an average-value home — $244,500 after exemptions — an extra $86 a year. It would pay for an array of improvements including three new schools and multiple classroom additions. Cook would get 10 new classrooms, a new cafeteria and a new gym.
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Was Reuters ‘Selective Admissions’ Charter Report Wrong?
Last week, Reuters published an analysis claiming that contrary to the ethos of the school choice movement and in some cases against federal and state laws, a large number of charter schools were practicing what was in effect selective admissions aimed at admitting only the best and most suitable students. Now, after looking directly at the data used in the Reuters report, the Center for Education Reform is saying that Reuters was wrong in its conclusions.
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Textbooks – and Their Publishers – Are Evolving
Textbooks as games? Textbooks that create a digital database of student progress? Or just text modules to mix and match? Michelle R. Davis, writing in Education Week, describes how the top three publishers are planning to bring their catalogs into the future.
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TASA Report: Report on School District Mandates: Cost Drivers in Public Education
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