Grading Texas

Students speak out on school finance suit

Many lawyers, school administrators and so-called education experts – some genuine and some only claiming to be — have been heard from during the pending lawsuit over Texas’ school funding system, but students have been mostly unheard – until now.

Ten high school students from Houston spent their summer vacations researching and writing a legal brief about how crucial it is to their futures for the state to provide adequate education funding and distribute it fairly among school districts. They have submitted their brief to the Texas Supreme Court, which is considering the state’s appeal of a lower court ruling that found the finance system inadequate, unfair and unconstitutional.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, the students used “personal stories and interviews with teachers, administrators and other students to tell the court’s nine justices how their lives and futures could be improved with smaller class sizes, more qualified teachers, improved enrichment programs and enhanced college or career readiness initiatives.”

Their interviewees included the principal of a Houston high school that is about 75 percent Hispanic and almost 100 percent low-income enrollment, where critical programs have had to be cut for budgetary reasons. Statewide, more than 60 percent of public school students are low-income, and hundreds of schools are struggling with similar issues.

“Above all else, students need hope: hope that they can live a better life than their parents, hope that they can really have a chance, hope that they, too, matter,” the students wrote.

And, they pointed out, the improvements and the hope they are seeking will require more money, the same conclusion that state District Judge John Dietz reached after hearing testimony in the lawsuit brought by several hundred school districts.

Let us hope that the Supreme Court justices give weight to what the students have to say. But the justices have competing briefs to read, including one from Gov. Greg Abbott, who wants the high court to reverse the lower court. Abbott wants the court to trust the legislative majority, which slashed education funding by $5.4 billion a few years ago and continues to shortchange schools.

That’s what you call putting political ideology for the next election over hope for the next generation.

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/students-add-overlooked-voice-to-school-finance-ca/nnh8d/

An anti-educator gives up

Two down but still too many left to squeeze onto most debate stages. Every working person, including educators, in the United States should be grateful that Scott Walker, who built a political career on bashing working people, has joined Rick Perry in dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Walker’s priorities and suggestions – including the de facto abolition of labor unions and erecting a wall along part of the Canadian border and maybe (I guess) laying mines in the Great Lakes – were outrageous. But he couldn’t out-trump Donald Trump in the outrageous category and had dropped off the radar screen for most Republican primary voters.

In the end, the candidate who carried the water for America’s wealthiest 1 percent wasn’t even hitting 1 percent in voter polls.

Unfortunately, Walker remains the governor of Wisconsin, where he has devastated public employee unions and attacked public education. And his departure from the presidential race isn’t likely to change the absurd tone of a Republican campaign that couldn’t get any worse. Or could it?

An unhealthy climate for students and teachers

If there is one thing that social media does very well, it is to rush to judgment. Within a few hours after high school freshman Ahmed Mohamed was handcuffed and hauled to police headquarters in Irving for bringing a “suspicious” homemade clock to school, cyber-pontificators everywhere were heaping scorn on school officials and the Irving Police Department for thinking it may have been a bomb.

Even President Obama chimed in onTwitter, inviting Ahmed to bring his “cool clock” to the White House. “We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great,” he tweeted.

Chiming in from a distance and surrounded by 24-hour, armed security, the president could afford to be jocular. But teachers and their students don’t share the president’s 24-hour bodyguards, and teachers aren’t trained to recognize bombs.

Did teachers and administrators at MacArthur High School overreact to Ahmed’s clock? Probably, especially since he tried to explain to them what it was. But school officials are charged with keeping their students safe — to the point, sometimes, of erring on the side of caution and risking ridicule.

Did the Irving police officers overreact? Most likely, particularly since they apparently didn’t even try to evacuate the school or call in a bomb expert before they hauled Ahmed off.

The school district and the Irving Police Department owe Ahmed and his family a public apology, and they need to address one more question.

Was Ahmed, a dark-skinned Muslim, a victim of racial and/or religious profiling? I don’t know, but that issue needs to be thoroughly examined.

For sure, Ahmed was a victim of an uneasy, post-Sept. 11 environment punctuated by deadly episodes of school shootings and other acts of violence and inflamed by anti-immigrant, racist-tinged political rhetoric that now has become a staple of debate for the nation’s highest office.

His teachers, administrators and fellow students at MacArthur High School and at schools across the United States are affected by the same unhealthy environment.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-ahmed-mohamed-swept-up-hoax-bomb-charges-swept-away-as-irving-teen-s-story-blows-up-social-media.ece

Homelessness a major problem for public schools

Our policymakers don’t talk about it very much, but thousands of children in Texas public schools are homeless, presenting their own special problems for educators. According to new federal data, there were more than 111,000 of them during the 2013-14 school year.

Nationally, as reported by the Washington Post, the number of homeless children in public schools totaled 1.36 million that year. Texas came in third behind California and New York. The national amount has doubled since before the recent recession.

“Teachers often find themselves working not only to help children learn but also to clothe them, keem them clean and counsel them through problems – including stress and trauma – that interfere with classroom progress,” the Post reported.

Sound familiar?

The newspaper also noted that homeless children are “more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities, are more likely to miss school and change schools, are more likely to drop out of school than other children and score lower on standardized tests.”

Homelessness isn’t limited to urban school districts. Suburban and rural districts also struggle with the problem, partly because the gentrification of cities has forced many low-income families to abandon central city neighborhoods in hopes of finding affordable housing elsewhere. And, often, they don’t find it.

I may have missed it, but I don’t recall any singificant debate in the Legislature when it was in session earlier this year about the plight of homeless students. To their credit, some lawmakers tried to convince the powers-that-be in Austin to expand Medicaid, at least, so millions of low-income Texans, including the homeless, could get health care.

But the powers-that-be shut the door on that idea, keeping Texas’ social safety net extremely thin – and letting educators continue to deal with the consequences.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/number-of-us-homeless-students-has-doubled-since-before-the-recession/2015/09/14/0c1fadb6-58c2-11e5-8bb1-b488d231bba2_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_daily202

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