Grading Texas

I have read several Facebook postings and letters to the editor recently indicating that many people think that we pay members of the Texas Legislature a lot more than we do. Each member of the Texas House and the state Senate is paid a base salary of $7,200 a year. That’s $600 a month.

During the 140 days they are in session this year, each will be paid an additional per diem for living expenses. The Texas Ethics Commission, which sets that allowance, is considering $150 a day for this session. If adopted, that would be another $21,000 per legislator, but that supplement will end when the session adjourns.

For some legislators, we can consider the low pay a bargain. Even at bargain basement prices, however, others still are ripping us off.

The governor, by comparison, is paid $150,000 a year plus housing. Members of Congress, both U.S. senators and U.S. representatives, are paid $174,000 a year.

The governor and members of Congress are paid more because their jobs are fulltime. Members of the Texas Legislature are considered parttime state workers because they are in regular session for only five months every other year, although they spend some time on state business when they aren’t in session. And, this year, they may even be called back to Austin for a special session or two to finish work on the budget.

The per diem supplement – which is based on economic factors changes from session to session, but the base legislative pay is set in the Texas Constitution and can be changed only with voter approval. It hasn’t been increased since 1975, when voters approved an increase from $4,800 a year to the current $7,200.

That’s a long time between pay raises, and it is likely to become much longer.

The low legislative pay pretty well restricts the pool of lawmakers to lawyers, retirees, wealthy individuals or people who own their own businesses and can afford to take the time off for frequent trips to Austin. Most everyday, working people, including teachers, can’t afford to disrupt their careers for the low pay. You can make an argument that higher legislative pay would broaden the pool of potential lawmakers and make the Legislature more representative of all Texans. But that change isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, there has been talk around the Capitol that a couple of the newly elected, slashthebudget Republican members of the Texas House thought they would get paid more. According to this scuttlebutt, they thought they would be paid like kings (or at least, congressmen) while they hacked state government into oblivion.

I emphasize that all that talk is unconfirmed, but it is fun to think that it may be true.

First, Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature cut higher education funding. Then, they passed the buck to university regents by removing caps on tuition, starting in 2003, and tuition started rocketing ever upward.

Now, Perry is telling universities to brace for more budget cuts.

So, imagine how thrilled college administrators must have been today to hear Perry, in his State of the State speech, call for a fouryear tuition freeze for entering freshmen and then top that off by “challenging” them to develop bachelor’s degree programs costing no more than $10,000, including books.

“Let’s leverage webbased instruction, innovative teaching techniques and aggressive efficiency measures to reach that goal,” he said.

Aggressive efficiency measures? That could mean things like cramming even more students into megasized classes, letting seniors (instead of tenured faculty) teach freshmen and using labs with outdated or imaginary equipment.

Mary Aldridge Dean, executive director of the Texas Faculty Association, said Perry’s $10,000 dream was a “statement out of fantasy land.”

“With increased student populations and cuts in funding, the numbers simply do not add up to quality education for Texas students,” she said.

It is only February, but the Marathon ISD in far West Texas already knows who the senior valedictorian will be this spring. That’s because 17yearold Michelle Campbell is the only senior in a district that includes only 56 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade.

Click on the link below for an interesting story by Morgan Smith in The Texas Tribune about the financial struggles of one of the state’s tiniest school districts and the vital importance that district represents to its local, Big Bend area community.

Fearing not only the survival of their local school but also of their town, area residents and property owners have contributed money – over and above their tax dollars – to a private foundation to help keep Marathon ISD in business. Marathon’s financial troubles predated the state’s current budgetary crisis, but the Legislature’s handling (or mishandling) of the state revenue shortfall may put an untold number of other small, rural districts on the ropes. And, many of those communities may not be able to cough up any extra cash.

It may be easy, theoretically, to talk about consolidating small school districts, but small town Texas views the issue from a distinctly different perspective.

-From The Texas Tribune

In what may soon prove to be hollow applause, state Education Commissioner Robert Scott was patting Texas on the back today for being the only state to implement all key college and career readiness policies identified by Achieve, a bipartisan, nonprofit education reform organization.

These policies include curriculum standards, graduation requirements, assessments, data systems and accountability systems.

The accountability standard was key for Texas because it was the only state that achieved all four accountability criteria – reporting school performance information annually and publicly, setting state performance goals, providing schoollevel incentives and employing measurements heavily weighted towards college and career readiness.

For several years now, the Texas Legislature has been very good at setting accountability standards – including House Bill 3 during the 2009 session – for everyone involved in the public schools – students, teachers, administrators. Everyone but, of course, the Legislature itself.

During the entire “accountability” buzzword era, the Legislature has not once adequately funded Texas’ public schools. Another recent, national survey – Education Week’s annual “Quality Counts” report gave Texas an “F” on school finance.

And now, lawmakers are threatening to slash important educational programs, including important classsize restrictions, and lay off untold numbers of teachers instead of gutting up and making themselves accountable for adequate, equitable school funding.

Achieve’s report may sound good, but so far it’s a stack of paper.

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/news_release.aspx?id=2147496043