Grading Texas

Farmers Branch, the North Texas suburb that tried, but failed, to kick all its illegal immigrants out of town, now is trying to secede from its local school district. More precisely, its mayor, Tim O’Hare, says the city council wants to explore whether the city can take its kids out of the CarrolltonFarmers Branch and Dallas ISDs and form its own school district.

Why? Because CarrolltonFarmers Branch ISD has allowed a chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to conduct an antidropout mentoring program at one of its high schools. Only someone with his head deeply buried in the sand would oppose a reputable dropout prevention program.

In case you don’t remember, Farmers Branch got national attention a few years ago over a city ordinance that tried to close rental housing to illegal immigrants. A federal judge threw out the antiimmigrant measure, and some city leaders apparently are still angry that LULAC actively protested against it.

Let us hope the CarrolltonFarmers Branch school board ignores the council and that Farmers Branch taxpayers get tired of wasting money on legal fees, which is what a school district disannexation fight likely would involve.

LULAC is trying to help move Texas forward, but the Farmers Branch city hall remains stuck in reverse.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/1204dnmetfblulac.3acd8ba.html

Hold your breath, folks…and imagine a drum roll.

Next week, we will be treated (a deliberate misuse of the word) to the latest on a very high stack of taxpayerfunded studies of Texas’ school finance system. This one – the umpteenth, at my count – will focus, allegedly, on school district efficiency. As were most of the others, it was ordered by the Legislature, and, like the others, it won’t change the fact that the basic, overriding problem with the school finance system is that it is inadequately and inequitably funded by the Legislature.

I am not sure of the detail of this study, which was conducted by the comptroller’s office. It may very well have found some examples of inefficient or wasteful spending among Texas’ 1,000plus school districts, and maybe it will produce some positive ideas for change. But I fear that it mostly will be used – if anyone at the Capitol pays much attention to it to give the governor and the legislative majority some political cover for slashing the education budget instead of increasing state revenue for schools.

The study may find some overpaid superintendents, a few unnecessary gyms or some electives that are too costly. But, if the study is thorough and honest, it also will find some overcrowded classrooms, some poorly equipped laboratories and a lot of underpaid teachers having to fork over several hundred dollars from their own pockets for basic classroom supplies – all because of inadequate state support.

As Ray Freeman of the Equity Center noted in an interview with reporter Ben Philpott of KUT radio and the Texas Tribune: “Where we get into trouble with efficiency is when you have a state (finance) system that’s as inefficient as the current one is.”

And as poorly funded.

http://www.texastribune.org/texastaxes/2011budgetshortfall/texaslawmakerslooktocuttexaseducationbudget/

Here is one of the educationrelated questions that some prominent (but not necessarily visionary) Texas legislators already are eager to tackle: How many fiveyearolds can we squeeze into one classroom?

Their likely answer? More than we should.

One of the first classroom quality factors (and it won’t be the last) that will be targeted next year by the Legislature’s budgetary meat ax is the 221 class size limit for kindergarten through the 4th grade. It has been the law in Texas since 1984 and is widely viewed as important to the learning environment in the primary grades. But the legislative majority is likely to remove it, and they will be aided and abetted by school boards and superintendents who should know better but have been compromised by insufficient state revenue.

It will be easier, after all, for these lawmakers to dangle the promise of “local control” rather than give school districts and their students what they really need – more state aid.

Districts already can seek waivers – and many do – from the 221 class limit if the cap poses a budgetary hardship. But some superintendents already are encouraging the Legislature to lift the cap entirely and open the door to more widespread classroom crowding. TSTA, for the record, strongly supports the cap.

One of the better pieces of research on the class size issue, the Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio, or STAR, project, conducted in Tennessee in the 1980s, found that children in smaller classes performed significantly better than kids in larger classes.

Opponents of 221 argue that this particular ratio isn’t necessarily magical, but they deny the reality that the smaller the class, the more a teacher has time to give each student some individual attention, which is particularly important in the primary grades. In that respect, 221 certainly is better than, say, 251, which is where some of the primary grade classes soon will be headed (or even higher) if the cap were lifted.

Class size limits, however, are under attack in many states, primarily because of budgetary problems. Some of the most extensive class size limits are in Florida, where voters considered them so important that they amended their state constitution eight years ago to include them. And, just last month, they defeated another constitutional amendment, backed by school administrators but successfully fought by school teachers, which would have loosened those caps. The Florida class limits are 18 students in kindergarten through third grade, 22 students in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in high school.

Now, guess what?

According to an Associated Press story published in today’s Education Week, more than half of Florida’s 67 school districts are violating the limits to some degree and could be fined by the state. More than 44,000 of the state’s 812,000plus public classrooms have too many kids.

Here is a link to the Education Week story:

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/11/30/390258flclasssizeviolations_ap.html?tkn=PSSFgkLjG9QgkmsHPdF4Yg2BS6nnGB4MLR3K&cmp=clpedweek

Here is a link to the Tennessee class size study:

http://www.herosinc.org/star.htm#Overview

As the House’s chief budget writer has made painfully clear, there will be a human side to the budget cuts that Republicans were promising during their recent, very successful campaign season. “We will have to throw some people out in the street,” Rep. Jim Pitts of Waxahachie replied when asked, at a recent briefing for a local Tea Party group, what would happen if the state got out of the Medicaid health care program.

Interestingly enough, the Tea Partier who asked the question has a friend on Medicaid (imagine that!) and may not have liked the answer. But, he and many other Texans (including some newly elected legislators) who may have thought the state budget is an overinflated balloon full of pork, gravy and inefficiency are beginning to get a more realistic math lesson.

I am not going to argue that there isn’t waste somewhere in a $182 billion biennial state budget because Gov. Perry alone wastes money every time he leaves the state on an “economic development” junket. But the truth of the budgetsetting process, as Ross Ramsey points out in an article in today’s Texas Tribune, is that the Legislature has unrestricted control over less than half of the total, or about $80.6 billion in the current budget. The remainder includes federal funds designated for specific purposes or funds dedicated by the state constitution for specific programs.

And, most ($73.3 billion) of the $80.6 billion directly controlled by the Legislature is for public and higher education and health and human services. Even if the state doesn’t drop out of the Medicaid program – and I don’t think it will – sick people are going to be booted out of hospitals and otherwise deprived of medical care if state leaders persist in bridging a looming revenue shortfall with spending cuts alone.

Do the math. A shortfall as high as $20 billion or more, which has been the persistent prediction, is onefourth of $80.6 billion.

Does that mean kids also are going to be kicked out of public schools? Maybe, but not to the extent envisioned by Leo Berman, Debbie Riddle and other lawmakers who would boot all the children of undocumented immigrants out of public classrooms. The federal courts already have decided that issue in favor of the immigrant children, at least for now.

If the Legislature stays on its announced path, many educators will lose their jobs, classrooms will become more crowded – making learning more difficult – more textbooks will be outdated and many children will be riding morecrowded buses because routes will be canceled or consolidated.

And, more children will end up on the streets because the dropout problem also will worsen under the anticipated budget cuts. To meet Perry’s directive, the Texas Education Agency already has had to propose cutting millions from dropout prevention programs. More classroom crowding and less individual attention from overextended teachers also will result in more student failures and increase the dropout rate.

Pitts needs to give more math lessons.

http://www.texastribune.org/texastaxes/2011budgetshortfall/pittsreadiesconstituentsforcomingbudgetcuts/