Grading Texas

With a little luck, this will be the last time I ever will feel inclined to write about that expertinherownmind, Cynthia Dunbar, who this week is participating in her last scheduled meeting as a member of the State Board of Education.

Dunbar did the schoolchildren of Texas a favor by declining to seek reelection this year, but only after several years of working hard to undermine the quality of Texas’ public schools with her own religious and political beliefs. She was a leader of the rightwing bloc that, most recently, tried to rewrite social studies curriculum standards to incorrectly depict the United States as a Christian theocracy with limited historical contributions from anyone who wasn’t white.

At yesterday’s board meeting, Dunbar offered what the Austin AmericanStatesman called a “parting gift” to her fellow board members – a resolution declaring the U.S. Department of Education an unconstitutional bureaucracy with no authority over Texas schools. The board didn’t act on the resolution, and we can hope the new board, after it takes office with five new members in January, also will decline to waste time on the measure.

The board can’t wish away the Department of Education anymore than Dunbar can wish away the separation of church and state principle, although she and her colleagues have mightily tried.

Also bidding farewell to the board this week is Dunbar’s philosophical comradeinarms, Don McLeroy, who was unseated last spring by moremoderate Republican Thomas Ratliff.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sharedgen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2010/11/18/dunbar_seeks_to_nullify_federa.html

To be absolutely clear, TSTA believes every school district that owes the state money under the socalled Robin Hood school finance law should pay up – and pay up on time. But one East Texas district’s delinquency serves to refute the old, wrongheaded cliché that spending more money on education doesn’t improve classroom quality.

That moldy oldie was repeated as recently as today by Talmadge Helfin, former budgetcutting legislator and now honcho of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a Libertarianleaning think tank that would like nothing better than to privatize most public services to the detriment of millions of low and middleincome Texans. Its leadership includes some of Gov. Perry’s biggest contributors.

“It makes the point that just putting money into education is not going to do the job,” Heflin was quoted in today’s Austin AmericanStatesman, in a story reporting that school districts are likely to see their state revenue cut by $3 billion to $5 billion over the next two years.

Heflin’s remark to the contrary, guess what happened, though, when the Hallsville ISD withheld $8.5 million in Robin Hood funds from the state and spent the money instead to help hire more teachers and make other improvements? According to an Associated Press report, the district raised its accountability rating from an unimpressive academically acceptable to exemplary. I don’t think the improvements were coincidental.

Yes, money makes a difference in educational quality. And, the education budget cuts the governor and legislative leaders are planning now will lower that quality because those cuts will mean fewer teachers and more crowded classrooms. Suggesting, as Heflin and the governor like to do, that those cuts will come strictly from administrative “fat” is perpetrating a fiction. Texas’ perpupil expenditures already rank in the bottom third among the states.

The Irving ISD, for example, is among districts already planning for big budget hits. District administrators already have proposed about $9.3 million in costcutting steps next year. Some administrators, nurses and technology specialists would lose their jobs, but the most lost positions by far – 95 – would be teachers.

Budgetcutting choices are difficult and painful – for everyone, that is, except Gov. Rick Perry, who still jets around the country, bragging about all the “belttightening” in Texas. But one alleged “costsaving” proposal making the rounds of higher education administrators is so obviously unrealistic as to be silly.

Before I explain, I will digress for a moment.

On one hand, I have some sympathy for university regents and administrators who, like other public agency heads, have to try to provide important, critical services while their budgets continue to shrink. But my sympathy for higher education leaders also is limited because, although they know better, they continue to help the governor slash and burn because they don’t have the courage to tell him he is wrong.

All the regents on every university governing board are Perry appointees – many of them are major political contributors to the governor and all the university chancellors and presidents were hired, directly or indirectly, by Perry’s regents. It would be refreshing for a change to hear one of them tell the wouldbe emperor – loudly and publicly that his budgetary policies have no clothes. (If one already has, I missed it.)

Instead, they continue to cozy up to power and then have handwringing sessions among themselves, including one that just concluded in Dallas, where a number of possible costcutting steps were discussed, including an effort to get more students to earn their degrees in four years instead of five or six.

Raymund Paredes, the state higher education commissioner, even wants to tie part of a university’s budget to its ontime graduation rate.

There always will be slackers, or “career students,” who take longer than necessary to complete degree requirements. But, nowadays, many conscientious, hardworking students are being forced to take extra semesters to graduate because they simply can’t afford to complete their course requirements in four years.

These are students who have to juggle their coursework while they take jobs – sometimes more than one – to pay for increasing tuition and fees. And while regents continue to raise tuition because the Legislature won’t increase appropriations, the state continues to cut back on student financial aid. Instead of worrying about these young people taking an extra year or two to get their degrees, university administrators should be taking steps to accommodate them. Otherwise, many will simply give up.

It’s time to quit picking on the kids. They and their families already are doing their share to support higher education. It’s time for the governor and the Legislature to step up – and time for some university regents to demand it.

http://educationfrontblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/11/texaspublicuniversitiesbrac.html

Gov. Rick Perry may claim to be “fed up” with Washington, and he may selectively (and very rarely) reject federal funds, but mostly he and his legislative partners have eagerly accepted federal cash.

In fact, according to an item in Peggy Fikac’s column in the San Antonio ExpressNews, federal revenue was the biggest revenue source for state government in fiscal 2010. That’s the first time that has happened since at least 1978.

Citing the state comptroller’s annual cash report, Peggy noted that the state collected nearly $35.4 billion in state taxes during fiscal 2010 but received nearly $36.9 billion in federal money. The federal revenue presumably included a lot of onetime stimulus money, which won’t be resupplied in January when it’s time to start drafting the new state budget in the face of a huge revenue shortfall.

Although the stimulus money will be missing, legislative budget writers – despite all the antiWashington rhetoric of the recent political campaigns – will accept virtually every other federal dollar available, including federal Medicaid funds. Ideological talk is easy. Telling Texas voters that their federal income tax payments should be used to help balance another state’s budget – but not ours could be political suicide.

Educators, meanwhile, should keep in mind one important chunk of federal money that Texas so far hasn’t been able to obtain. This is the $830 million in emergency funds, approved by Congress last summer, designed to save educators’ jobs. Texas applied for its share, but Perry refused to comply with a congressional requirement and assure the feds that the state wouldn’t use the money to replace state education funds.

The money apparently hasn’t been lost, at least not yet, but who knows how many more political games may be played before the issue is finally resolved.