Grading Texas

Gov. Rick Perry is still trying to win reelection by kicking Washington. That’s a lot easier, of course, than running on his record.

But he also is kicking Texas educators and school kids with his opposition to the emergency education jobs funding bill that is set for a vote in the U.S. House on Tuesday. The measure includes $830 million in extra federal funds for Texas’ public schools. The governor should be turning handstands. Instead, he is playing politics.

Perry objects to a provision in the bill, inserted by U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett and other Democrats, that would force Texas to actually spend the money on its intended purpose – education instead of using it to patch other holes in the state budget.

Doggett doesn’t trust the governor and the Republican legislative leadership – and with good reason. They diverted billions of federal stimulus dollars to other purposes last year to help balance the current budget, and that temptation may be even greater in the face of Texas’ anticipated $18 billion revenue shortfall for 2011.

This latest round of federal funding is intended to save educators’ jobs, and that’s what it should be spent to do. Perry should be welcoming the money instead of trying to throw up roadblocks.

It’s interesting that the governor and his fellow Republicans started publicly complaining about the education funding restrictions about the same time the federal government announced its latest school accountability ratings. According to the Texas Education Agency, about onefifth of the state’s school districts failed the federal threshold of making adequate annual progress on specified goals.

That’s a worse showing than the state accountability ratings announced a week ago, but the fed standards are tougher than Texas’ rating system.

The governor obviously doesn’t like trying to explain the federal accountability showing. It’s easier to kick Washington (and school kids) instead.

Despite Gov. Rick Perry’s delusional denial, one of the more critical issues facing Texas’ public schools – and threatening the state’s future economic growth – is a school dropout rate that experts estimate at 30 percent or higher. Particularly affected are Hispanic young people who will soon make up a majority of Texas’ adult work force.

The reaction to this problem is one strong difference (among many) between Perry and his Democratic reelection opponent, Bill White. At last report, Perry was still claiming that the dropout rate was only 10 percent, a figure that even some of his staunchest, conservative political contributors don’t believe.

Perry not only denies the dropout problem, he also may have contributed to its continued growth with his veto last year of a bipartisan bill that would have expanded access to prekindergarten programs. The same experts who worry about the high dropout rate also recognize that one effective way of fighting it is to expand preK and other early childhood education programs. The earlier children, particularly underprivileged youngsters, get used to being in school, the more likely they are to stay in school and to graduate.

Perry either doesn’t understand that concept or simply chooses to ignore it, while Bill White has put the expansion of effective preK programs at the top of his education priorities list. As White repeatedly has pointed out – including in an interview with TSTA this week – Perry’s preK veto was a huge mistake.

Preschool programs also have been taking a hit nationally, according to a new study by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. Blaming the recession, the study’s authors estimated that $348 million in state funding has been cut or proposed for cutting from preK programs in 19 states (excluding Texas) in fiscal 20102011.

Texas’ looming budgetary shortfall is all the more reason to put someone who actually wants to fight the dropout problem, rather than deny it, in the governor’s office.

Here is a link to the preK funding study:

http://nieer.org/pdf/Funding_Cuts_to_StateFunded_Prekindergarten_Programs_in_FY10_FY11.pdf

In yesterday’s post, I noted how Texas was struggling to obtain mediocrity in one key indicator of the state’s future economic health – access to college educations for our young people. Now, it looks as if mediocrity may be getting farther out of reach.

As reported in today’s Austin AmericanStatesman, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, following the instructions of Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders, has drafted a plan for reducing its budget by 10 percent. And, guess what?

One of the biggest hits would come in student financial aid, a category already underfunded in Texas. The new budget plan would cut financial aid by as much as $108 million during the next biennial budget period.

This is only a recommendation because the final budget will be written by the Legislature next year. But with lawmakers facing a projected revenue shortfall of $18 billion and student financial aid making up most of the Coordinating Board’s budget, students and their families – lowincome and middleincome alike have reason to be concerned.

The need for financial help already exceeds the grants and loans available, and the need will continue to rise, partly because of the economy and partly because of two state policy decisions, which actually conflict with each other.

One policy, dating back to 2000, is a concerted effort by the state to increase college enrollment so Texas can attain parity among the 10 largest states. That goal has been at least partly thwarted by the second policy – the decision by Perry and legislative leaders in 2003 to transfer more of the responsibility for college funding from elected legislators to students and their parents.

Under the socalled tuition deregulation law enacted that year, the cost of attending Texas’ statesupported universities has soared, even as student aid has lagged behind.

As I have noted before, Perry and legislative leaders talk a good game on education. But, dusting off an old cliché, talk is cheap, much cheaper than their commitment to it.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/texasstudentfinancialaidcouldtake108mhit831369.html

State Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes may be part of the Rick Perry administration, but he hasn’t drunk all the Rick Perry KoolAid, at least not the election year flavor that claims Texas is the “envy” of the nation.

Consider Paredes’ recent report to Texas A&M regents about the state’s efforts to improve access to college enrollment, the socalled “Closing the Gaps” initiative that began in 2000, the year Perry first moved into the governor’s office. At this point, Paredes admitted, the state is not driving for the gold standard, but for mediocrity.

“All we’re trying to do by the year 2015 is to get parity with collegegoing rates in the 10 largest states. That’s all,” he told the regents. “Our aspiration in this initial effort is to become average.”

Paredes’ comments were reported in the BryanCollege Station Eagle.

The Closing the Gaps goal was to increase higher education enrollment in Texas by 630,000 by 2015. By fall 2009, enrollment had increased by about 400,000, and most of that had occurred in community colleges, Paredes reported.

Coincidentally, a new report by the College Board, which administers the SAT and AP tests, ranks Texas 40th among the states and the District of Columbia in the percentage of residents between the ages of 25 and 34 who have associate degrees or higher. Texas’ 27 percent was well below the 41 percent national average.

Experts attributed Texas’ poor finding to a large number of firstgeneration college students and a large number of lowincome students who can’t afford to stay in school.

Thanks to everincreasing tuition, even middleincome students are having trouble paying their university bills, a problem that threatens to worsen next year in the face of the state’s anticipated $18 billion revenue shortfall.

Paredes wants to address the middleincome problem by basing state financial assistance to students on merit as well as need. That idea may be worth exploring, but the major problem is that needbased grants aren’t funded enough to meet all the demand from lowincome students and are likely to fall even shorter because of the deficit.

The big question is: Will Texas stretch high enough to become average?

Here are links to the two articles:

http://www.theeagle.com/am/Gapsnotyetfilledleadersays

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/DNcollegedegree_23tex.ART.State.Edition1.4d21e47.html