Grading Texas

Remember the backandforth between Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Bill White over Texas’ high school dropout rate? White contended it was as high as 30 percent, and Perry countered that it was as low as 10 percent, if you counted young people who took more than four years to complete high school and performed several other statistical gymnastics.

No two interested groups, it seems, count dropouts the same way, but just about every group, except the governor’s office, believes the rate is much higher than 10 percent.

Now, the newspaper, Education Week, has weighed in – not on the governor’s race, but on the dropout rate. It has been tracking dropout rates across the country for years and has just released its most recent calculations – the graduation profile for the class of 2007.

According to Education Week, the graduation rate for Texas that year was 65.1 percent. Some 34.9 percent of the students who began ninth grade four years earlier didn’t cross the finish line, at least on time. The national graduation rate that year was 68.8 percent. Texas tied with Hawaii for 38th, both just behind Alaska.

Over the previous 10 years, the Texas graduation rate had gradually risen from 59.3 percent in 1997.

As they did nationally, the graduation rates for Hispanics and African Americans lagged behind the statewide total. The 2007 graduation rate for Hispanics in Texas was 55.6 percent, virtually identical to their national average of 55.5 percent. The graduation rate for black students in Texas was 55.3 percent, slightly higher than the 53.7 percent for that group nationally.

That means about 45 percent of Hispanic and black students in Texas, almost half, didn’t graduate within four years.

In other findings, the Education Week study, entitled “Diplomas Count,” identified two school districts in Texas – Dallas and Houston ISDs – as among the 25 “dropout epicenters” producing onefifth of all the dropouts in the country.

The study used a “Cumulative Promotion Index” to calculate graduation rates. It measured how many students were promoted during each year of high school.

Nationally, 2007 graduation rates ranged from a high of 83.3 percent in New Jersey to a low of 41.8 percent in Nevada.

The study estimated that 1.3 million students nationwide – including 135,000 in Texas – failed to graduate on time with the class of 2010. That represented a loss of 7,200 students from the U.S. graduation pipeline every school day, including 751 dropouts each school day in Texas.

I think just about everyone with more than a passing interest in this subject, except maybe Gov. Perry, realizes Texas has a serious dropout problem. Now, it is time – past time – for officeholders and candidates to start promoting some realistic, honest solutions. Merely debating the numbers isn’t going to make the problem disappear.

Some Republicans obviously are not as confident of Gov. Rick Perry’s reelection as the governor and some polls seem to be. That is why, of course, a Republican consultant in Arizona (the Border Phobia State) went to the trouble of arranging a petition drive to get the Green Party on the Texas ballot in November.

Remember, Perry was reelected with only 39 percent of the vote in 2006 because his wealth of unpopularity produced a wealth of opponents – one Democrat, two independents and one Libertarian. The more opposition, the merrier for our incumbent governor, because it reduces the number of votes he needs to win another four, long years.

A Green Party gubernatorial candidate, any Green Party gubernatorial candidate, will siphon votes from Democratic nominee Bill White. And, that will be bad news for educators, health care professionals, working class people and anyone else (including environmentalists) who believe that state government has a positive role to play for everyone, not just a privileged few.

According to The Dallas Morning News, which broke the story, it is unclear who actually paid for the Green Party’s ballot petition drive. But it was arranged by an Arizona political consultant and funded through Take Initiative America, a nonprofit corporation in Missouri.

The funding arrangement even may be illegal under Texas law. But the Green Party seems eager to accept the gift and the ballot access, even though the whole arrangement, if successful, will continue to hinder the environmental cause in Texas. Yes, I am one of those people who believe Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s 2000 presidential candidate, helped give the White House – and control of federal environmental regulations – to George W. Bush for eight years.

Political behavior, unfortunately, is not always rational. Nor, obviously, is it always ethical. It would seem that a selfrespecting political party would not willfully let itself be played for a fool. But issues and advocacy aside, the first goal of a political party, even a minor one, is to get votes. And the Green Party can’t get votes in Texas this year if it is not on the ballot.

We can only hope that if the Greens get their candidates on the ballot, they don’t end up shooting themselves – and a lot of other people – in the head.

Let us imagine for a moment that the environmentally friendly Al Gore had won that razorthin presidential race in 2000 and had been in charge of the Department of the Interior for the eight years during which the Bush administration established a lax regulatory climate.

Maybe Interior would have had a tougher regulatory mindset when BP filed for the necessary federal approvals for that drilling site in the Gulf of Mexico. You know the one.

It would be unkind – and maybe unfair – to suggest that the Green Party contributed indirectly to one of the biggest environmental disasters in history, but….

Here is a link to one of the Dallas News’ stories:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/060810dntexballotfolo.1e6ec0a.html

Please forgive me, folks, but I almost missed some important, positive news over the weekend. Hidden among all the dire headlines about budget cuts and looming layoffs was a moreupbeat report from Gov. Rick “tellitlikeIwantto” Perry. It seems that $18 billion state revenue shortfall that untold numbers of state employees – including educators – have been agonizing over is just a bad dream.

“I think it’s a number that somebody just reached up in the air and grabbed,” Perry said in an interview with Austin’s KVUETV late last week. In other words, House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts, the first to issue the $18 billion warning, and the numbercrunchers who work for the Legislative Budget Board either can’t add or simply enjoy being alarmists.

Either that or the governor has been inhaling something funny from the highpriced air in his taxpayerfinanced fantasyland of a mansion. Surely, he isn’t deliberately trying to mislead voters into thinking – in the middle of his reelection campaign – that state government has performed well under his watch. He wouldn’t do that, now, would he?

If an $18 billion shortfall is simply a product of budgetwriters’ imaginations, what about all those deep spending cuts that the governor and legislative leaders already have ordered?

Unfortunately, they are reallife nightmares, both for state workers who will be losing their jobs and Texans who need the services.

“Fill that budget gap, if there is one – which we suspect there will be – with the appropriate reductions in spending, without raising taxes,” Perry said.

Life is so simple and easy when viewed from the mountaintop.

Here is a newspaper story about the interview:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/DNperrybudget_05tex.ART.State.Edition1.2a0df29.html

People need to step up to the plate so hungry kids can have a plate to step up to. That was the message from Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples this week as he promoted a program that will provide free lunches to school children during the summer. The program, costs of which are reimbursed by the federal government, is designed to help kids who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program during the school year.

Staples held a teleconference to encourage school districts, clubs and other organizations to act as local sponsors of the program, according to a report in the Odessa American.

“Communities need to step up to the plate, literally,” Staples said.

Texas has one of the highest rates of childhood poverty and hunger in the country, a fact that often seems to fall on deaf ears in Austin, where the state leadership prides itself on being stingy with public assistance. Remember the reports, just a few months ago, about how far behind the Health and Human Services Commission was in processing food stamp applications from thousands of Texans in need?

And, the plight of impoverished kids and their families will only worsen with the budgetary cuts that Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders want the Legislature to impose when it convenes in January.

Staples is correct that groups need to step up to the plate and help out those in need. But so do the governor, the lieutenant governor, the speaker and legislative budget writers who have fallen way short in meeting human needs and are promising to do an even more miserable job in months to come.

Maybe Staples also should have a teleconference with the state leadership. Or, maybe he should sit down and discuss the reality of hunger with the governor maybe over lunch in one of the three dining rooms at the governor’s $10,000permonth, taxpayer financed rental mansion in Austin.

Here is the story about the summer lunch program:

http://www.oaoa.com/news/children48084texasdon.html