Grading Texas

This is no time to retreat from (or whine about) timehonored educational reforms, but watch out for a lot of whining and proposed retreating when the Legislature convenes in January in the face of a huge revenue shortfall. Already being targeted in some legislative discussions is the important 22pupil limit on class sizes for kindergarten through the fourth grade.

Leading the charge against the 221 studentteacher ratio is state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston, one of the Legislature’s most outspoken advocates of slashing and burning public services. Unfortunately, he will be aided and abetted by a number of budgetstrapped school superintendents, who should know better but have long considered 221 – despite its educational value – a pain in their administrative…uh, necks.

As reported by Terry Stutz in The Dallas Morning News today, Patrick contends that the 221 limit, enacted in 1984, is costing school districts “millions and millions of dollars” each year without any evidence that it boosts student achievement. Patrick, however, is wrong.

Districts that are too financially strapped to comply with 221 can apply to the Texas Education Agency for waivers, which are almost always automatically granted. Some 144 districts received waivers this year, allowing larger classes at 544 elementary schools, according to the newspaper.

And, there is a pretty large body of national – even international – research concluding that smaller class sizes are important to improving student achievement. And closer to home, the Texas Elementary Principals & Supervisors Association (TEPSA) has done research strongly indicating that 221 has been a positive factor in student and school performances in Texas.

According to TEPSA, the number of class size waivers granted in 20072008 per campus was in direct inverse proportion to the state accountability rating of that campus. In other words, the higher rated campuses received fewer waivers to the class size requirement. TEPSA derived its findings from the TEA Regional and District Level Report to the 2009 Legislature.

Only about 10 percent of “exemplary” campuses asked for and received waivers allowing larger class sizes, compared to 40 percent of lowerranked “recognized” campuses and 50 percent of the even lowerranked “academically acceptable” campuses. Those figures are sending a pretty loud message that legislators – and superintendents – should be listening to.

Superintendents and school board members who feel that 221 is an unrealistic financial burden for local taxpayers can gut up and continue to ask for waivers. That is what they are paid and/or elected to do. Unfortunately, they would rather let the Legislature take the heat from parents, who like the smaller class sizes.

Patrick is proposing that 221 be replaced with an asyetundetermined average class size limit for elementary schools, a proposal that has been supported by superintendent and school board lobby groups in the past. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R Plano, and Rep. Rob Eissler, RThe Woodlands, the Legislature’s education chairs, also seem open to the change. All three lawmakers are members of an interim HouseSenate committee studying school finance.

Here is a link to The Dallas Morning News story:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/051010dntswclasssize.3f89c03.html

No one is trying to rewrite history this time, but there is another idea percolating before the State Board of Education that nevertheless may generate a fair amount of controversy. It is a proposal by Republican board member David Bradley of Beaumont to allocate about $100 million of the $22.1 billion Permanent School Fund to invest in buildings for charter schools.

The proposal recently was discussed by the board’s Permanent School Fund Committee, which Bradley chairs, and may soon be presented to the entire board.

Some charters operate in substandard facilities because they get no money for facilities from the state and have difficulty getting longterm financing because their operating contracts with the state are subject to renewal every several years. Bradley’s idea is for the state to get a return on rental payments from charter operators while helping the charters upgrade their classrooms.

The Permanent School Fund normally generates several hundred million dollars a year that the state spends primarily on textbooks for public school students. The endowment was created from stateowned land and mineral royalties and now is invested in stocks, bonds, real estate and treasury notes, among other things.

The proposed $100 million investment in charter rentals would represent only a fraction of 1 percent of the fund’s total endowment, but opposition already is surfacing.

In an editorial published this week, the San Antonio ExpressNews pointed out that charter school operators, as a group, have an uneven performance and financial record. “The Permanent School Fund needs to be managed for the benefit of all public education in Texas, not for the narrow interests of charter schools or – more accurately – politically connected charter schools,” the newspaper wrote. “This is a proposal that deserves to be scrapped.”

It also should be noted that charter schools educate only about 100,000 kids, while traditional public schools enroll 4.8 million. Many of those traditional schools also have substandard facilities, thanks to low property tax bases and inadequate state assistance. What does Bradley propose for them?

Every time the Legislature convenes with a huge budgetary shortfall, as it will in January, you can bet that the progambling folks will be out in force, promising to put the state on easy street if lawmakers vote to expand gambling. Once again, efforts will be made to legalize fullblown casinos or, at least, video slot machines for racetracks. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jim Dunnam of Waco already is proposing a bipartisan study of the issue.

But you also can bet that expanded gambling will continue to be a hard sell, mainly because of the twothirds vote requirement in the House and the Senate to put the necessary constitutional amendment on the ballot. That’s a high hurdle in the face of opposition not only from antigambling groups but also from the owners of casinos in neighboring states who want Texans to keep driving over to bet – and lose – in their establishments, not at home.

Even though Republican House Speaker Joe Straus owns part of a racetrack, most Republican lawmakers historically have opposed more gambling. And, Republicans will continue to control the Senate and may very well still control the House in January. And even if legislators vote to put a gambling amendment on the ballot, its impact on the upcoming budget would be zero to minimal because of the time necessary to win voter approval and get the new casinos, etc. up and running.

In the notsodistant future, though, the public schools and school teachers could be big beneficiaries of new gamblinggenerated revenue, or so the gambling advocates will tell us. ThenGov. Ann Richards used that promise – the state’s lottery proceeds will be dedicated to education to help convince the Legislature and the voters to create the Texas Lottery in 1991.

It was one of the most successful political deceptions in modern Texas history. Texans automatically began to associate the lottery with education, believing that every time they purchased a lottery ticket they were sponsoring another kid’s journey to graduation.

The only problem was, it wasn’t true. It wasn’t until 1997 that the Legislature finally got around to actually dedicating lottery revenue to education. Previously, it had gone into the state’s general revenue fund to be divided up among dozens of programs.

Today, the lottery generates about $1 billion a year for the public schools. That’s a lot of money, but the total state appropriation for public education this year is $23.5 billion.

Teachers may want to listen to what the gamblers have to say, but be wary of pieinthesky promises. Fool us once, shame on you. But you better not even think about fooling us twice.

I don’t know how many school districts operate crisis hotlines for students suffering from depression or other emotional or psychological problems, but one that does is the Fort Bend ISD, which launched its “Talkline: You Share, We Care” program during the 200809 school year. It provides middle and highschool students anonymous access to a staff of certified counselors trained in crisis intervention.

This school year, the hotline’s second, it received an award for excellence from the Texas School Health Association. It will be back for a third year of helping students in 201011. After that, though, it may be history, still another victim of tightening education budgets, according to a recent article in the Fort Bend SunNews.

The hotline has been funded by the federal government through a Safe and DrugFree School entitlement grant. But that grant soon will become competitive, forcing FBISD to find another source of funding or scrap what apparently has been a very positive program.

“We are looking at federal competitive grants as possibilities for continued funding, but we will be fighting with all of the other school districts to try to get some of that money,” Bob Conlon, the district’s director of student support services, told the newspaper.

More and more, it seems, both the federal and state governments would rather see school districts spend an increasing amount of time fighting each other, rather than educating kids. And turning to Austin for help could be particularly futile in the face of a budgetary shortfall expected to hit $15 billion or more by the time the Legislature convenes in January.

The Fort Bend hotline averages 350 calls a month. Fortyfour percent of calls involve depression or sadness. Six percent relate to thirdparty suicide, 3 percent concern abuse or neglect, 3 percent relate to pregnancy and 3 percent to bullying.