Grading Texas – Page 62 – Texas State Teachers Association

Abbott’s alleged teacher pay “raise” is a hoax

Texas teachers need and deserve a pay raise, which is why Gov. Greg Abbott tried to make teachers think he was going to push for an annual pay boost of $1,000 during the upcoming special legislative session. But Abbott’s alleged pay plan is a hoax, mainly because he also made it clear that he still doesn’t want the state to spend more money on education.

“Texas doesn’t need to spend more. We just need to spend smarter,” the governor told the media. “The pay increases can easily be achieved by passing laws that re-prioritize how schools spend money, and we can do that without taxpayers spending a penny more.”

Baloney.

Under Abbott’s “plan,” if it actually is a plan, there is no guarantee of a $1,000 pay raise for any teacher.

What the governor really wants to do is squeeze under-funded local school districts – and local property taxpayers – even harder by requiring them to pay for a “merit” pay raise for selected teachers, which could very well come at the expense of other teachers losing their jobs or taking pay cuts and students getting stuck with larger classes. According to one preliminary analysis, only 10 percent of teachers eventually would get a significant salary increase under this scenario, which likely would be carried out only after a two-year study by the education commissioner.

The state instead should invest the resources necessary to attract and retain highly qualified teachers for all Texas students, and those resources should be invested now.

The governor, who may announce for reelection about the time the special session convenes, is mainly dangling the promise of higher teacher pay as a political ploy to try to cover his miserable record on public education.

Average teacher pay in Texas lags $6,300 below the national average, and per-student funding is $2,555 less than the national average. Nothing in Abbott’s proposal would address these deficiencies.

Trying to flush school districts down the toilet

Graydon Hicks, the superintendent of the small Fort Davis ISD in far West Texas recently wrote an open letter, lambasting Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick over the legislative majority’s continuing failure to adequately fund public education.

He detailed how the state’s top two “leaders,” while playing politics with school bathrooms and privatization, are threatening to flush endangered school districts, such as Fort Davis, down the toilet.

In his letter published on the Big Bend Now website, Hicks wrote: “Fort Davis ISD has 235 children, has NO cafeteria, has NO bus routes, has dropped our band program, has eliminated (or not filled) 15 staff positions, has CUT stipends for extra-curricular activities, has FROZEN (or reduced) staff pay for one year, has CUT extra-curricular programs, has NO debt and has increased our local tax rate to the maximum of $1.17 (per $100 valuation) allowed by law.”

“We have nothing left to cut. We have nothing left to reduce,” he added.

Meanwhile, in Austin, Abbott and Patrick continue to stick their noses into kids’ bathrooms, continue to promote the wasting of tax dollars on private school vouchers and are seeking an unnecessary, umpteenth study of school finance instead of tackling the funding issue head-on.

“Quit pontificating about bathrooms,” Hicks wrote. “Quit hiding your intentions behind righteous statements on school vouchers and choice.”

The superintendent then challenged the governor and the lieutenant governor to “come out to our community and face the wrath of our taxpayers and voters….Come explain yourself to our parents and children.”

That’s a nice idea, but it won’t happen because Abbott and Patrick have every reason to think they can continue to take the votes of most Fort Davis voters for granted. And why shouldn’t they?

Abbott took 60 percent of the vote in Jeff Davis County, where Fort Davis ISD is located, in winning the governor’s office in 2014, and Patrick took almost 57 percent. Both defeated Democratic opponents who had far superior records on public education issues. The two handily won majorities not only in Fort Davis but also in many other school districts throughout Texas that now also are being squeezed by Abbott’s and Patrick’s policies.

Elections have consequences for school districts, superintendents and students, and those consequences will be changed only when election outcomes are changed. Abbott and Patrick will be on the ballot again next year. What will the parents, educators and other voters in Fort Davis and other school districts do then?

http://bigbendnow.com/2017/06/correspondence-271/

From Austin to China: summer school and subway diplomacy

Education Austin and TSTA member Kelly Long just completed a summer school of sorts in China, summer school mixed with international subway diplomacy, and my family and I got to participate. It was a nice, educational break between the absurdity of the recent legislative session and the potential disaster of the special session coming up.

For several years now, Kelly, who teaches Chinese at Anderson High School in Austin ISD, has been organizing these summer excursions to give hand-picked high school students an opportunity to practice their Chinese language skills in a real-life, person-on-the-street setting.

This year, she also invited my daughter Caroline’s fifth-grade Chinese immersion class and the fourth-grade immersion class at Doss Elementary School, an Anderson feeder, to participate, and four Doss families accepted her offer. We paid our own way, but Kelly organized, booked and led the two-week, five-city trip. She was assisted by Doss Principal Janna Griffin, who was making her first trip to China, and Doss Chinese immersion teacher Connie Soong.

The group included about 30 people, including 16 high-schoolers.

Our tour included a few chartered bus rides and visits to tourist attractions such as the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, but it wasn’t really a vacation. This was a moving classroom for the students, and a lot of physical exercise for students, educators and parents alike.

Our primary modes of transportation were city subways, public bus systems and our own two feet, as the students followed Kelly’s written (in Chinese) instructions to find their way (without her help) to designated destinations in Shanghai, Changzhou, Nanjing, Beijing – wherever we were on a particular day – and accomplish assigned goals, such as identifying and buying specific items at a market or locating selected exhibits in a museum.

Although much of the transportation signage, especially in Shanghai and Beijing, was in English as well as Chinese, the idea was to force the kids to practice their reading and verbal Mandarin skills. Many times, they had to stop and ask directions from strangers on the street or at the subway stations, people who spoke only Chinese.

This was a particularly big challenge for 11-year-old Caroline and her soon-to-be middle-school classmates – Henry Ward, Zoe Huels and Alissa Laves – but they proved to be more than ready for the task. While in Changzhou, they attended classes in a public school for one whole day and parts of two others while their parents, I confess, took a breather in Starbucks, where the currency was Chinese yuan but the prices were American.

This was Caroline’s first return to the country of her birth since my wife, Jena Heath, and I adopted her as a two-year-old nine years ago. Caroline was nervous about the trip before we left, apparently concerned that her level of Chinese would prove insufficient. But once she hit the streets of Shanghai, our first stop, and succesfully ordered our first night’s dinner from a menu written entirely in Chinese characters (without photos of what she was ordering) her confidence noticeably improved.

Soon, Caroline and her classmates were leading their parents through the streets and subway systems of huge Chinese cities as we adults struggled to keep up, fearing we would be lost without the kids. And we would have been.

Caroline helped give directions to cab drivers and asked desk clerks for extra towels. In Changzhou, she asked a hotel doorman for ice for a sore knee, taking care to differentiate, in Mandarin, that she was seeking ice, not ice cream. And, about 15 minutes later, we were delivered a block of ice.

Anyone who still thinks our public school educators spend their entire summers lounging around at the beach or keeping their feet propped up in front of a TV screen had better not suggest that to Kelly Long, Janna Griffin or Connie Soong – or to the thousands of other Texas educators who spend their summers teaching more conventional summer school classes, taking professional development courses and/or working extra jobs to meet family budgets.

We were in Nanjing a couple of weeks ago when the Texas Education Agency released the latest round of STAAR scores, and from half a world away Janna sat down to prepare and email a report to Doss parents.

Texas needs more than a blessing

The late Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, who died in 1999 soon after retiring from public office, had a reputation for being more rowdy than religious, but he cared deeply about the people – all the people – in our state. He worked to improve critical services, including education and health care, and strengthen Texas’ future.

When Bullock ended speeches or letters with his signature “God Bless Texas,” you knew he was playing to Lone Star chauvinism, but you also suspected he meant what he said.

The current lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, also has taken to using the “God Bless Texas” line, but his use of it seems about as phony as his professed interest in school children, anyone in need of help or anything that would prepare Texas for real prosperity in the 21^st century.

Bullock had a lot of flaws, but he was a leader. Patrick is a charlatan who has hijacked Bullock’s signature and continues to try to hijack Texas’ future by neglecting the state’s real needs in favor of phony, discriminatory issues that pander to fear and ignorance. We soon will see more of that in the upcoming special legislative session.

With Patrick and a governor who is afraid of him holding the state’s top two offices, our state needs a new motto:

God Help Texas.

Please!