Grading Texas

Pre-K money doesn’t match Abbott’s rhetoric

Despite the release of $116 million in state pre-K grants this week and despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s claims to the contrary, early education has never been the governor’s top priority. It certainly wasn’t during last year’s legislative session, when the money was appropriated.

The governor’s top priorities then and now were tax cuts and limited government, which includes squeezing education and other programs for children.

The $116 million in pre-K grants pales in comparision to the $3.9 billion – that’s billion, with a b — that Abbott and the legislative majority approved in tax cuts last year. The lion’s share of those cuts — $2.6 billion – were to the state’s main business tax. And state leaders left several billion additional dollars in the bank, rather than invest in the children they claim to support.

So Texas still spends much less per student on education than most states, while enrollment continues to grow by about 85,000 students per year. And Abbott already has asked the Legislature to continue shortchanging schools when lawmakers convene in January.

About half of the state’s school districts received the pre-K grants. But they will receive only $734 per student, about half of the $1,500 per kid that Abbott had dangled in front of the schools if they agreed to impose “tougher” pre-K standards.

The new grant program doesn’t even completely restore the $200 million that the legislative majority cut from pre-K in 2011. And it doesn’t fund full-day pre-K, despite research showing that full-day pre-K is much more effective, particularly for low-income children, who now account for about 60 percent of Texas’ public school enrollment.

As the AP story linked below points out, the Duncanville school district from which Abbott graduated was among more than 20 districts that applied for a pre-K grant but ended up passing on the money.

“It kind of became diminishing returns,” a Duncanville spokeswoman explained.

Abbott no doubt will continue to talk about how important pre-K is, but his commitment doesn’t match his rhetoric.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Abbott-s-pre-K-funding-falls-short-8344735.php?mc_cid=b03922c831&mc_eid=d716db2067

Hillary Clinton vows to rein in testing

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, she will part company with her two predecessors – George W. Bush and Barack Obama – and reduce the role of standardized testing in public schools.

In an address to the National Education Association’s annual convention today, Clinton said testing should be restored to its “original purpose” and that is as a diagnostic tool to help teachers and parents see how their kids are doing and where they need addtitional work for improvement.

“When you’re forced to teach to a test, our children miss out on some of the most valuable lessons and experiences they can gain in the classroom,” she said.

Over-testing, she added, hurts low-income children the most because the poorest schools are forced to cut back on art, music and other electives essential to a full educational experience, opportunities to which students in wealthier neighborhoods have more ready access.

“This is a form of inequality, and we are not going to stand for it,” Clinton said.

Clinton also called for universal pre-K, higher pay for educators and giving educators a break on student loans. She vowed to work to improve public schools, not privatize them, and to actually listen to educators.

In other words, her view of education is the opposite of what has been practiced by the political majority in Austin for the past several years.

Fed up with STAAR? This is what to do about it

I keep noticing a lot of parental and educator anger over STAAR, and all of it is justified. But lost scores and other problems created by the testing vendor, ETS, are only symptoms of a deeper problem, and venting against the vendor on Facebook and Twitter won’t accomplish much without going to the source of the problem – the elected officials who still support over-testing instead of real education.

Only the Legislature can rein in high-stakes, high-stress standardized tests, and the next opportunity will be the session convening in January.

A state commission that has been studying problems with STAAR – the Texas Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability – isn’t likely to go so far as to recommend that STAAR be scrapped. So, it is important that legislators hear directly from parents, educators and others demanding significant change.

If you do not know who your state representative and state senator is, click on this link and fill in your address to find out who they are and how to contact them:

http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx

Contact their offices early and often. Be polite but tell them you want STAAR to go away and insist on a definitive answer.

And remember their names and how they answered – or didn’t – when Election Day rolls around in November. All of the state representative seats and about half of the Senate seats will be on the ballot this year.

Had it up to here with STAAR? Take your complaints to the source of the problem — and keep taking them there.

Someone educate the governor, please

I know many Texans who are full of themselves, and sometimes I see one in my mirror. But the notion of Texas exceptionalism has grown absurd, fueled by a state leadership that would rather promote ideology than lead us to a prosperous future.

No, Texas isn’t going to follow the lead of British voters and try to secede from the United States, Gov. Greg Abbott told a radio host last week. No fooling?

Texas can’t secede, period. The Civil War settled that notion 150 years ago, although the governor’s political party had to beat back a politically delusional attempt only a couple of months ago to resurrect the idea in the party platform.

Abbott doesn’t talk about secession, but he does promote something called Texas “sovereignty” and, on the same radio show, declared: “What Texans believe in is that we need the United States to be more like Texas. In fact, I believe America longs to be the way Texas is.”

Think about how absurd that statement is.

Although some Texans may want the rest of the United States to follow them over the cliff, many of us would rather the Texas brand espoused by Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton be expunged, not exported. The rest of America doesn’t long to “be the way Texas is.”

Other states don’t want to be the leader in adult residents without a high school diploma. They don’t want to be the leader in residents without health insurance. They don’t want to lead the nation in the number of prison inmates and incarceration rate. And, they don’t want to rank in the bottom tier of states in resources they invest in their children’s education.

They also don’t want an attorney general who is under criminal indictment for securities fraud. They don’t want a lieutenant governor who can’t wait for his next opportunity to cut money for public school funding. And, they don’t want a governor who would rather criticize and sue the federal government than exercise any real leadership of his own.

That is the brand of Texas “exceptionalism” the rest of the country can do very well without.

Abbott’s job is to make Texas better. Let the rest of the states take care of themselves. Many of them, in fact, are doing a better job than Texans are seeing at home.

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