Grading Texas – Page 90 – Texas State Teachers Association

How to defuse student anxiety

The issue of carrying guns on college campuses has been settled in Texas – at least for now at state-supported universities – but campus carry still will be debated. This week, the Georgia Legislature is considering a similar campus gun law, which prompted the article linked at the bottom of this post.

Written by Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost and published in The Atlantic this week, the article discusses the stress and anxiety the author finds pervasive among this generation of college students and why allowing guns on campus is not a solution. It is long but worth reading.

“Today’s college students are beset by unease. And it’s no wonder why – their whole lives have been lived bathed in vague and constant threat,” Bogost writes.

Today’s 21-year-old students were in kindergarten when terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and have grown up during the “war on terror,” he points out. They began high school just after the 2008 global financial crisis, which precipitated billions of dollars in government cuts to primary, secondary and higher education. Scholarships were reduced, and tuition and fees were increased.

Sound familiar?

Getting into college also has become more difficult, Bogost points out, because of an “arms race” to raise test scores and rankings. And, once in college, young people are building mountains of student debt while facing increased competition for even entry-level jobs.

“It’s entirely reasonable for young people to fear a future that has never been more tenuous,” he writes. “There are reasons to fear on college campuses. But those fears are misdirected at hypothetical bad guys with guns against whom good guys with guns would prevail.”

Bogost believes America would be better off – and I agree – if lawmakers instead took more meaningful steps to address students’ anxiety.

“We can do that by providing the resources to teach them well as kids, to give them affordable opportunities to pursue higher education, and to help them secure productive places in society matched to their talents and capacities.” he says.

That approach, however, would require more thoughtfulness, statesmanship and commitment of resources than merely waving the Second Amendment requires.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/campus-carry-anxiety-age/472920/

Passing the buck on college costs

Tuition at state-supported universities is going up – again – and our state leaders are trying to convince us that they actually care. What they actually care about is finding someone other than themselves to blame for the fact that many young people in Texas are being priced out of college degrees – or coming dangerously close.

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick each have ordered separate studies of the problem. But the reality is that the statehouse majority, including Abbott and Patrick, are more interested in cutting taxes than they are in adequately funding education – either higher or K-12 – and have been relying on unelected university regents to cover rising college costs with a series of tuition increases.

Since the Legislature in 2003 enacted the tuition deregulation law, which gave regents the authority to set tuition independently of legislative control, the cost of attending public universities in Texas has gone up by 65 percent, adjusted for inflation, while state funding per student has gone down by 27 percent, also adjusted for inflation.

These figures, which come from Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, were reported by the Houston Chronicle.

Abbott and Patrick weren’t in their current offices when the 2003 law was passed. But they and the legislative majority have been content – maybe eager – to keep passing the buck to the appointed regents while they can brag to their tea party supporters about holding the line on state spending.

Remember, one of Abbott’s and Patrick’s highest priorities during last year’s legislative session was cutting taxes, not realistically addressing the budgetary needs of public schools or universities.

Now, they are ordering studies and expressing concern. Concern, however, won’t pay anyone’s college tab.

Another computer billionaire meddling in education

Move over, Bill Gates, and watch out, educators. There’s another computer billionaire out there who has anointed himself an education expert. The story linked below is about Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings, who, among other things, wants to expand charter schools and replace locally elected school boards with privately run boards.

He also is suspected of wanting to replace teachers with computers, and earlier this year he pledged $100 million to help accomplish his goals.

Hastings, a former president of the California State Board of Education, apparently has been convinced for years that privately run charter schools are the way to improve education in America. And the more computers those schools purchase to replace teachers, the more billions that he and his techie buddies will amass while the quality of education deteriorates.

In a speech last year to the California Charter Schools Association, Hastings proposed replacing locally elected school boards with privately run boards, such as those that govern corporate charters.

“The most important thing is that they (charters) constantly get better every year…because they have stable governance – they don’t have an elected school board,” he was quoted as saying.

Of course, there are some major problems with that statement. First, a lot of charters don’t get better every year, including charters that Hastings has been associated with. Many charters get worse, and some fail. Granted, as teachers in a couple of school districts in San Antonio know all-too-well, elected school boards can be disasters. But so can privately run boards, especially if they are stacked with high-tech entrepreneurs who know nothing about teaching and learning.

Parents, school employees and other taxpayers, though, can replace elected school board members at the next election, whereas they have no control over privately run boards.

Now, if only we had a way of “dis-electing” billionaires who insist that their fortunes have suddenly given them remarkable insight into the educational process.

http://www.alternet.org/education/netflix-billionaire-reed-hastings-crusade-replace-public-school-teachers-computers

Elections have consequences for education

Elections have consequences for public schools, and, if you haven’t already cast an early ballot, you have 5.2 million reasons – the children who attend those schools — to vote tomorrow (March 1) in the party primary of your choice.

Down-ballot from the presidential nominating contests, both Republican and Democratic voters will find local races for the Texas Legislature and the State Board of Education that could make significant differences in school funding, classroom sizes, the future of high-stress testing, the quality of textbooks and curricula standards and the success or failure of vouchers and other privatization efforts.

Most of these races will be decided in the primaries, not in the general election in November.

TSTA is not partisan. It is backing both Republican and Democratic candidates, based strictly on a candidate’s support and advocacy for public schools, students and educators.

Groups trying to undermine public schools for their members’ profits aren’t partisan either, and one in particular, the misnamed Texans for Education Reform (TER), is making significant contributions in selected legislative races.

In two races in particular – one Democratic and one Republican – TER is trying to unseat two of the strongest advocates that public education has in the Texas House. One is Democratic Rep. Mary Gonzalez in House District 75 in El Paso County, about whom I have written before, and the other is Republican Rep. Gary VanDeaver in House District 1 on the other side of the state in Northeast Texas.

Gonzalez has voted to increase education funding and fought excessive standardized testing, and VanDeaver, a respected, former school administrator, also is a strong advocate for giving students and educators the resources they need to succeed. Both are members of the House Public Education Committee, which makes them worrisome to TER, whose primary interest in education is diverting tax dollars to corporate charters and other for-profit schemes for its members.

So far, TER has contributed almost $300,000 in advertising and other services to Gonzalez’s opponent, former Rep. Chente Quintanilla, and more than $100,000 to VanDeaver’s challenger, former Rep. George Lavender. As legislators, both Quintanilla and Lavender voted to under-fund education, and Lavender even voted to slash $5.4 billion from school budgets in 2011, costing thousands of Texas educators their jobs.

To see all of TSTA’s Republican and Democratic endorsements in races for the Legislature and the State Board of Education, please click on the link below. They all are important for education, but the Republican primary race for the State Board of Education in District 9 in Northeast Texas is worth some extra attention. TSTA is supporting Lufkin ISD school board President Keven Ellis to succeed Thomas Ratliff, a good board member who is not seeking reelection.

One of Ellis’ opponents is Mary Lou Bruner, an extremist ideologue backed by the tea party who has accused President Obama of being a male prostitute, believes there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, dismisses climate change as a hoax dreamed up by Karl Marx and denies slavery was a major issue in the Civil War. Bruner can write all she wants about that on her Facebook page – and she has, and more — but we don’t want her on the State Board of Education trying to write that into our children’s curricula and textbooks.

Yes, elections have consequences for education, folks, big consequences. Tomorrow is your chance to say something about that. Go vote!

http://www.tsta.org/sites/default/files/2016TSTA_Legislative_endorsements.pdf

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