Grading Texas – Page 99 – Texas State Teachers Association

Testing: Is the time ripe for change?

First, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a national cheerleader for standardized testing, prepares to head into the Washington sunset. Then President Obama and a new national study note the obvious – testing has gotten out of control and needs to be curtailed.

Could the retirement of the STAAR testing regime – or at least an extreme makeover — be that far behind?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For one thing, the president’s new “testing action plan” offers guidance to school officials but does not carry the force of law. Permanent changes in testing requirements, at least at the federal level, will require congressional approval of changes in the No Child Left Behind Act, and our dysfunctional Congress is barely able to legislate a walk across the street.

But the president’s announcement comes at an opportune time for educators and parents in Texas who have had it up to their eyeballs with practice tests, benchmarks, stressed-out grade-schoolers and other manifestations of an out-of-control STAAR culture.

Earlier this year, Texas legislators – who also began detecting parental anger over testing – created a 15-member Texas Commission on the Next Generation of Assessments and Accountability. That’s a long title for a panel that will study possible changes in testing and accountability requirements and make recommendations for the Legislature to consider in 2017.

The commission will be appointed by the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House, and, despite concerns about testing, it is likely to hear from interest groups more concerned with test scores than they are in providing educators and students with sufficient resources for classroom success.

But the panel will include at least two parents and two educators. TSTA is encouraging all its local affiliates to lobby their school boards to demand that the commission and the Legislature reduce testing and replace it with a realistic accountability system that is supported by an adequate and equitable school funding system.

It’s past time to start putting first things first.

A bad “fix” for health care is bad for education

Gov. Greg Abbott isn’t endorsing anyone yet in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but he has listed the top criteria for a candidate to gain his support. The first two are border security and “fixing” Medicaid. There already has been a lot of hyperventilation over the first, so let’s skip to the second.

Regarding Medicaid, according to The Dallas Morning News, Abbott wants his choice for the Republican nomination to “promise and commit to at least a block grant program so that Texans can do a better job of taking care of themselves with regard to the health care system.”

I assume the governor delivered that line with a straight face, but the thought of the current state leadership doing a “better job” with the health care system is preposterous. That would require a complete reversal of priorities for a political leadership that consistently has ranked public health care at the bottom of its list of concerns, right alongside public education. And, health care has important consequences for education.

Texas continues to lead the nation in the percentage of people without health insurance and, last year, edged out the more populous California for the largest actual number of uninsured people as well. About 5 million Texans, or 19 percent of the state’s population, lacked health insurance in 2014. That was an improvement from 2013, when 5.75 million residents, or 22 percent of the Texas population, were uninsured.

Texas leaders, though, did nothing to cause the reduction in the uninsured. The reduction was brought about by the fact that about 700,000 Texans found insurance under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which the political majority in Texas continues to castigate. The Texas leadership also refuses to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which could provide health care coverage to as many as 1 million additional adult Texans with the federal government picking up most of the cost.

Abbott and other state leaders want more authority over Medicaid so they can have more authority over eligibility and other rules, with the goal of saving money in the state budget, not necessarily increasing health care coverage. And, their approach would increase the burden on county taxpayers, whose hospitals would have to provide more expensive, emergency care to indigents without health insurance and access to preventive care.

Several hundred thousand of the Texans without health insurance are public school students. Without proper health care, they are more likely to struggle in class, have lower test scores and drop out.

Let’s make health care a real priority, not a political one.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2015/10/gov-greg-abbott-says-hes-still-mulling-which-gop-presidential-candidate-to-endorse.html/

From Irving ISD to Qatar

Former Irving ISD student Ahmed Mohamed not only became an instant social media celebrity, but he also traveled widely after he was handcuffed and arrested when his harmless homemade clock was mistaken by school employees for a possible bomb. Now, the 14-year-old is getting ready to become an international transfer student.

Earlier this week, Ahmed met President Obama after accepting the president’s invitation to visit “Astronomy Night” in Washington, D.C. Then, less than 24 hours later, his family announced they were moving to Qatar, where Ahmed will join a “Young Innovators Program” run by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. Ahmed will receive a full scholarship.

In a statement from his family, the famous clockmaker noted that Doha, Qatar’s principal city, has a number of “amazing schools,” including some campuses of American universities. Texas A&M has a campus there, but there was no word on whether Ahmed plans eventually to become an Aggie.

I wish Ahmed well. And, I hope the over-reaction of Irving school administrators and police to his clock hasn’t made the difficult task of balancing the very real need for campus and student security with student expression and common sense even more difficult for educators.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/clock-kid-ahmed-mohamed-and-his-family-will-move-to-qatar/2015/10/20/a95ed296-7762-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html

Choice of next education commissioner will say a lot

With the pending departure of Michael Williams, a holdover appointee of Rick Perry, Gov. Greg Abbott now will have an opportunity to appoint his first state education commissioner. Considering Abbott’s education record so far, we better keep our fingers crossed.

Remember, Abbott designated a home-schooler to chair the State Board of Education, backed tax cuts over adequate education spending during last spring’s legislative session and continues to defend the state’s inadequate and unconstitutional school funding system. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other Tea Party-types and school privateers also are likely to try to influence the governor’s selection.

Granted, the education commissioner has limited policy-setting authority and has to operate within the confines of laws set by the Legislature and Congress. But school children and educators need a real advocate for public schools in the state’s top education office, someone who – as TSTA President Noel Candelaria pointed out — will “advocate for a greater investment in our public schools and policies that will end punitive standardized testing that robs teachers and students of the time they need for real teaching and learning.”

Abbott’s choice will say a lot about whether he really intends to make public education a top priority or will continue to merely pat educators on the head with empty plaudits.