CALL THE CAPITOL MONDAY & TUESDAY! LULAC is part of this Coalition. Consider attending this meeting. It'll be the spectacle of the session—at least in the area of education. Consider testifying as well. And if not testifying, at least signing a card stating your (or your organization's) position on school vouchers. -Angela

The Coalition for Public Schools is having a "virtual rally" in opposition to private school vouchers on Monday and Tuesday, April 4 & 5. We need thousands of public school supporters to participate by making phone calls to the Capitol in opposition to the three private school voucher bills—H.B. 12, H.B. 1263, and H.B. 3042. It's easy, quick, and your calls will make a big difference! Timing is important, because there will be a public hearing on the three bills Tuesday, and one or more of the bills could be passed out of committee Tuesday night.

1. Call your state representative's office, and you will typically talk with an assistant. Tell him or her you are a constituent who is calling to urge the representative to oppose any private school voucher bill or floor amendment. Then give any reasons why you passionately oppose vouchers! (Of course the best reason is that we can't afford to take money away from neighborhood public schools to fund private school tuition.) The legislative assistant will listen politely and record your name and your opposition to vouchers on a tally of incoming calls. To find out who represents you in the Texas House of Representatives and the phone number, go to this site: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/fyi/fyi.htm

2. Call members of the Texas House Committee on Public Education and urge them to oppose the voucher bills when they come before the committee Tuesday. Committee members' names and phone numbers are:

Chairman Kent Grusendorf (R-Arlington): 512-463-0624
Vice Chairman Rene Oliveira (D-Brownsville): 512-463-0640
Rep. Dan Branch (R-Dallas): 512-463-0367
Rep. Diane Delisi (R-Temple): 512-463-0630
Rep. Harold Dutton, Jr. (D-Houston): 512-463-0510
Rep. Rob Eissler (R-The Woodlands): 512-463-0797
Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston): 512-463-0492
Rep. Bill Keffer (R-Dallas): 512-463-0244
Rep. Anna Mowery (R-Fort Worth): 512-463-0608

If you live in one of the school districts that would be included in a voucher program proposed under H.B. 12 or H.B. 1263, be sure to mention that your neighborhood schools would be harmed when voucher money is siphoned away! The school districts in the proposed voucher pilots are: Houston, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Cypress-Fairbanks, San Antonio, Northside (San Antonio), Edgewood, South San Antonio, and Masonic Home (Fort Worth).

Our anti-voucher "Virtual Rally" needs to have TONS of participation to compete with the real PRO-voucher rally that is taking place Tuesday on the south side of the Capitol. The monied special interest groups promoting vouchers are paying for chartered buses to bring to the Capitol minority parents and those whose children are already enrolled in private schools.

PUBLIC HEARING ON VOUCHERS TUESDAY

The public hearing before the House Committee on Public Education on all three voucher bills has officially been set for Tuesday, April 5 at 2 p.m. or upon adjournment of the House. The hearing is posted to be held in E2.036 in the Texas Capitol extension, but we anticipate a possible change of location to the auditorium in E1.004 (which is directly across from the cafeteria entrance in the extension). The auditorium can hold 350 people. We'll send out a subsequent email if the location changes.

1. WE NEED AT LEAST 35 PEOPLE TO TESTIFY AGAINST THE VOUCHER BILLS. Please respond to this email if you intend to testify or could recruit someone from your organization to speak out against the voucher proposals. We also need the names and contact information on people who will testify, as we are attempting to loosely coordinate the points that will be made.

2. Audience Members of Color. Help us in recruiting minority parents and grandparents who are willing to attend the hearing and sit in the audience for several hours wearing an anti-voucher button (they do not need to present testimony). Please respond to this email with the names, phone numbers, email addresses of persons willing to be audience members.

3. Seat Holders. We need 25+ people in Austin who could stand for an hour at the locked door of the auditorium where the voucher hearing will be held so they can be the first in the door to grab seats. The seat holders would then give up their seats to persons scheduled to testify as they arrive. (NOTE: This is an ideal role for staff assistants or student interns at association headquarters who would like to come to the Capitol for a short while to help out the cause, but then they could return to their offices after giving up their seats) Please respond to this email with the names, phone numbers, email addresses of persons willing to be seat holders.

4. Interested Audience Members Wearing Buttons. We also need people who want to sit in the audience and wear "STOP VOUCHERS" buttons. Our hope is that voucher opponents can be comparable in numbers to the voucher supporters who are being bused to Austin. Please pick up a button from a friendly volunteer as you enter the auditorium (or if crowded there probably will be an overflow room).

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE VOUCHER BILLS

A summary of the three voucher bills is attached to this email. H.B. 1263 is expected to be the lead bill, and it even has a promotional web site:

You could read the text of the three bills at these links:
H.B. 12

H.B. 1263

H.B. 3042

Thank you for making it a priority to speak out against vouchers and in support of our Texas public schools!

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:53 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Carolyn Boyle is correct. The poll on Hispanic support for vouchers is bogus. -Angela

March 30, 2005, 12:47AM

School Vouchers Popular in New Poll
But critics blast group's survey of Hispanics voters as 'totally bogus'
By JEFFREY GILBERT
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau


AUSTIN - In a poll sponsored by a group working to pass a school voucher bill, almost 73 percent of Harris County Hispanics support the proposed legislation for at-risk children.
ADVERTISEMENT

"This poll unequivocally verifies what we have known for a long time: Hispanic parents, particularly those in Texas' largest, inner-city school districts, understand school choice offers their children a better future," said Rebeca Nieves Huffman, president and CEO of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, the group that sponsored the poll.

The poll of about 1,000 Hispanic voters in Bexar, Dallas, Harris, Tarrant and Travis counties shows that almost 76 percent favor a pilot voucher program in Texas' largest, inner-city school districts.

The poll was conducted between Feb. 23 and March 2, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Carolyn Boyle, coordinator of the Coalition for Public Schools, said Tuesday the poll is "totally bogus," because it didn't give the full story.

"The people who promote private school vouchers always want to ask nebulous questions, and they never ask about the cost," she said. "Had they asked, 'Do you think we should spend a couple of hundred million dollars taken away from neighborhood schools?' they would have said no."

In a Scripps Howard Texas Poll earlier this year, 55 percent said they were opposed to using taxpayer-funded vouchers to allow public students to attend private schools, and 39 percent were in favor.

House Bill 1263 would create a school voucher program in the five largest urban school districts. There are at least two related bills the committee may consider, HB 12 and HB 3042.

Boyle said the respondents also aren't identified as parents.

"It's hard for Jose Q. Public to know the quality of the public schools if they don't have a child in public schools," Boyle said. "This is just a push poll to push a bill."

Even so, Marcela Garcini, Texas parent coordinator for the Hispanic group, said the poll should send a strong message.

"When 76 percent of Democrats favors school choice, it's time for our elected officials in Austin to listen to their constituents and to implement a pilot program," Garcini said.

jeffrey.gilbert@chron.com
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3108602
 

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Grusendorf makes the following comment: "It is not true that HB 2 would be a vehicle for profit-making companies to take over schools. Nothing could be further from the truth...." I find it so problematic that a state official can be so openly far from being truthful to the public. This bill needs to be read in the context of voucher legislation that Grusendorf supports. -Angela

Comment: HB 2 Would Sharpen School Results
03/31/2005 12:00 AM CST

by Kent Grusendorf
Chair, House Committee on Public Education
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

I've read with amazement editorials and articles slamming House Bill 2, education reform legislation that I authored and call a Roadmap to Results.

In most cases, the writers attended few public hearings where we discussed innovative measures to improve education. They didn't contact me or HB 2 supporters to gain insight into the intent of the legislation. They seemingly relied on criticism generated by lobbyists with financial interests.

As chairman of the House Public Education Committee, I opened the hearings to any interested individuals with ideas or concerns about how we should deliver the best education to more than 4 million children. We heard from hundreds of Texans who testified in writing or in person. No point of view was ignored.

It is not true that HB 2 would be a vehicle for profit-making companies to take over schools. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our legislation would ensure no child is trapped in a school that is doing a poor job.

Under HB 2, the state would crack down on low-performing campuses by requiring the commissioner of education to send in a team to turn around bad schools after the first year of poor performance. If a school continued to fail children a second year, the commissioner could move more aggressively and assign a new management team with a proven record for improving academic performance. Qualified nonprofits, including teams of teachers, parents or university professionals, would be among those considered for the turnaround efforts.

A mandate for getting tough with failing schools is among many HB 2 reforms that would create efficiency and accountability.

HB 2 would add more than $3 billion in new money for education, one of the greatest state increases in history. More important, we would spend those dollars more wisely.

Too many education dollars are spent on top-heavy school bureaucracies. HB 2 would require new financial reporting and accountability so parents will know how much money is spent in classrooms and funneled into management. Parents and taxpayers would be able to look at a Texas Education Agency Web site and see exactly how their money is being spent.

Our legislation would empower taxpayers by requiring administrators to justify the need for more money when they ask voters to approve higher school property taxes. We would encourage greater participation in school board elections by moving them to November, when voter turnout is higher.

Colleges of business would teach principals and superintendents to spend money more efficiently through advanced management programs. An online, best-practices clearinghouse would allow districts to share success stories so they don't waste time and money duplicating efforts.

The state would improve high school learning and college readiness by paying for SAT and ACT testing and phasing in end-of-course exams.

Right now, we teach children and assess their progress much as we did in the 1950s. HB 2 would change that by trading pencil-and-paper exams for online testing that allows teachers to more quickly evaluate student progress. We're adding money to help schools pay for new, computer-driven materials.

One of our most critical missions is to close the achievement gap for minority students. This bill would provide $100 million to do that. The money would be used as an incentive for our best teachers to work on campuses with a majority of at-risk students.

Under HB 2, school districts would use 1 percent of their budgets to reward exceptional teachers through performance pay plans. Teachers would help design the plans to spend the money in three ways: on bonuses for experienced teachers who serve as mentors for beginning instructors; on bonuses for outstanding teachers at educationally disadvantaged campuses; and to recognize exceptional teachers or employees who improve student performance on a campus or grade level.

The bottom line for our Roadmap to Results is this: Money is important, but how the money is spent is even more important. HB 2 would direct schools to use education dollars more effectively. It would empower taxpayers, propel academic achievement and lead to results. And results are what we're all after.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, is chairman of the House Public Education Committee.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:07 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Federal Data Show Gains on Language
But Most States Miss English-Learner Goals
By Mary Ann Zehr
Published: March 23, 2005

The U.S. Department of Education’s first-ever evaluation of how states are meeting requirements for English-language learners under the federal No Child Left Behind Act can be looked at two ways.

One view of the report, which was released to Congress last week, is that states have made great strides in laying the groundwork for schools to teach English-language learners. That’s the view of Kathleen Leos, the associate deputy secretary and senior policy adviser for the Education Department’s office of English-language acquisition, a researcher for the evaluation.

“Given where the states started, there’s been significant progress made in all states at varying levels,” she said in an interview. The evaluation shows all 50 states plus the District of Columbia have developed standards for English proficiency and aligned them with their academic-content standards, she noted. Before the 3-year-old law was enacted, only seven states had such standards, and they were not connected to academic content.

“It’s absolutely going to impact instruction in the classroom,” Ms. Leos said.

For More Info
"Biennial Evaluation Report to Congress on the Implementation of the State Formula Grant Program" is available online from National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition.

But another interpretation of the findings in the 503-page evaluation, which covers the 2002-03 and 2003-04 school years, is that states have largely failed to meet the law’s requirements to ensure that English-language learners master academic content. Only two states—Alabama and Michigan—met “adequate yearly progress,” or AYP, goals last school year for such students in both reading and mathematics.

Moreover, not a single state both reported all the data required by the federal law and met all the mandated targets for English-language learners.

“This report certainly accentuates the positive, and to learn the bad news about how the No Child Left Behind Act is working out, you have to read the fine print of a 503-page report,” said James Crawford, the executive director of the Washington-based National Association for Bilingual Education, who was a reporter for Education Week in the 1980s.

The news, according to Mr. Crawford, “shows that this is a dysfunctional system of accountability. No one has sat down to do the math to see that it’s impossible for most schools with significant numbers of English-language learners to meet their AYP targets as the targets get more stringent. This subgroup by definition will never go very far in meeting the full-proficiency target.”

While states that didn’t make adequate yearly progress goals could lose federal funds, Ms. Leos said the federal government doesn’t plan to punish states for failing to meet requirements for English-language learners, because states have made so much progress in such a short period of time.

The report was released to Congress March 15.

“States should be commended for making significant progress in implementing these provisions in three short years,” said Rep. John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, the chairman of the House education committee, in an e-mail. “However, there is still much work that must be done before we achieve our long-term goals of ensuring all students are proficient in reading and math.”
Two States Stand Out

Though the Education Department’s summary of the evaluation’s findings fails to point out that no state met all of its English-proficiency and academic goals for English-language learners, Ms. Leos acknowledged that conclusion in interviews last week.

In addition, the summary provides analysis only for how states met their goals for English proficiency, but not for how the states did at meeting goals for English-language learners in reading and math.

For instance, the summary says that “of the 42 states that provided target and performance data, 33 report meeting at least some of their [annual measurable achievement objective] targets regarding progress in English-language proficiency.” The department counts the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states.

As far as helping second-language learners gain fluency in English, the success rate for states’ achievement of their goals is even better, the department points out: Of the 45 states that provide one or more targets as well as performance data, 41 met some or all of their goals.

The Fine Print

But readers of the report will have to look beyond the summary and wade through more than 400 pages of data about individual states to draw conclusions about the states’ progress in meeting academic goals for English-language learners. The findings are much less impressive than states’ record on helping students learn English.

Buried in the data is the fact that only Alabama and Michigan met their AYP goals last school year for English-language learners’ test scores in bothreading and math. Alabama set a goal of having half its 11th graders who were tested in math reach the cutoff score for “proficient and advanced.” Michigan set the target of having 33 percent of its 11th graders land in the category of “proficient and advanced,” though each state has different tests.

Mississippi, Missouri, and Virginia met their goals for math, but not for reading. None of the other states met their projected targets for English-language learners in either subject. Altogether, 36 states reported the data fully for math, and the same number of states, though not the same exact group, did so for reading.

“Those who have studied second-language acquisition wouldn’t be surprised by those findings,” said Deborah J. Short, a language researcher at the Washington-based Center for Applied Linguistics. “It takes four, seven, or even nine years for some students to reach academic proficiency.”

Ms. Leos said the Education Department’s decision not to spell out whether states had met AYP goals for English-language learners wasn’t an “edict coming from a political standpoint.” Rather, she said, it was an “internal decision” grounded in a belief that it was hard to make comparisons between states.

“I don’t think you can make any conclusive statements about what achievement gap exists between limited-English-proficient children and native English-speakers,” Ms. Leos said.

Ms. Short countered that the department should have taken a stab at characterizing second-language learners’ academic results in reading and math. Annual testing of 3rd through 8th graders in those subjects is a key gauge of success under the federal law.

“They should have reported how students were doing on math and reading to the extent they could so we could understand the challenges these students face when asked to perform in a language they are not proficient in,” Ms. Short said.

At the same time, she cautioned against reading too much into whether states make their targets or not because each state sets targets differently.

California, for example, reached its goal for helping students attain fluency in English by bringing 38 percent of English-language learners to fluency last school year. Delaware, at the same time, met its goal by having just 5.6 percent of such students attain fluency.

States’ definitions for fluency in English also vary.
New Level of Data

Experts on second-language learners who had read the summary of the evaluation last week said the report reflects positive change for how schools and states view English-language learners.

“The approach in the program suggests that the states or the feds are recognizing that limited-English-proficient kids are here to stay, and they need a systematic approach,” said Charlene Rivera, the executive director of the Center for Equity and Excellence in Education, located at George Washington University.

“One of the main points of the report is to show Congress the data are being collected,” said Randy Capps, a senior research associate at the Washington-based Urban Institute, who is conducting a study about the impact of the federal education law on English-language learners. He said the federal government has never collected data on such students to the extent that it is now.

Most states had some gaps in the data that they were required to report to the Education Department.

New York, for example, did not provide information on whether it had made AYP for English- language learners in reading. Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the state education department, said last week that New York was unable to provide the data because of difficulties in matching up test scores used previously with scores on a test introduced last school year.

Elsewhere, Irene Morena, Arizona’s deputy associate superintendent for English acquisition said in an e-mail message she couldn’t say why data about her state’s targets and student performance in English proficiency didn’t make it into the federal report. It was, she said, submitted to the federal department on time.

Ms. Rivera of the Center for Equity and Excellence in Education said the report was lacking in information that would help states improve instruction in academic content for English-language learners.

“The report doesn’t really discuss how instruction in reading and math and other content areas is being delivered,” she said. “That needs to be thought about more. Language is one thing, but you need to really focus on content.”

The report’s findings show that all states have English-only programs for children to learn the language, while 40 have at least some bilingual education to teach the language. Thirteen states provide assessments in students’ native languages.

An official at the Alabama Department of Education credits teacher training in strategies for working with English-language learners as helping her state meet its academic goals.

“The more we provide professional development, the better off we are,” said Dely Velez Roberts, the state agency’s specialist in English-language learners.
Vol. 24, Issue 28, Pages 1,25

The Center for Applied Linguistics offers research resources on student language acquisition and proficiency.

The Center for Equity and Excellence in Education has launched the Promoting Excellence Initiative, a "national effort to improve K-12 education for English language learners."

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:08 AM 0 comments Links to this post

LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
***********************************************************************************************
TAKE ACTION – TESTIFY AGAINST VOUCHERS APRIL 5 IN AUSTIN
*** CHECK OUT OUR NEW WEB SITE, WWW.TFN.ORG, FOR MORE INFO **

VOUCHERS – Public hearing on vouchers set for April 5
Three voucher bills are headed for public hearing on April 5 in the House Public Education Committee. This will be the one-and-only chance the public can speak out against private school vouchers. We expect a large turnout from the pro-voucher camp – two years ago bus loads of parents currently receiving a voucher from James Leininger packed the hearing room.

We need our side of the story told. Please make plans to come testify. It’s important that the committee hear from parents, teachers, school board members, business owners, etc. That means you! Please contact Heather Alden, heather@tfn.org, if you can testify and to get more details!

Following are the proposed House bills on vouchers:

· H.B. 12 by Rep. Corte, R-San Antonio, is a pilot voucher program that would drain money from neighborhood public schools to pay for tuition at private and religious schools in urban areas. Not only would the bill take hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from our neighborhood schools, private schools receiving the money wouldn’t even have to be accredited by a recognized organization.

· H.B. 1263 by Rep. Harper-Brown, R- Irving; Jodi Laubenberg, R-Parker; and Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, creates a pilot voucher program for educationally disadvantaged students in counties with a population of more than 800,000 people. Those counties include Harris (Houston), Dallas, Tarrant (Fort Worth), Bexar (San Antonio) and Travis (Austin).

· H.B. 3042 by Rep. Riddle, R-Tomball, opens up private school vouchers to any student in the state who is eligible for public school. This is the most far-reaching of the three voucher bills.

********************************************************************************************
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

Today the Senate Education Committee began hearing testimony on H.B. 2, the omnibus school finance and education reform bill by Rep. Gruesendorf, R-Arlington. The chairman of the committee, Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said that there will be a much different version of H.B. 2 coming out of the Senate. Besides the pitiful lack of funding, the House bill also includes provisions to privatize and erode state education standards. One provision in H.B. 2, for example, would allow exemplary schools to ignore quality education standards like small class sizes, teacher certification and early reading intervention that have helped students make progress over the past two decades. Another provision in the bill would allow private companies (such as Edison Schools) to run low-performing public schools. Studies have shown, however, that many public schools run by private education companies have a poor record of improving academic performance.

VIRTUAL CHARTER SCHOOLS

· H.B. 1445 by Rep. Madden, R-Plano, creates a “virtual school network” to allow local school districts and charter schools to develop online courses to be taken by any school-age child in Texas, including home-school kids. H.B. 1445 would create a de facto virtual voucher program because it would allow school districts and charter schools to contract with private companies to develop and administer these online courses at state expense. A substitute bill to H.B. 1445 is expected this week.

SBOE/TEXTBOOKS

· NEW! H.B. 2534 by Rep. Chisum allows the State Board of Education (SBOE) to determine content requirements and limitations for facts and theories (theory of evolution), citizenship, patriotism and free enterprise (history and social studies), divergent individuals and groups (“may not encourage lifestyles that deviate from generally accepted standards of society”). This bill would set into law the kind of textbook censorship TFN has fought at the SBOE for the last 10 years. The bill has been referred to committee, but a hearing has yet to be scheduled.

· H.B. 220 by Rep. Howard, R-Sugar Land, would give the SBOE the authority to reject a textbook or require its revision simply because it did not conform to the political or religious beliefs of SBOE members. This same bill was filed in the Senate last week as S.B. 378. H.B. 220 and S.B. 378 have both been referred to committee, but hearings have yet to be scheduled.

· H.B. 973 by Rep. Madden, R-Plano, would give the SBOE broad authority to change the state’s social studies curriculum by allowing the SBOE to decide whether or not textbooks “focus in an unreasonably negative manner on American values, culture, or history.” This bill has been referred to House Public Education Committee, but a hearing has yet to be scheduled.

· H.B. 2576 by Rep. Grusendorf is the Texas Education Agency Sunset bill. This bill opens up a door to vouchers, virtual charter schools and lessening of school standards. The bill has been referred to committee, but a hearing has yet to be scheduled.

*********************************************************************
Make a donation to support our work to stop private school vouchers and textbook censorship. Donate online: https://www.tfn.org/member/general/ .

Please contact me with any questions or comments.

Best Regards,

Heather Alden
Outreach Director
Texas Freedom Network
512.322.0545 telephone
512.322.0550 facsimile
heather@tfn.org

The Texas Freedom Network advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the radical right.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:44 PM 2 comments Links to this post

Below is an important report on education based on recent U.S. Census Bureau analyses. The latter is another report by NPR’s Claudio Sanchez on the Houston dropout problem. Side-by-side, one gets a sense of the severity of the problem both for society and the students and their families, as well.
-Angela


Education-Earnings Gap Widens
by Jack Speer 

Morning Edition, March 28, 2005 · The earnings gap between high-school and college graduates continues to widen, the Census Bureau says. On average, college graduates now earn just over $51,000 a year, almost twice as much as high-school graduates. And those with no high-school diploma have actually seen their earnings drop in recent years.

NPR: Scandal Surrounds Dropout Rate in Houston
 
Morning Edition, March 29, 2005· Authorities in Houston investigate the tracking of the dropout rate in Houston high schools. Some observers claim 42 percent of Houston's ninth-graders never make it to their high school graduations. School officials say the number is closer to 25 percent.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

by LynNell Hancock

The author, former education editor at Newsweek, is an assistant professor
in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She observes that
the scandal in Houston shines a Texas-sized spotlight on the new world
facing education reporters around the nation, reporters too tied to top-down
reporting habits.
Columbia Journalism Review
March-April 2005

"We have no dropouts!” Robert Kimball declared in a sarcastic e-mail to his
boss, the principal of Houston’s Sharpstown High School, in November 2002.
Sharpstown had just reported that none of its 1,650 students had left
without graduating or transferring elsewhere, and the assistant principal
could not believe the math. “Amazing! We go from 1,000 freshmen to less than
300 seniors with no dropouts.”

Kimball soon learned that Sharpstown’s strange statistics were no anomaly.
Two other inner-city Houston high schools that ordinarily lost about half
their students by graduation also reported zero dropouts. A dozen more
schools reported losses of less than 1 percent. His suspicion grew when he
calculated that Sharpstown’s teachers and administrators had received
$75,000 in bonuses as accountability rewards for keeping children in school.

In February 2003 a local television station checked out Kimball’s worst
fears. Investigative reporters at the CBS affiliate KHOU-TV tracked down
several actual dropouts, including a seventeen-year-old student who
Sharpstown officials claimed was enrolled in a private school. In fact, she
was working behind the counter at a Wendy’s. Following up on the story,
Texas state auditors discovered that the district including Sharpstown
falsely recorded nearly 3,000 high schoolers as “moved away” or
“transferred” instead of as “dropouts.”

Months later, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and 60 Minutes
weighed in with their own analyses of Houston’s dropout data, finding more
inconsistencies along the way. The big media were attracted to the story
because Houston was at the epicenter of the “Texas Miracle,” the standards
and accountability reform movement championed by former Governor George W.
Bush. Their stories revealed that scores of mostly black and Latino students
in Houston were held back in the ninth grade for several years, enabling
them to avoid taking the tenth-grade graduation exam, a test that had been
diluted over time to include many questions better suited to sixth- through
eighth-graders. Children who repeated ninth grade ended up dropping out in
large numbers, and only half the students who did graduate went on to higher
education. Not exactly the stuff of miracles.

The tricks and truths were buried by the numbers, and all but ignored for
years by The Houston Chronicle. The city’s only remaining daily paper should
have owned the story, and years earlier, but its coverage habits were
cemented in a model that kept reporters out of classrooms. Education
reporters were conditioned to cover “schools” instead of “education,” to
come at the beat from the top down by reporting on district policies without
comparing them to real-life results or assessing their classroom relevance.
So the Chronicle’s initial dropout stories simply repeated the district’s
1.5 percent rate, and gave critics the token, brush-off-for-balance
treatment at a story’s end.

The scandal in Houston shines a Texas-sized spotlight on the new world
facing education reporters around the nation. It’s a complex beat, in flux,
under new scrutiny. Old top-down reporting habits — never adequate to begin
with — become even more dangerous when used to analyze the impact of such
far-reaching, top-down reforms as the elimination of social promotion and No
Child Left Behind, the landmark federal act that brings President Bush’s
twin philosophies of accountability and market competition to bear on the
messy business of education. Not surprisingly, these reforms, which have
more to do with managing school systems than teaching kids, work best when
they operate in a centralized, businesslike manner. Since management systems
depend heavily on measuring tools, the standardized test — education’s most
popular assessment measure — takes on added importance. All this exacerbates
the press’s tendency to rely on official sources, and on the seductive power
of the test score as the sole measure of success. To avoid the trap of
oversimplification, reporters need a working knowledge of everything from
psychometrics to education theory in order to untangle where the numbers end
and the truth begins.

At the same time, education reporters are continually trying to figure out
who’s really in charge as they negotiate a changing bureaucratic terrain. At
least seven big-city mayors have assumed control over their school systems
from school boards in recent years. And as their appointees, often
tight-lipped lawyers and corporate executives, replace educators as school
superintendents, accessible sources such as principals or school board
members have become scarce. Parents, often the most credible school sources,
have been effectively pushed further down in the pecking order.

Ironically, just when some reporters are losing touch with their true
subjects — children — many parents are becoming more curious about what
exactly is happening in the classroom. In wealthier districts, so-called
“helicopter parents” hover over every aspect of their children’s lives,
scouring relevant reports as they groom their offspring for success in the
world of high-stakes testing and college admissions. In low-income
neighborhoods, parents rely on the media to help them negotiate the new
rules and new tests, along with the new possibilities for tutoring or
transferring as they angle to keep their children from being left behind.
Both groups of parents want to know the difference between standards and
standardized tests, between reading scores and real knowledge. But such
stories don’t lend themselves to simple answers, and so are too often missed
by reporters who come at the beat from the wrong end.

Education reporters at The Houston Chronicle could have provided their
readers with trustworthy coverage of the high school dropout paradox had
they looked for stories in closer proximity to the blackboard. A simple head
count of freshmen and seniors in homerooms on any given day would have
confirmed suspicions. How could there be so many more ninth-graders than
twelfth-graders? Where had all those kids gone? Any high school student or
teacher would have been able to tell a reporter about one or two people who
had left school before graduating, thereby disproving the zero-dropout
assertions.

But no one was there to tell.

It’s always tempting to say that today’s pressures on journalists are more
overwhelming than those of the recent past. But in the world of public
education, the evidence is stark. The story has branched off into broader
and more complex directions in a relatively short span of time. Large-scale
school reforms in the works for more than two decades are becoming more
prevalent, the tools that measure them more potent, and the punishment for
failure more dire. Voters and parents demand more and better information in
order to know where their kids and their schools stand. At the same time,
the high-level politicians in charge have a pressing interest in keeping a
lid on unfavorable school data, and in keeping journalists away from the
schoolhouse door. Their political lives are at stake.

President Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind Act is one such politically
charged management plan that has altered the reporting landscape. The
federal government has never played such a powerful monitoring role in the
life of individual public school students, even though it still contributes
less than 10 percent of total school funding. The measure glided through
Congress with unprecedented bipartisan back-slapping during the tumultuous
months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Both sides of the aisle were
eager to find something positive to unite them, and in No Child Left Behind
— the fruit of decades of growing centralization — they found goals that few
could reasonably debate. No Child is based on the premise that all children
in public schools should receive a high-quality education from a
well-prepared teacher, and that schools should be accountable for serving
every child, regardless of race or disability. Children in failing schools
are technically eligible to transfer to better ones or receive free
tutoring. The law seeks to close the achievement gap between whites and
minorities by requiring schools to openly report their data by race and
ethnicity, and by imposing a variety of sanctions on any school that fails
to improve learning for all students.

But the devil is in the solutions, which have little to say about proven but
expensive goals like reducing class size or offering incentives for highly
qualified teachers. The act recognizes standardized test scores alone as
measurements of achievement; it ignores performance assessments that can
include students’ writing skills and teachers’ views. (Close to $400 million
was added to No Child Left Behind for testing companies to design new
high-stakes exams, and a burgeoning $2 billion test-preparation industry has
moved into a place of national prominence.)

The second part of No Child Left Behind reflects Bush’s belief that the
private sector is best equipped to carry out public reforms. Schools that
don’t report adequate test scores over time could face being taken over by
for-profit companies or charter schools. Students in failing schools can
technically transfer to better ones or receive tutoring, preferably from
private test-prep companies. Other hidden line items betray the law’s
politically conservative agenda. Federal money to train history teachers can
be used only for “traditional” American history, meaning a fact-based
curriculum about national leaders, and not a multicultural approach about
social movements. Sex education must emphasize abstinence even though no
scientific data show that this curriculum approach helps reduce AIDS or teen
pregnancy. The public was largely unaware of these consequences when the
bill passed.

If No Child Left Behind raised the stakes for school districts, it also
raised the stakes for those who cover them. The education story became a
national political story (read: more important) the day the bill passed, and
its initial handler was the Washington press corps. The coverage underscored
the benefits of the unusual Democratic-Republican alliance that helped push
the bill into being. It heralded the importance of imposing high standards
and requiring full disclosure for schools that can no longer hide the
failure of their most vulnerable students. And it forecast four years of
welcome attention to the public schools. In other words, the news was good.
But Washington reporters did little to shed light on the 1,000-page
measure’s finer points, at least initially, preferring instead to parse its
political implications.

Now that the law’s full effects are settling into elementary and middle
school classroom reality, more critics are speaking out against it, and
talking to reporters. The Department of Education was so concerned about the
growing bipartisan wave of criticism that it paid $700,000 to a public
relations firm to promote No Child and rank individual reporters’ coverage
of it. Then, in January, USA Today broke the story that the department had
paid Armstrong Williams, a conservative black pundit and radio host,
$240,000 to shill for the Bush administration’s main education initiative.

Everyone agrees that quality standardized tests can be useful as one of many
measures of success, or of failure, but they’ve been given an elevated role
that they cannot sustain. Under No Child Left Behind, mandatory testing for
third- through eighth-graders will be used to make decisions that the test
makers agree their products were never meant for — whether a child passes, a
teacher fails, a principal is rewarded, or an entire school is shut down.
During the next four years, the Bush administration plans to spend another
$1.5 billion to expand this testing strategy into the nation’s high schools.

Assessing the meaning and validity of such tests requires a pool of
sophisticated reporters who can navigate the world of statistics, business,
human development, teaching and learning methods, neuroscience, politics,
race, and culture. A few news organizations, like the Baltimore Sun, are
responding to the changes wrought by the federal act by redesigning the
education beat as an investigative challenge. And the Chicago Tribune now
employs five reporters to cover a beat with more than 400,000 students. Less
impressively, The New York Times deploys just three writers to cover a local
school system more than twice the size of Chicago’s. Most papers, though,
like The Houston Chronicle, have undergone cutbacks, leaving their education
reporter, if they even have one, with little time for much more than chasing
the latest press release. Lisa Walker, executive director of the Education
Writers’ Association, estimates that newspapers lost as many as 15 percent
of their reporter positions nationwide over the last five years, up to 30
percent at some larger papers. “We’re concerned,” she says. “With fewer
people, are they going to be able to go beyond the surface?”

National education reporters such as Sam Dillon and Diana Jean Schemo of The
New York Times have made the new federal law a natural focus within their
beat, contributing insight into the general knowledge of its impact on
education. Each has probed the law’s positive impact as well as chronicling
the games states play by lowering their passing grade or finding ways to
keep disabled and new immigrant children from taking the tests at all.
Dillon wrote movingly about the absurdity of holding troubled children to
the same standards as those whose parents do not routinely lose their jobs
and move their families from school to school. For some of those children,
it’s a triumph to get them inside the school building, without further
traumatizing them as test failures.

Still, by far the best No Child Left Behind stories have percolated straight
up from local schools, where the voices of teachers and children bring the
national policy home to readers. The Chicago Tribune has devoted rare energy
to such a project. Its city and metro staff have produced more than 400
stories on the subject since the act was passed, many of them memorable.
Instead of battling a torrent of numbers or playing poker with test
rankings, Tribune reporters dug behind the data, analyzing their origins and
putting a human face on their percentages.

Tracy Dell’Angela told the story of a public elementary school in the suburb
of Aurora that had turned around its failing school, pouring efforts into
new reading specialists and extra programs. Morale at Rollins elementary was
high, as children began responding and Rollins’s reputation grew. But then
low results from a test for new-immigrant children, required by No Child
Left Behind, pummeled the school into a failing category. “We celebrated our
scores. We know we did well. But we’re still considered a failure,”
Principal Karen Hart told Dell’Angela. “It’s just hard to put on your game
face and keep going when it’s not recognized beyond our four walls.” The
Rollins school, Hart explained, now faces the “painful prospect of setting
aside money that once went to reading specialists and after-school programs”
for tutoring and transportation costs.

Another Tribune reporter examined the fruit of moving children out of
failing schools. Stephanie Banchero followed third-grader Rayola Carwell
from her South Side Chicago home in the morning until she arrived, two hours
later, tired, hungry, and late at a better school thirteen miles away.
Banchero illustrated through the experience of a nine-year-old why only 500
out of 270,000 eligible children transferred out of their failing Chicago
schools last year, and why 37 percent who left ended up leaving their new
schools as well.

Media coverage in Chicago was not always this probing. During the
mid-nineties, when the dynamic ceo Paul Vallas was running the schools,
reporting hewed more closely to his aggressive agenda. Vallas, who now heads
Philadelphia’s schools, understood that strategic media relations would be
vital to his success. Reporters complained they could not get him off the
phone, an odd phenomenon for big-city beat reporters. And the coverage in
the heady early years of reform in Chicago was held captive by Vallas’s
announcements, rarely leavened by the reality, or analytic research, on the
ground.

Vallas was pushing a top-down, high-stakes policy that has become popular
with the new breed of mayors and businessmen leading public schools:
preventing “social promotion” by holding underperforming students back a
grade. The strategy appeals to educational bureaucrats because it advertises
their zero tolerance for mediocrity. And it appeals to bored education
reporters in search of stories charged with the drama of sink-or-swim
scores.

Unfortunately, like No Child Left Behind, the story of social promotion is
rarely reported from a student’s or school’s perspective. Even more
surprising, stories about the campaign against social promotion barely hint
at the raft of research showing that retention in grade does more harm than
good. Philadelphia has tried it, as have Baltimore, Houston, Washington,
D.C., and New York City (three times), along with about twenty-one other
school districts nationwide, all with similar results. Instead of infusing
coverage with knowledge of the past, reporters hungry for some excitement on
the beat tend to embroider official pronouncements, writing as if the policy
is a new idea.

Just last year, New York City residents were subjected to yet another ritual
of misleading stories about grade-retention policies. New York’s education
reporters should be well schooled on the subject, but they’re not. In the
early 1980s, the city school system installed a massive “Gates” program that
held back students in the fourth and seventh grades who failed a
standardized test. In other words, the test serves as a “gate” that opens
and closes for fourth- and seventh-graders, depending on the scorer. The
program was eventually scrapped as an ineffective waste of money. Then, more
than fifteen years later, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani famously and ambitiously
revived the practice late in his second term, imposing grade retention in
six consecutive grades, third through eighth, at a cost estimated at $564
million a year. At the time, most reporters seemed too absorbed in the
squabbles between the mayor and his chancellor to pay much attention to
behind-the-scenes program details. The “Gates” fiasco was almost never
mentioned. Education research assessing grade retention was not considered
in the coverage. Few in the media revisited Giuliani’s big initiative after
the initial burst of confetti was swept away.

The clearest indication that Giuliani’s idea was an academic bust came five
years later, at a March 2004 press conference held by his successor, Michael
Bloomberg. The current chancellor, Joel Klein, a former antitrust lawyer and
Clinton White House deputy counsel, lamented that 37 percent of the city’s
ninth graders were failing. “We can’t continue the way we’re going,” Klein
told reporters, “which is pushing children through the elementary schools.”
The chancellor was endorsing the mayor’s idea, announced a few weeks
earlier. Bloomberg, the first mayor in more than 130 years to have direct
control over the school system, said he would launch a program to hold
failing third-graders back. No one in the press noted that the same
ninth-graders whose failure Klein deplored had already been subjected to a
far more sweeping grade retention plan for six straight years — which
apparently hadn’t done much good. “It’s as if collective amnesia had
overtaken everyone,” lamented Noreen Connell, executive director of
Education Priorities Panel, a New York City research group. “Reporters and
politicians.”

The New York Daily News has since clambered onto Bloomberg’s grade retention
plan as a civic cause, printing editorials extolling the “glorious” numbers
of third graders passing out of mandatory summer school. News stories about
the plan in the tabloid, meanwhile, tend to be free of analysis and barely
mention the conflicting research. Both Daily News editorials and news
stories framed the policy as a political volley: a “win” for the mayor and a
“loss” for status-quo critics. Only The New York Times examined this third
attempt to hold third graders back with a data-based glance at the past. A
Times education beat reporter, David Herszenhorn, dug up a seminal 1998
study by the National Research Council on the issue. He spoke to a range of
respected education experts. In the midst of the controversy a University of
Chicago research group released a long-term study showing that Chicago’s
aggressive eight-year practice of holding third-graders back did more harm
than good.

Herszenhorn needed only to pull the clips of a predecessor’s 1997 school
coverage to understand the complexities of teaching a class of
eight-year-olds to read, mysteries that remote test results could never hope
to capture. Nearly a decade ago, after convincing his editors at the Times
that an immersion approach would be the best way to document the new era of
high-stakes testing among those who were supposed to matter most, Jacques
Steinberg spent a full year ducking in and out of Ted Kesler’s third-grade
class at Public School 75 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The result was a
potent glimpse into the stew of human triumphs and tragedies in the city’s
public school classrooms.

Steinberg followed Kesler from home to work, brambling through the nine-year
teaching veteran’s whims and tragedies. He entered the homes of many of the
third-graders, watching one eight-year-old vie for homework space with her
five siblings. An immigrant boy struggled with kindergarten-level books. The
series of stories showed on a profound level the daunting daily journey of
thirty children, all at different stages of reading, with varying capacities
and passion for English. Their education was far more daunting and far more
miraculous than an end-of-the-year test could gauge, yet the test loomed
like the story’s villain, waiting to deliver its defining judgment.

Of course, blending this level of depth and color into education stories
requires that educators open their classrooms to reporters, an invitation
that has grown even rarer under the new era of top-down management regimes.
In New York City, Joel Klein heads a newly centralized school system that
tries to shield itself from public scrutiny more scrupulously than any
previous administration. Most principals now routinely tell reporters they
need permission from central headquarters before speaking to the press —
permission that rarely materializes, and certainly not on deadline.
Herszenhorn said a story he wanted to pursue on changes, including the new
standardized math and reading curriculum, was put on hold because the
chancellor’s office initially insisted on choosing which schools he could
observe — obviously, an unacceptable bargain. By the time the Department of
Education relented, the Times had dropped the idea.

Access to public school systems should be a given in a democracy (a right
that demands a large helping of media responsibility). Narratives from
inside and outside the classroom are powerful testaments to a shared sense
of civic values, and an understanding of the role of education in sustaining
a democracy. The best coverage confronts the complicated world of education
not as a managed system of test results and ordered reforms, but as a busy
intersection of culture, race, child development, pedagogy, neuroscience,
and politics.

Ira Glass painted on such a canvas last October with a piece on This
American Life he called “Two Steps Back.” Glass focused on a gregarious
Chicago public school teacher on the verge of quitting because of changes
wrought in her school by the city bureaucracy.

The piece is distinguished by a ten-year journey back into the archives.
Glass dug up tapes he compiled in 1994 when he spent a year for NPR’s All
Things Considered inside two schools, including Washington Irving Elementary
School, which had transformed itself into a model of urban success amid
Chicago’s ambitious reforms. Glass had wanted to know how. It had no extra
money, no special status as a magnet. What he learned about Washington
Irving was this: kids simply wrote all the time and read all the time. The
crusading principal was a master at fending off bureaucratic mandates.
Teachers took over the curriculum. They made sure the parents came to school
at least three times a year. The faculty designed elaborate narrative report
cards that guided their curriculum. They stayed late, came in early, and
found ways to keep respect for learning and for each other alive in the
classroom.

Ten years later, Glass found the exemplary Washington Irving teacher, Cathy
La Luz, in her classroom, near tears on his first day of reporting. La Luz
was watching helplessly as the teachers’ carefully honed programs were
slowly unraveling. Mandates from central headquarters were flooding in, and
the new principal was doing little to divert them. Little indignities, like
a new requirement to turn in daily lesson plans, were eroding the teachers’
sense of autonomy. Their self-designed report cards were scrapped. Teachers
were required to write the state education goal of the day every day on the
blackboard. The demand for uniformity from Chicago Public Schools
headquarters had become overbearing. Officials were setting goals that La
Luz felt were vague and lower than the school’s own.

Glass took listeners inside La Luz’s classroom, where children’s voices took
over as they hashed out new endings for a book they were reading. We hear La
Luz coax a daydreaming child to find where his attention had disappeared to.
We hear the children banter with her about her new hairstyle and her new
outfit. Then we hear the despair in her voice as she agonizes over whether
she can endure the slow erosion of the profession she deeply loves. It is
education journalism at its best, rich with nuances and context, alive with
children’s voices and conflicts. The story said as much about the future of
high-stakes, top-down reforms as it did about the future of urban teaching.
Glass noted that the X factor in school reform is the chemistry between
teachers and children, a fragile eloquence that can easily be garbled if it
is not respected by outside contractors, outside authorities, outside
monitors. “Not that anybody wants to hear that,” Glass commented at the end.
“They don’t want to hear it.”

But perhaps they do.

PLEASE NOTE DR. KIMBALL IS A LULAC COUNCIL 402 MEMBER
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/2/

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:42 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I somehow forgot to post this earlier. This story is very important because under HB2 (currently under review by the Texas senate), a new rating scheme will 1) markedly increase the number of low-performing schools via a revised definition of what it means to be low performing (or "academically unacceptable"; 2) these schools could be taken over by for-profit corporations with up to five-year contracts to run the schools. ALL schools in the bottom 10 percent could potentially be contracted out to the private sector. The current accountability rating scheme would thus be less profitable. If this legislation doesn't expose private-sector interests, then no legislation does. -Angela

92 rated unacceptable now; number could climb over 1,000

01:10 PM CST on Wednesday, March 23, 2005

By JOSHUA BENTON / The Dallas Morning News

The number of "academically unacceptable" schools in Texas could grow by a factor of 10 under a tougher set of standards approved by a Texas Education Agency committee.

There are now 92 Texas schools labeled unacceptable, the state's lowest rating. But if the proposed new rules had been in place last year, more than 1,100 schools would have earned the label and faced possible state intervention.

"We're going to have to go after more schools," said Sandy Kress, the former Dallas school board president and Bush adviser who is among the new standards' supporters. "We're going to have to go to a place we have not gone yet if we really want youngsters to succeed in these ineffective schools."

But some educators question whether it's a good idea to change the state ratings system for the expressed purpose of making some schools look worse.

"I think it's setting up schools to fail," said Mac Bernd, superintendent of the Arlington district. "I am a strong accountability supporter, but some people have this idea that just because something worked before that more of it will work better."

The proposal – awaiting approval by Commissioner Shirley Neeley – would raise the TAKS passing rate required for a school to be academically acceptable.

For a school to be acceptable under current law, a school must have at least a 50 percent passing rate in reading, writing, and social studies, a 35 percent passing rate in math and a 25 percent passing rate in science.

According to the proposal approved Monday by the commissioner's Accountability Advisory Committee, each of those passing rates would increase by 10 percentage points in 2006, and most would march up five more points each year until 2010.

"We can't be happy with half the students not passing," said Catherine Clark, associate executive director of governance services for the Texas Association of School Boards and a member of the advisory committee.

The higher required passing rates alone will knock hundreds of schools from the ranks of the acceptable to "academically unacceptable" – the state's new term for what used to be called "low performing."

But when combined with other changes already planned to debut in the next year – like a higher passing standard on the TAKS and new restrictions on how schools calculate their dropout rate – the number of newly unacceptable schools could be staggering.

TEA officials haven't yet estimated how large that number is. That's because the advisory committee's recommendations were more extreme than any of the proposals TEA staff had prepared for.

Under the most extreme proposal TEA researched, 1,100 Texas schools would have been rated unacceptable last year. The advisory committee's proposal would likely tack several hundred more onto that total because it requires higher passing standards in four of the five TAKS subjects.

Hardest hit would likely be the state's large urban districts, like Dallas and Houston, where dozens of schools would likely be considered unacceptable under the tougher standards.

Those estimates all assume that test scores in 2006 – when the changes would take effect – will be the same as they were in 2004, the last year of complete data. That's unlikely, since test scores tend to go up every year as schools figure out how to improve performance.

But no matter how fast the improvement, it's likely these changes would result in a record number of schools being labeled unacceptable. Since the debut of the school ratings system in 1994, the number of low-ranked schools usually has been 100 or fewer.

"I worry about the pressure we're putting on children and on educators in this state," said Michael Motheral, superintendent of Sundown schools in the Panhandle. "It's somewhat inevitable when you have a system that rates kids and schools. But there's going to be some heartache if we move at this pace."

Mr. Motheral sits on TEA's Educator Focus Group on Accountability, a group of school administrators who also advise the commissioner on school ratings issues. His group recommended a slightly smaller change – only increasing required passing rates by five points next year instead of 10.

"I think everybody wants to make sure the kids are challenged," said Billy Espino, a principal in Fort Stockton who also sits on the educator focus group. "But we also don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot."

But Mr. Kress said the Texas system needs to be more aggressive about identifying weak schools. He cited one high school where nearly three-quarters of students failed at least one section of the TAKS last year – but was still rated acceptable.

Mr. Kress, who sits on the 27-member advisory committee recommending the 10 percentage-point jump, said he would be happy with a system that identified about one in 10 Texas schools as underachievers each year. (Texas has about 7,700 public schools in total.) Schools have generally done better than expected on the TAKS test since the test's debut in 2003, and that's pushing many to advocate tougher standards.

Dr. Bernd, the Arlington superintendent, disagrees. "We shouldn't assume that when people are doing well the standard's too low," he said. "The standards ought to be based on how much we want students to learn, not some pre-set idea of how many schools should fail."

He also said he believed raising standards too quickly would encourage some educators to cheat on state tests.

Possible penalties

Schools that are rated unacceptable for multiple years are subject to a number of sanctions, including stiff state intervention. Under some proposals being considered in the Legislature, schools that remain unacceptable for several years could be subject to private management.

The debate over passing rates partly is being governed by federal law. The No Child Left Behind law, passed in 2001, requires all schools to march their passing rates steadily north toward 100 percent by 2014. The proposed tougher state standards largely mirror the passing rates required by the federal law.

Now Dr. Neeley will have to decide whether to accept the more ambitious proposals of her advisory committee or the more modest recommendations of her educator focus group – or do something else entirely. On one hand, political and business figures generally want standards to get tougher quickly. On the other, superintendents – aware of the power of a poor label – generally favor a slower approach.

"It is really tricky," said TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe. "You want to set goals that are challenging but reachable for most schools. We've got some people saying the system's not hard enough and some saying don't go too fast."

Dr. Neeley is expected to make her decision in the next few weeks.

E-mail jbenton@dallasnews.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/032305dnmetunacceptable.52d45.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 4:13 PM 0 comments Links to this post

It seems to me that "dumping" kids into charter schools to skew public school ratings isn't an either/or kind of thing, but rather we should be asking the extent of this? In a previous post, Nichols & Berliner reveal the great ends that many schools/districts will go in order to preserve their viability. -Angela
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 24, 2005, 11:22PM
Senator questions heavy charter school transfers
Mario Gallegos asks for an inquiry into possible 'dumping' during testing time
By JEFFREY GILBERT
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
.
AUSTIN - A state senator wants to know why more than 400 Houston-area charter school students moved to traditional schools in a four-month period leading up to February's state testing.

Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, wrote a letter to Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley this week asking for an investigation into possible "student dumping."

"This figure appears inflated to me, and it is almost as if students are being dumped off onto school districts for the sake of ratings," Gallegos said. "Texas relies heavily on students' academic performance, and this alleged trend could have a profound affect on a school's academic rating."

Gallegos is asking for an audit of student migration trends, whether there was a spike in enrollment in the months leading up to the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, and how charter schools report student migration.

Last year, 43 percent of charter schools and 3 percent of regular schools were not included in the state system as an alternative education rating system was being developed. This year, they will be measured.

"It is a key year," said Carolyn Boyle, coordinator of the Coalition for Public Schools, which includes a number of education and public advocacy groups.

Charter schools are public schools that are privately managed and exempt from many of the regulations governing traditional schools.

'Burden' on public schools

Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abe Saavedra told Gallegos that 407 children moved from charter schools to HISD between Nov. 1, 2004, and Feb. 22, 2005, the week of the testing. Officials with the school district did not return telephone calls.

Gallegos said it isn't fair for a public school to take on a child just weeks or days before the testing is done. He said if it is happening in the Houston area, it is probably going on around the state.

"It's just astonishing," he said. "The (public) school has had to take on the burden of the charter, and the teachers haven't had a chance."

A spokeswoman for the education agency said Neeley is reviewing Gallegos' letter before deciding if any action should be taken.

Boyle said the education agency should conduct an investigation into the allegations, but said there could be other explanations.

"It could have been that the parents and the students chose to leave the charter school and return to the public because the public school offers a much better educational program," Boyle said.

She pointed out that the numbers could be skewed because 76 of the migrants came from the Harris County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program, a course that accepts students for a certain period of time and then sends them back to their regular school.

Schools losing students
At the American Academy of Excellence, 14 students migrated to traditional schools during the four-month period. The charter has been rated academically unacceptable in three of the four previous years and could have moved the students to avoid getting a similar rating this year, Boyle said.

Even the highly regarded Yes College Preparatory School, one of the only charter schools in the state given an exemplary rating last year, lost 19 students.

Chris Barbic, founder of Yes, said he doesn't think Gallegos' allegations hold water.

"We never try to identify kids who aren't going to pass the test and have them check out," Barbic said. "Almost 100 percent of our kids pass the test anyway."

Still, Gallegos is looking for an investigation. He said if the charter schools want to be in the business of teaching, they should be held responsible for their own actions.

"We are talking about keeping a child up to a certain point and then dumping that child due to low performance," he said. "Any way you paint it, that is wrong."

jeffrey.gilbert@chron.com

This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3101535

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:47 PM 1 comments Links to this post

TO: Coalition for Public Schools Organizations
FROM: Carolyn Boyle

SUBJECT: Debriefing on Public Hearing & Background Information
This email is intended to provide background information on H.B. 1445, a risky expensive proposal to offer taxpayer funded home-schooling and private schooling. A "what to do" email will follow that covers both virtual vouchers and the three private school voucher bills.

The public hearing on H.B. 1445 was held Tuesday, March 22, before the Texas House Committee on Public Education. It lasted 3 hours (approximately 7:30-10:30 p.m.) Bill sponsor Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano) explained that the virtual school bill was designed to benefit a variety of students, including those who: are home-schooled, need an extra course to graduate, are sick or in the hospital, are overseas with military parents, or desire courses not available at their high school (like career and technology courses, foreign languages, or advanced math and science).

There was some discussion of the fiscal note, which gives a projected cost of $26 million for the first biennium and then $52 million each year by 2009. Major new expenses would be for students who currently are home-schooled or enrolled in private schools. You could read the fiscal note at this URL: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/textframe.cmd?LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=01445&VERSION=1&TYPE=F

There were 9 persons who testified in favor of H.B. 1445, including John Fleming (whose wife Cheryl Fleming is vice president-education at Questia Media America, Inc., www.questiamedia.com ); two home-schooling moms; a woman who was an online kindergarten-first grade teacher in Wisconsin; two coordinators from the SUPERNet Consortium, which is comprised of 17 school districts in East Texas participating in the current virtual school pilot; a representative of the conservative group Texans for Texas; Forrest Watson representing the Alliance for Sound Education Policy* and Miss Texas.** (see "OF NOTE" below).

The 11 persons testifying against the bill did a terrific job explaining all the problems. They included: Lindsay Gustafson, Texas Classroom Teachers Association; Ted Melina Raab, Texas Federation of Teachers; Kathy Miller, Texas Freedom Network; Karen Miller; Tim Bacon, Texas State Teachers Association; Jo-Hannah Whitsett, Association of Texas Professional Educators; David Watson, Texas Association of School Boards and Texas Association of School Administrators; Kimberly Baxter, Texas Association of Secondary School Principals; David Priddy, Texas Association of Secondary School Principals; Charlotte Coffelt, Americans United for Separation of Church & State; and Paul Colbert.

You could listen to the hearing on H.B. 1445 at the following URL.
http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/broadcasts.php?session=79&cmte=400
[Note: I was asked to explain how to do this by some individuals who had not listened to an archived hearing before, so here goes: Click on the URL above, which should take you to the Texas House Audio/Video web site with recordings of Committee on Public Education meetings. Click on the one that says 3/22/05. If you have RealPlayer on your computer (and if you don't you can download a basic version for free at this site: www.real.com ), audio/video of the hearing should appear on your RealPlayer screen. Under the screen there is a horizontal line with a circle in it. You can click on the circle and drag it to any particular time in the hearing. There also is a fast forward arrow which can advance the time by clicking on it and holding it down. The testimony on H.B. 1445 begins at 4:55:47 (which is 4 hours, 55 minutes, and 47 seconds into the hearing). Note: If you have difficulty following my online teaching, feel free to give me a call or ask your children or grandchildren!]

OF NOTE:
* Alliance for Sound Education Policy. Some Coalition leaders asked me for background information on Forrest Watson's Alliance for Sound Education Policy. Watson has testified on behalf of the Alliance on several bills, but there is no information about the group available via internet search engines. Watson was one of the founders of Eagle Academies of Texas, a chain of 18 charter schools in Texas, and he continues to be associated with Eagle providing contract management through Planagement, Inc. In August 2003, Eagle Academy of Texarkana closed, and Watson changed the name of the nonprofit corporation holding the charter for that campus to "Alliance for Sound Education Policy." This is reflected in documents on file at the Texas Secretary of State's office. The amended and restated articles of incorporation say the Alliance for Sound Education Policy corporation has no members. Four individuals serve on its board of directors: Dr. Forrest E. Watson and his wife Betty of Cedar Park; Earl "Buster" Renfrow of Cedar Park; and Charles S. Cook of Lewisville. Cook is president of Pathway Publishers Inc., which produces the Odysseyware software used by Eagle Academies and the new Texas Virtual Academies, which the web site says is "Coming Soon": http://www.texasvirtualacademies.com/

** Miss Texas. One surprise witness testifying in favor of H.B. 1445 was the reigning Miss Texas, Jamie Story, and she even placed her crown on the podium while she spoke to prove she is Miss Texas. Her main point was that students in rural areas need access to online Advanced Placement courses (she may not be aware that there are distance learning and electronic courses for such students in Texas now). Ms. Story explained she is earning her Miss Texas scholarship through speaking fees, and in answer to a question she said the fee to hire her to speak depends on the "booking party." Unfortunately, no one asked if there was a "booking party" who paid her to speak in favor of H.B. 1445! You could hear Ms. Story's testimony at 1:24:30 at the following URL: http://www.house.state.tx.us/committees/broadcasts.php?session=79&cmte=400

WHAT NEXT? This week Rep. Jerry Madden is expected to develop a committee substitute for H.B. 1445. We'll keep you informed about any changes to the bill, and a subsequent email will include a specific call to action.

***********************************************************
Coalition for Public Schools, 1005 Congress Avenue, Suite 550, Austin, Texas 78701-2491, (512) 474-9765, Fax: (512) 474-2507, Carolyn Boyle, Coordinator
email: cboyleaust@aol.com www.coalition4publicschools.org www.coalition4publicschools.org

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post

By Greg Moses
http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/

A Texas agency charged with taking over Civil Rights analysis has decided to
stop basing its civilian workforce report on data collected by the federal
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Instead of basing its analysis on data collected for civil rights purposes,
the Division of Civil Rights at the Texas Workforce Commission in its debut
report this year used less precise figures reported by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS).

In the past, noted the report, the Texas Commission on Human Rights had
compiled the civil rights report from data provided by the EEOC. As a result
of the switch in data sources, the first table of the Texas Equal Employment
Opportunity Report shows some civil rights anomalies.

For example, Caucasian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans
collectively represented 128 percent of all Texas workers; and all three
categories of race-ethnicity cited were under-represented in Administration
jobs. While these anomalies are common in reports from the BLS, they make a
poor basis for analyzing civil rights.

Since the civil rights report is supposed to compare state agency employment
figures with civilian workforce numbers, the choice of BLS data as a
baseline raises further questions about the "comparison charts" presented in
the report.

Chart One for instance (not Table One) presents numbers on the employment of
African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Females in the Statewide Civilian
Workforce. Numbers used in the chart for race and ethnicity are taken from
the overlapping BLS categories.

Chart One in turn is compared to employment of protected classes in state
agency employment. From attachments, it appears that state agency employment
is calculated according to more rigorous EEOC standards, where protected
classes do not overlap.

Throughout the report, numbers are presented in such isolation that it is
difficult to scan for internal consistency. Why does no chart present a
complete spectrum of protected classes, with comparisons to Anglos and
Males? Why are women rarely considered as various races and ethnicities? Why
are discussions, analyses, and footnotes so scarce?

In the end, the reader wants to know, what purpose is this report intended
to serve beyond simply complying with some law that says a report is to be
issued? Do the laws themselves not have a civil rights context that can
serve as the basis for stating the purposes, findings, and recommendations
of this report?

Perfunctory is the word that would most charitably describe this report.
Evasive is the word I would rather use. From start to finish, the reader
gets the impression that no one has really set out to show her the state of
equal opportunity in Texas in a way that the plain language of civil rights
demands.

NOTES:

The Texas Equal Employment Opportunity Report(pdf)

The EEO-1 Aggregate Report for 2002

The BLS distribution of employment report 2003 (pdf)
-----
gmosesx@prodigy.net

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I personally don't like this phrase, "managed instruction," but we can expect to be hearing it in greater frequency. I do agree though with providing add'l resources to low-performing schools and "guiding, supporting, and improving instruction at the building level." No mention, however, whether test scores the sole or primary indicators behind "data-driven success." Moreover, certain districts are improving achievement, but are they creating life-long learners? There's a lot to digest here. -Angela
_________________________
You probably won't find the term "managed instruction" in a Google search yet, but the expression is popping up  with increased frequency in educational literature.
 
The basic idea is that instruction needs to be "managed," too, in the same way  urban districts effectively manage human resources, finance, facilities construction, or transportation.  The Council of Great Cities Schools 2002 report, "Foundations for Success, " offers a framework that identifies practices in ten areas, including goal-setting, curriculum, assessment, and professional development, found to be common among urban districts that are effectively improving student achievement.  Making sure the curriculum is aligned with standards and statewide assessments, and is both coherent and comprehensive, is part of more aggressively managing curriculum and instruction.
 

The report summarizes case study districts' approaches to reform by identifying the following elements shared in common:

They focused on student achievement and specific achievement goals, on a set schedule with defined consequences; aligned curricula with state standards; and helped translate these standards into instructional practice.

They created concrete accountability systems that went beyond what the states had established in order to hold district leadership and building-level staff personally responsible for producing results.

They focused on the lowest-performing schools. Some districts provided additional resources and attempted to improve the stock of teachers and administrators at their lowest-performing schools.

They adopted or developed districtwide curricula and instructional approaches rather than allowing each school to devise their own strategies.

They supported these districtwide strategies at the central office through professional development and support for consistent implementation throughout the district.

They drove reforms into the classroom by defining a role for the central office that entailed guiding, supporting, and improving instruction at the building level.

They committed themselves to data-driven decision-making and instruction. They gave early and ongoing assessment data to teachers and principals as well as trained and supported them as the data were used to diagnose teacher and student weaknesses and make improvements.

They started their reforms at the elementary grade levels instead of trying to fix everything at once.

They provided intensive instruction in reading and math to middle and high school students, even if it came at the expense of other subjects.

An executive summary of the report is available at: Foundations for Success  The complete report (224 pages) may be downloaded as a PDF file.
 
Doug
________________
Douglas S. Fleming
P.O. Box 597  Lunenburg, MA 01462
(978) 582 4217 voice&fax  (978) 807 4095 cell

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 3:03 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Privatization efforts are very HOT this session. Folks need to express their views to legislators. Educating children and making a profit should not mix. As we consider where we are headed in this state, I quote Thomas Jefferson's famous 1820 letter to William Jarvis:

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves and if we think [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

If the link between education and democracy is foundational, as Jefferson indicates, control of education must remain in the hands of the people rather than in the corporate sector. This hardly means that lots of schools aren't in trouble, rather that market solutions to educational problems amounts to loss of citizen control of public schools, where the control should reside. -Angela

Proposed privatization and virtual classrooms among debated issues
By Jason Embry, David Kassabian
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, March 26, 2005

Groups who for years have fought to limit the role of private companies in Texas public schools see some of their fiercest battles yet looming over the next nine weeks.

The major education bill passed by the Texas House and now being considered in the Senate would allow outside entities, including for-profit companies, to manage the state's worst-performing schools.

A House committee also is considering a bill that would allow public schools to contract with private companies to create virtual classes where students, including those who go to private or home schools, would take classes over the Internet.

"We know we need to find funding for our neighborhood schools," said Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors social conservatism in government. "They're struggling to find the money they need to barely keep pace with enrollment growth and inflation. At the same time, (lawmakers) want to carve out pieces of those dollars to give to private companies."

Supporters of giving businesses a crack at reviving failing schools say school boards and administrators should not retain control of schools that have suffered on their watch. They also champion the virtual schools as a way to reach students who have dropped out or whose local schools offer a basic menu of classes.

"A lot of people are in a comfort zone with the status quo," said Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, chairman of the House Public Education Committee. "But our kids are just too important to make decisions for the purpose of protecting the status quo."

Several lawmakers also have filed bills to create voucher programs that would give students public money to attend private schools. Those bills have not yet been heard in committees, but they're likely to receive heavy consideration in the GOP-run Legislature.

House Bill 2 calls for the state education commissioner to hire an outside entity to take control of a school if, for two years in a row, it does not meet federal guidelines and lands in the bottom 5 percent of the Texas Education Agency's ratings. Both the state and federal requirements are largely based on standardized test scores.

Five percent of the campuses translates to nearly 400 of the state's 7,800 schools.

Defenders of the takeover provision point out that the commissioner could name nonprofit groups of parents or teachers, as well as local colleges and universities, to run the schools.

"If a school is not performing well, we have to be aggressive in making a change," Grusendorf said. "Two years is a long time in a kid's life."

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said she wants to include a similar provision in Senate school reforms. But instead of focusing on schools that rank in the bottom 5 percent, she would apply the provision to schools that are rated "academically unacceptable."

One percent of the schools in the state received that rating last fall, but state officials are reviewing the ratings criteria and are likely to make them more stringent by the fall of 2006.

Shapiro said the state should, after the first year, thoroughly review any group or company that takes over a school. She also said she wants the state to provide more help to schools after one year of low ratings so they never become subject to takeover.

"What happens now is we wait two or three years down the road to ever intervene," she said.

But Carolyn Boyle of the Coalition for Public Schools said school districts should continue to use scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills to see where to focus their resources, not to justify the use of for-profit companies.

"The TAKS test is helping communities to know which groups of children need more help and more tutoring, and people are working on it," Boyle said. "Plus there's no proof that if you turn over a school to a for-profit corporation the student achievement will improve."

Opponents of bringing in private companies to run the schools point to Dallas, where the school board voted in 2002 to end a contract with the for-profit Edison Schools Inc. after two years. District officials said the schools failed to match the performance of other campuses with similar student populations, according to published reports.

Also stoking privatization fears is House Bill 1445. It would allow school districts, charter schools and education service centers to hire companies to develop online education programs. The schools that administer the programs would receive money from the state for educating those students. But Miller said she worries that most of that money would be passed through to private vendors to develop the online tools needed to offer the classes.

While schools regularly buy textbooks and other materials from for-profit companies, "what schools typically contract out for is not the wholesale education of the student," Miller said.

Grusendorf, whose committee heard testimony on the bill last week but did not act on it, said he hopes the panel will send it to the full House for a vote.

GOP Rep. Jerry Madden of Richardson, the author of the bill, said students enrolled in the programs would use class materials from the Internet, computer software, video and traditional textbooks. Teachers would instruct students and answer questions over the Internet and the phone.

Students could enroll in virtual programs if they are unhappy with their local schools or if they're trying to pick up a course or two that is not offered nearby.

"This is an opportunity program for any kid to get the best teacher in this state and the best course in this state," Madden said.

Shapiro said she supports a virtual-learning program because it has worked well at her local schools, in Plano. But she said she has not studied the specifics of the Madden bill.

The Legislative Budget Board projects that more than 10,000 students from private or home schools would enroll in virtual programs, which has raised concerns among teacher groups.

"You're talking about adding a significant number of (private and home-schooled) students into an already stretched funding system," said Lindsay Gustafson, a staff attorney with the Texas Classroom Teachers Association. "We want more transparency and accountability. Really, this is a step back."

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/03/26PRIVATE.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:24 AM 12 comments Links to this post

The presupposition below that socioeconomic class differences won't worsen if we move toward vouchers does not make sense. Clearly, the education that a middle class person will be able to purchase with their voucher will be better than that which a working class person can purchase. Why? Because the private school sector is stratified by class and the amount that they'll charge folks with the SAME voucher amount will logically correspond to their purchasing power. -Angela

Sat, Mar. 26, 2005

It's Time to Give School Choice a Chance
By Gavin W. Pate
Special to the Star-Telegram

If you are unhappy with your choice of grocery stores, you might try another one. If you disliked the product selection at Kroger, you might go to Whole Foods. If you were dissatisfied with the pricing at Tom Thumb, you might get a membership at Costco.

However, if you are unhappy with your local government-operated schools, you cannot take your spending power and go elsewhere.

You are truly stuck.

Of course, you have the option of working hundreds of hours to pay your local property taxes, then working overtime and taking odd jobs to save enough to send your youngster to a private school. You want the best for your kids, but you are left with no viable choice but to hope that your school district doesn't go downhill.

That's not right, nor is it acceptable for the residents of Texas.

A school voucher program that would allow families to choose where their hard-earned dollars go is a critical step toward the future.

Harvard economist Carolyn Hoxby's study of voucher programs found an increase in academic performance of not only the students who chose to attend the private schools, but also in the students who chose to stay in the public schools.

We all stand to benefit since children would have more specialized attention in a setting where schools see the direct value of competition. The end result is a platform for educational success where young Texans have more of the tools they need to surpass expectations.

In 2004, Texans spent more than $10,000 per student who attended class regularly. A highly competitive private school can cost as little as $6,000 per year.

Certainly there are advantages to both schooling environments, and families should always have the opportunity to choose whichever benefits their children the most. But what we have now in Texas is a system that severely penalizes those with the smallest incomes.

Many families want a stable home environment and believe that a single-income family is the way to go. They then limit their choices of housing to what is within their budget. If dad works as a carpenter and makes $35,000 per year, they might live in a $75,000 house. This may be a less than prestigious ZIP code -- and that's fine. But you have now forced the children of this family to go to a school that may be mediocre in its approach to education.

Neither mom nor dad has a college degree. They both dream of more options for their children, but without a path to success, there is no reasonable choice.

The myth that if vouchers were allowed the wealthy will yank their children from public schools and the schools will become desolate wastelands for our boys and girls is not true. When Hoxby studied the effect of widespread vouchers, she found significant improvement in the public schools that faced the most competition.

This isn't to say that public schoolteachers don't care. Most of them do. But some are faced with the unenviable choice of entertaining children who don't want to be there, meeting standards that aren't properly funded and dealing with a cookie-cutter approach to education that is outdated for today's specialized economy.

When shopping for groceries, you have an endless number of choices. Some of us prefer to eat what tastes good, some of us prefer to eat what's healthful. Others choose to dine somewhere in between. But the bottom line is that we all have a choice. We are not forced to pay for something that we don't want.

Shouldn't we all have a choice on something so much more important?

But we must proceed cautiously. There are some heavy hitters in Texas who don't want to see such a program succeed.

The National Education Association is completely against vouchers on the grounds that they will pull money from public education. While this may be true, the goal of an educated society should not be to feed a government monopoly. It should be to find the most economical way to ensure the highest levels of education for all people that choose to pursue it.

In Texas we are all paying for an outdated approach to education that is not sustainable. We are dooming our low-income families to a poor set of choices: bad, mediocre or average. That is unacceptable and stands to limit the future of Texas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gavin W. Pate of Arlington is a member of the Star-Telegram community columnist panel. gavinpate@comcast.net

------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2005 Star-Telegram and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.dfw.com

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:58 AM 2 comments Links to this post

I agree with the editors of the L.A, Times that there is a failure of federal and state policies, and clearly, leadership as well. The lack of political will to address students’ needs is indeed tragic and costly, both to them personally and to society. Conversely, there is undue concern in our nation over students’ test scores to the detriment of the children themselves.

Yesterday on NPR, I heard an interview with the principal, Chris Dunshee, of Red Lake High School in Bemidji, Minn. where student Jeff Weise killed fellow students before turning the gun on himself. He reflects on priorities. (I’m paraphrasing) Last week, he said, it was No Child Left Behind and raising students' test scores. He said that test scores won’t matter so much anymore since they’re not really what’s important; rather, it’s getting the kids healed. Listen yourself to the NPR interview.

We should all monitor this school’s/district’s scores since 1) they are among the lowest in the state of Minnesota, and 2) this one will likely be slotted for a series of sanctions or school closure if it continues to do poorly (i.e., failing to meet AYP under NCLB). And how cruel and disgusting would that be?!

This, plus the L.A. story appearing below attests to educational aims in our country that are so astoundingly off base that they render the architects of this system suspect, if not conspiratorial.

-Angela

EDITORIAL

L.A. Schools' Silent Scandal ...


March 25, 2005
It took a study last month by the Education Trust-West, a policy and advocacy group for disadvantaged students, to show conclusively that, even within the same districts, California schools spend less money on poor and minority students. Now, a Harvard report reveals that dropout rates among black and Latino students in California are substantially higher than the state has been reporting. What else don't we know about our schools?
Confronted with the data on Los Angeles schools — where a shockingly low 39% of Latino students and 47% of African Americans graduate on time — school officials offered excuses identical to those they used regarding those students' inability to read: They're poor, their parents don't get involved, the culture works against them. But the district also has almost the state's highest dropout rates of white and Asian students.
If the Army was losing people as fast as the Los Angeles schools, generals would lose their stars and the Defense secretary his job. In part, the outcry over schools has been muted by their legerdemain in calculating dropout rates — and their lack of transparency in explaining how they use their money.
While the school reform movement has emphasized test scores, neither state nor federal officials have put teeth into demands for lower dropout rates. As it happens, the push for higher test scores has at times coincided with counselors advising failing students to leave. It's a scandal, but a shushed one because dropouts make the schools look better while harming communities and businesses and filling prisons, as the Harvard study all too sharply shows.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has made major press lately with his gripe that high schools need to adopt a more rigorous, college-bound curriculum. That doesn't address the crisis. Few of the dropouts are complaining about their college preparation.
The nation still needs its plumbers (try outsourcing that to India) and mechanics — hands-on jobs that interest many otherwise disengaged students. Yet vocational education has made only tiny comebacks here and there. These programs help keep students in high school and, a bonus, give them a practical reason to learn academic subjects.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, long a trusted advisor to President Bush, should be using her position to urge increased funding for vocational education instead of the cuts the administration proposes. And if Spellings were to give dropout rates the same weight as test scores under No Child Left Behind, educators would be working a lot harder to keep kids in school. The Education secretary also should make the system for tracking dropouts far more rigorous. Start by requiring that schools do more to find out what happens to students who stop showing up.
Any school, large or small, can connect better with kids — if each counselor is given a caseload of fewer than thousands of students. Because school districts are spending less on the salaries of the less-experienced teachers at schools attended by poor and minority students, they should be required to even up the score with more counselors at these campuses. Given a realistic workload, counselors should meet tough standards for acting as student advocates and forging relationships with parents. Teachers should also be part of the solution, but has anyone asked them for their ideas lately?
The study itself raises bigger issues about the rigidity of school systems that designate as dropouts anyone who doesn't graduate by the expected month of the expected year. But who said high school has to end in four years?
The superintendent of the Santa Ana schools has proposed both a fifth year of high school and a two-year kindergarten for students who need the extra boost. He has parental support for the proposals — in a district that's more than 90% Latino, the very parents who supposedly don't get involved in their children's education. A budget crisis kept both ideas from fruition, but at least a door was opened.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-dropout25mar25,1,3921033.story?ctrack=3&cset=true

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:54 PM 0 comments Links to this post

In chapter 10 on "Accountability and the Privatization" in LEAVING CHILDREN BEHIND (see links to my book in the sidebar), I lay out the connection between the two based on analysis of the 2003 legislative session. For 2005, Amy Smith astutely notes the tension that legislators feel in coming through for their constituencies and speaker Craddick, who is one of the most powerful men in Texas politics (see the March TEXAS MONTHLY article on him; he comes off like another Karl Rove). Vouchers is one of those issues that cuts across party lines though--which is good in light of the proposed legislation, but nothing should be taken for granted. LOTS of money has gone into this campaign. For instance, see the following AUSTIN CHRONICLE piece that lays out the present political/financial landscape Who's Funding the Voucher Campaign?

We all need to try and attend the Tuesday, April 5 hearing on vouchers, beginning at 2PM at the state capitol. Folks should consider testifying and/or producing written testimony. You can do this when you get there. I provide links on my sidebar on committee hearing schedule. Click the house link on the morning of the 5th. It'll be a LONG hearing so don't worry if you arrive late, meaning afternoon or evening. I also want to urge, in particular, my fellow colleagues to attend. It promises to be a spectacle.

The article below reports on another privatization scheme that's afoot. -Angela

'Virtual' or 'Pilot' – Lege begins the biennial campaign to siphon money from public schools
BY AMY SMITH

Does it surprise anyone that the legislators who voted to deny health insurance to thousands of low-income children in 2003 are now invoking poor kids to justify school vouchers? Poor kids, indeed. Put in that light, the pro-voucher rhetoric comes across sounding wholly disingenuous – but don't expect that to stand in the way of lawmakers propelling this ideological agenda forward.

Exhibit A is House Bill 1445 – a "virtual voucher" proposal and the first of a handful of related bills to go to a public hearing this week before the House Public Education Committee (see below). The House killed a virtual relative of this bill in 2003, which gives opponents some measure of optimism for a similar rejection this year. But in the larger scheme of things, school vouchers will command more attention this session, if for no other reason than that Gov. Rick Perry and House Speaker Tom Craddick have already deemed the "choice" issue a key component of education "reform." With that, expect both vouchers and an expansion of charter schools to figure into lawmakers' discussions when they take up a sunset bill to reauthorize the Texas Education Agency.

The dilemma for several House Republicans, however, is that they may have to decide between their constituents' wishes and the speaker's marching orders. Carolyn Boyle, coordinator of the anti-voucher Coalition for Public Schools, says she is sympathetic to the GOP members' predicament, given the strong-arming that went on during the debate on the widely unpopular House school finance package (House Bills 2 and 3, currently undergoing cosmetic surgery in the Senate). Boyle believes, however, that there is a certain amount of safety in numbers – and the numbers, at least at this writing, tell her that there aren't enough votes to pass a full-on voucher bill. "There seems to be more bipartisan opposition to vouchers than there was last time," Boyle said. "But what complicates the issue is [political] pressure." That pressure is further compounded, she continued, by a common refrain of "Let's just give vouchers a try and get it over with."

That's one of the reasons the pilot proposal of HB 1263 has emerged as a particular favorite, evidenced by the nine other lawmakers who have signed on to the legislation authored by Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, and co-author Rep. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney. ("Re-emerged" is perhaps more precise, since some form of the pilot proposal has been a voucher stalking horse for several sessions.) The bill would create a pilot school-choice program for low-income students in eight school districts in five urban counties – Travis, Bexar, Harris, Dallas, and Tarrant. (Proponents have even established a Web site, www.texaschoice.org, devoted to the HB 1263 cause.)

Chronicle readers will be shocked to learn that many of the legislative backers of the bill have received substantial political money from pro-voucher funding sources. Harper-Brown and Paxton, for example, were among the recipients of a huge windfall of cash that the national pro-voucher group All Children Matter dropped on a select number of (mostly GOP) House candidates in the 2004 election cycle. The Grand Rapids-based outfit gave $15,000 to Harper-Brown and $10,000 to Paxton, although it was unclear at press time whether they also benefited from the group's last-minute money drop just before the election.

In Texas, right-wing millionaire Dr. James Leininger finances the younger state affiliate of All Children Matter, along with a number of other pro-voucher entities. The San Antonio tycoon's money is driving much of this session's voucher phalanx, which includes lobbyists Richard H. McBride, Sabrina Thomas Brown, Mindy Ellmer, and Charles W. Evans, all registered gents of Leininger's Texans for Educational Excellence. Even with this bounty of riches, it's still uncertain how proponents will make the argument for a tax-funded voucher program in the face of an increasingly tight budget, especially for schools. Harper-Brown's chief of staff, Erin Sanders, offers a familiar argument that school vouchers won't cost the state additional money, because the per-child cost remains the same with or without the voucher program.

Boyle, of the Coalition for Public Schools, takes issue with that. "Schools typically don't budget on a per-child basis, but on a per-classroom basis," she pointed out. And since school funding for districts is based on the number of enrolled students, every student who leaves costs the district money. Boyle also points out that the pilot boundaries for Harper-Brown's bill are neatly drawn to include Edgewood ISD as one of the proposed pilot districts. She suspects it was a deliberate maneuver to serve as a "government bailout" for Leininger, who seven years ago pledged $50 million to the privately funded Horizon Voucher Program for children who live in the low-income San Antonio district made famous by the school financing lawsuit that brought us the "Robin Hood" funding scheme for public education. At the time, Leininger said he would contribute up to $5 million a year for up to 10 years, or until a state-funded voucher program was established to pick up the tab.

State Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, has added a new dimension to the debate with a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow voters to decide the issue of tax-financed school vouchers. Raymond acknowledges his bill likely won't go anywhere, but he hopes that it will provide some leverage in the voucher debate. Last month, a Scripps Howard Texas Poll on private school vouchers found that 55% of those surveyed opposed tax-financed private school vouchers. Last week, the Texas Association of Business boasted of another poll – by Baselice and Associates – that showed 74% in favor of a pilot voucher program if, as the TAB press says, "it does not cost taxpayers any additional money."

By contrast, John Stevens, executive director of the Texas Business & Education Coalition, said that while his group supports the concept of school choice, "We think there are a lot of options for students to choose from within the public school system. The bottom line," he added, "is that since the vast majority of students are going to be educated in public schools, is it really a good investment to spend public money on private schools? If so, then they should be subjected to the same accountability standards as public schools."

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:02 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I am very pleased to announce two recent book awards by two dear friends and colleagues, Professors Amilcar Shabazz (University of Alabama) and Carlos K. Blanton (Texas A & M University) both of whom are also on this list. Professor Shabazz won the T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award for his book, "Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas" while Professor Blanton won the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize by the Texas State Historical Association for the best book on Texas. His book is titled, "The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981." My students did read the Blanton text this semester and found it to be engaging, informative and nuanced on the topic of bilingual education. I look forward to reading the Shabazz book. What’s particularly cool is that these awards seldom go to educational histories in great part because so few are written. And this year, we have two such texts! I hope that these books will spur greater interest in research on education in Texas and beyond. I’m so proud of you and so very happy for you and your families, as well! -Angela
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The T. R. Fehrenbach Book Award honors original research and publication of material that preserves, records and recounts the prehistory and history of Texas. The program is named in honor of T. R. Fehrenbach, former Texas Historical Commission chair and Texas history author.

"Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas"
Amilcar Shabazz
As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), it is important to consider the historical struggles that led to this groundbreaking decision. Four years earlier in Texas, the Sweatt v. Painter decision allowed blacks access to the University of Texas's law school for the first time. Amilcar Shabazz shows that the development of black higher education in Texas--which has historically had one of the largest state college and university systems in the South--played a pivotal role in the challenge to Jim Crow education.

Shabazz begins with the creation of the Texas University Movement in the 1880s to lobby for equal access to the full range of graduate and professional education through a first-class university for African Americans. He traces the philosophical, legal, and grassroots components of the later campaign to open all Texas colleges and universities to black students, showing the complex range of strategies and the diversity of ideology and methodology on the part of black activists and intellectuals working to promote educational equality. Shabazz credits the efforts of blacks who fought for change by demanding better resources for segregated black colleges in the years before Brown, showing how crucial groundwork for nationwide desegregation was laid in the state of Texas.

You may purchase this text at www.amazon.com or at UNC Press
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Winner of the 2005 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize awarded by the Texas State Historical Association for the best book on Texas

"The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981"
Carlos Kevin Blanton

Despite controversies over current educational practices, Texas boasts a rich and vibrant bilingual tradition—and not just for Spanish-English instruction, but for Czech, German, Polish, and Dutch as well. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Texas educational policymakers embraced, ignored,
rejected, outlawed, then once again embraced this tradition.


In The Strange Career of Bilingual Education in Texas, 1836–1981, Carlos Kevin Blanton traces the educational policies and their underlying rationales, from Stephen F. Austin's proposal in the 1830s to "Mexicanize" Anglo children by teaching them Spanish along with English and French, through the 1981 passage of the most encompassing bilingual education law in the state's history. Drawing on primary materials, Blanton presents the Texas experience in light of national trends and movements, such as Progressive Education, the Americanization Movement, and the Good Neighbor Movement.

By tracing the many changes that eventually led to the re-establishment of bilingual education in its modern form in the 1960s and the 1981 passage of a landmark state law, Blanton reconnects Texas with its bilingual past.

You may purchase this text at www.amazon.com or at Tx A & M Press

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:54 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Texas may be opening the floodgates around the country with their defiant stance vis-a-vis NCLB. We'll see. -Angela

March 9, 2005
EDUCATION WEEK
Move Puts State at Odds With NCLB Policy
By David J. Hoff

Faced with a conflict between state and federal laws, Texas officials have come down on the side of their own law and set up a possible showdown with the U.S. government over millions of dollars in education aid.

In determining which schools and districts were meeting annual goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the state last month granted a host of appeals from districts and schools that said they should get credit for following less stringent state rules for assessing special education students.

As a result, 431 districts and 1,312 schools were considered by Texas to be making adequate yearly progress, or AYP, even though they didn’t follow the federal law’s strict rules for counting the test scores of students with disabilities.

“There was simply no way that schools could have followed [federal rules] without violating state statutory requirements,” said Criss Cloudt, the associate commissioner for accountability and data quality for the Texas Education Agency.

States will be watching how the U.S. Department of Education reacts to the Texas decision and whether it withholds any of Texas’ $1 billion annual share from the No Child Left Behind Act.

“If [federal officials] do anything to grant Texas this, it could open the floodgates around the country,” said Scott Young, a senior policy specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

A U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman said last week that the federal officials haven’t decided how to respond to Texas’ action.

“We’re reviewing the information we currently have and will be talking to them to get a better grasp of what they’re doing,” Susan Aspey, a department spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
Federalism in Question

As state officials nationwide have faced carrying out the 3-year-old law, they have chafed at complying with federal requirements that conflict with their state laws. A proposed measure in Utah, for instance, calls for letting state laws trump the federal law.

Two days before the Texas announcement, the Denver-based NCSL issued a report saying the law championed by President Bush unfairly usurps state policies. The group listed changes it wants from Congress and the federal Education Department. ("NCLB Law Needs Work, Legislators Assert," Feb. 24, 2005.) State officials also have been seeking waivers from Margaret Spellings, who was sworn in as the U.S. secretary of education in January.

While Secretary Spelling has said she would consider granting states leeway on the rules for compliance with the law, she has said she won’t bend on its key requirements.

Last week, for example, she denied a request from Connecticut to waive the law’s requirement that students be tested in grades 3-8 and once in high school. The state had asked to continue its practice of assessing students in grades 4, 6, 8, and 10.

“We must measure annually and in each grade to determine if these [achievement] gaps are being closed, and, if they are not, adjustments must be made,” Ms. Spellings said in a Feb. 28 letter to Connecticut’s commissioner of education, Betty J. Sternberg.

Ms. Spelling added that the Education Department is “committed to including every student in the assessment and accountability system,” citing the federal rule that Texas officials overrode in making its AYP decisions.

The federal testing rule says that 1 percent of a school’s or district’s enrollment may be tested against other than their grade-level standards and still be considered proficient for accountability purposes.

Any students above the 1 percent figure who don’t take state or alternative tests for the grade level in which they are enrolled are to be considered as not proficient for purposes of determining AYP.

State officials argue that the 1 percent rule is unfair because special education students aren’t always equally distributed across districts or among schools, Mr. Young of the NCSL said.

In Texas’ case, local school officials followed state law allowing for alternative tests for special education students when the students’ individualized education programs call for them. Under state law, the IEP team, rather than the state, gets to set a student’s passing standard for such tests.

In the spring of 2004, almost 10 percent of all students took a state-approved alternative test instead of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS.
Shared Goals

Texas officials also point out that the federal Education Department didn’t make the so-called 1 percent rule final until December 2003, just two months before Texas began testing. “You just can’t turn the ship that quickly,” said Gene Lenz, the deputy associate commissioner for special programs, monitoring, and interventions for the Texas Education Agency.


In deciding which districts and schools made adequate yearly progress for the 2003-04 school year, Texas Commissioner of Education Shirley Neeley granted appeals to districts and schools that said their special education populations failed to reach the districts’ achievement targets solely because of the 1 percent rule.

After the appeals, 86 districts failed to make AYP. Without the appeals, almost half the state’s 1,227 districts would have fallen short of the AYP goals. Without the waivers, 1,718 of the state’s 7,813 schools, or 22 percent, wouldn’t have made AYP. With the waivers, all but 402 did.

The Texas decision is at odds with the basic tenet of the No Child Left Behind Act, according to a supporter of the federal law.

“That’s a real step backward to say they have an alternative test and they’re not going to count [students with disabilities] for AYP,” said Delia Pompa, the director of the Achievement Alliance, a Washington-based coalition that supports the No Child Left Behind Act.

Ms. Cloudt said the agency was working with state legislators to revise state law. “Our goals are identical to No Child Left Behind,” she said. “We’re trying very hard to implement policies in concert with the federal accountability system.”
Vol. 24, Issue 26, Pages 1,23

www.edweek.org

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:24 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I can't say enough good things about this recent study by my colleague, Professor David Berliner (Arizona State University) and his co-author, Professor Sharon L. Nichols (UT—San Antonio).

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:52 AM 3 comments Links to this post

by Gerry Birnberg
Chair, Harris County Democratic Party

A good friend whom I respect and admire greatly just told me he read my recent post about the vote on HB3 and thought I was saying that I support that legislation. I was aghast. Let me be absolutely and unmistakably clear: HB3 is a terrible piece of legislation which (for the most part) is contrary to the values of the Democratic Party and must never be permitted to become law.

HB3 raises taxes on anyone making less than $100,000 per year. The Bush tax cuts have already favored tremendously the very wealthiest among us at the expense of the rest of us. Now HB3 seeks to do the very same thing at the state level - give a big tax cut to millionaires by raising the taxes the rest of us must pay.

How does HB3 accomplish that? It lowers state property taxes, but then raises state sales taxes by the same amount. Now, for many of us who are fortunate enough to own homes, property taxes on our houses are indeed too high, and should be reduced. But that can be accomplished by increasing homestead exemptions or limiting taxes on owner-occupied residential properties, especially on those having values of, say, less than $500,000. If we did that, we wouldnâ•˙t have to raise sales taxes (probably at all, but at least not to 9Âπ%). But HB3 lowers property taxes on all property - including commercial as well as residential property and on properties (like shopping centers or office buildings) worth many millions of dollars, and replaces those taxes with revenue generated by increasing sales taxes to 9Âπ% - the highest in the nation. So, your sales taxes go up by over 12% to give the Walmarts and the Trammel Crows of this state a huge reduction in their property taxes. Tax the middle class and the poor, this bill provides, to pay for tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthy.

Lots of Texans will never see a dime of tax relief from the property tax reductions: if they live in apartments, the landlord gets the tax break, but they donâ•˙t. On the contrary, their taxes go up, because they will have to pay more sales tax to finance the tax cuts for the apartment complex owners.

So how does a legislator like a Joe Nixon, for example, explain to his constituents why he voted for this bill? 62% of Nixonâ•˙s constituents live in apartments and so they wonâ•˙t receive any benefit from the reduction in property taxes - only their landlords will. Yet their sales taxes will go up to 9Âπ% because of the bill he voted for. The real reason he voted for this bill is that his Republican leadership told him to - not because itâ•˙s good for the constituents he supposedly represents (it isnâ•˙t). Quite simply, he sold them out.

And as far as business taxes are concerned, HB3 creates a new tax on jobs to replace the current tax on businesses. Big companies will no longer have to pay franchise taxes; instead, small businesses will have to pay a tax on each employee on their payroll. I guess the Republicans in the state legislature think we have too many jobs in Texas, so they have decided to tax payrolls instead of corporate profits (which is what the franchise tax does). And if wages are income (and they are), HB3 creates a state income tax, since it imposes taxes based on how much money wage-earners make (up to $80,000 per year; earnings over $80,000 per year are exempt from this new tax). At all events, it ainâ•˙t right in my book to pass a tax on wages to pay for a reduction in taxes on corporate profits. But you see who gets the shaft here - working men and women - and who gets the goodies - big business and wealthy executives.

Now all this might be acceptable if it raised revenues we could use to improve education in this state or to provide health care, for example. (Notice I said might.) By and large, Democrats are willing to sacrifice to achieve those objectives, even if it means foregoing some tax cuts. But that isnâ•˙t the effect of HB3. It doesnâ•˙t raise one penny more for education or health care (or any other government program) than the current tax structure. It simply changes the tax burden to make poor and middle class Texans shoulder more of it, without increasing the pie one dime. Whatever taxes are raised by raising sales taxes to 9Âπ% are used to reduce property taxes (including for commercial properties and mansions). Whatever revenues are realized from the jobs tax go to relieve corporations from the franchise tax. Thereâ•˙s no new money for education or health care resulting from HB3. Just an increase in the taxes most Texans pay in order to give tax relief mainly to folks and corporations who donâ•˙t need it.

If there was any confusion about where I stand on HB3, let me be perfectly clear: this bill is a travesty, an abomination, an unmitigated rip-off, and an outrage - just what youâ•˙d expect from a House presided over by Tom Craddick.

Paid for by Harris County Democratic Party, www.hcdp.org. Not authorized by any
candidate or candidate's committee.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:02 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Strayhorn is being accused of playing politics. She is enormously competent. My guess is that she/her office was largely left out of the discussions on HB3 and to legislators' detriment. -Angela

79th LEGISLATURE
Comptroller's Office Signed Off on Proposal, House Leaders Claim.
By Jason Embry, Stephen Scheibal
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Statewide school finance reform was thrown into further disarray Tuesday when Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn assailed the tax overhaul passed last week by the House.

She said it would raise taxes on Texans in the short term and then fail to generate enough money for the state in the long term.

"My heart goes out to them. They just passed the largest tax bill in history, and it does not balance," Strayhorn said.

But House leaders insisted that the numbers add up and said Strayhorn's staff signed off on the bill before the House approved it.

"It's just another frustrating day working with your comptroller," said Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and House Bill 3's chief architect.

"We can only conclude that the comptroller's office is either inept, purposely misleading the media and the public, or just playing politics — or maybe all three," Keffer said.

The bill, a key component of a plan to change the way Texas pays for public schools, would raise a series of taxes and would create a business tax to offset a proposed one-third reduction in property taxes for school maintenance and operations. House leaders have said the bill is revenue neutral, shorthand for a measure that creates as much money as it costs, and doesn't raise overall taxes.

Even when officials worked on the premise that the bill is revenue neutral, it faced a very uncertain future in the Senate, where lawmakers have long been working on their own tax plan. Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, showed no plans to pull the bill back, meaning that its differences with a Senate plan will be worked out in a conference committee before returning for votes from both bodies.

"We still feel the numbers are correct. We delayed the vote twice to make sure everything was right," Craddick said. "We don't see where anything has changed."

Strayhorn, a possible GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2006, has a history of tangling with lawmakers but has been relatively quiet during the first half of this session. Until Tuesday.

She said the bill would bring in $6.8 billion in new taxes in the next two years while reducing property taxes by only $5.8 billion, netting an extra $1 billion in tax revenue statewide. The bill would create a surplus, she said, because the property tax cuts would not take effect until the 2007 budget year, the second half of the two-year cycle.

After that, she said, the scales would tip the other way: In the next two years, the cuts in property taxes would exceed the state tax increases by $4.3 billion.

"The imbalance continues to grow each year thereafter," Strayhorn said in a letter to Keffer and Craddick.

Strayhorn said the problem lies in proposed changes to the business tax. The bill would allow businesses to pay either the current franchise tax or a new payroll tax. It originally called for all businesses to pay a payroll tax, but House leaders changed it during the floor debate to give companies the option and appease concerns about a payroll tax punishing labor-intensive businesses such as restaurants.

"The bill does not provide for a minimum tax," Strayhorn said in her letter. "Taxpayers will simply plan around the tax as easily as they do the current franchise tax."

Most businesses in Texas legally avoid paying the franchise tax, many by organizing as partnerships, which are not subject to it. Strayhorn said one way companies could reduce tax payments under the House plan is to replace existing staff with leased staff.

At a Capitol news conference with Craddick, Keffer and other House members launched into an accusatory recounting of the bill's history, saying Strayhorn's staff repeatedly assured lawmakers that the bill was revenue neutral. House leaders accused Strayhorn of contradicting the very advice that, they said, led them to bring the tax bill forward.

Rep. Mike Villarreal, a San Antonio Democrat and the Ways and Means vice chairman, was no softer on Strayhorn.

"Our hands are tied, our work becomes completely impossible, when the calculator that we rely on changes its mind from one day to the next, from one week to the next, and does not accurately report what the numbers are adding up to," he said.

Craddick and Strayhorn offered differing accounts of her staff's involvement. On the day it was passed, when House leaders met for most of the day and considered dozens of amendments to it, Strayhorn aides had no time to analyze the full bill, said Deputy Comptroller Billy Hamilton.

"It was not something we could raise the alarm on," Hamilton said. "Our estimators were deluged with the amendments."

Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, dismissed the criticisms of Strayhorn, saying the comptroller followed the proper channels in making her concerns known, and he called it disappointing that House leaders lashed out at her.

Enactment of a bill that raises taxes overall or leaves schools starving for revenue probably would help Strayhorn if she challenges Gov. Rick Perry in next year's Republican pri- mary. But Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said Strayhorn will be judged most on the accuracy of her analysis.

"There's certainly going to be politics in the executive summary, the headline on the analysis," Jillson said. "But if the headline isn't right and the numbers aren't sound, she will pay a terrible price for that, because that's her job."

http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/03/23strayhorn.html
 

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 7:13 AM 1 comments Links to this post

Check out this piece in the Black Commentator. The market-based money-making, profit-seeking agenda is laid bare in this, as well as the Saltman piece mentioned below. -Angela

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:42 AM 6 comments Links to this post

Check this out from the April 2005 issue of the Scientific American http://www.sciamdigital.com/. I wish this were mere satire or hyperbole. Indeed, check out the following proposed legislation

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:47 PM 2 comments Links to this post

This came out on NPR this morning. It focuses on the recent cheating scandal. I think that it's wrong to focus on these individual acts and NOT to focus on the system. While the story indeed implies something systemic is going on, no analysis is provided to the listener. -Angela

"NPR : Testing Scandal in Texas Schools"

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:38 PM 1 comments Links to this post

Increased gaming could gain momentum as budget hole widens
 
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, March 21, 2005

Nearly a year after legislators soundly spurned video lottery terminals as a way to pay for education, expanded gambling appears close to winning a fresh look as new forces work opposite sides of the perennial fight at the Capitol.

Key lawmakers in both houses say momentum for gaming could swell once legislators get a fix on funding gaps for public schools, health care, criminal justice and higher education in the 2006-07 state budget.

"Gambling has a chance of resurrecting itself," said Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, "just because it's going to be hard to make everything balance."

And while conservative opponents of gaming say they still have enough clout to thwart the efforts in the GOP-controlled Legislature, their political rivals also like their chances.

Bill Stinson, a lobbyist for the pro-casino group Let the People Decide, said legislators will realize their choice boils down to legalizing casinos or implementing a big tax increase on top of $5.4 billion a year in taxes the House approved Monday to pay for reduced local school property taxes.

"I'll bet you a cup of coffee they're going to be $3 billion to $5 billion short" in the budget, Stinson said.

Let the People Decide, backed by real estate developers who see opportunities in the legalization of casinos, is encouraging a public vote on the issue. The group touts a study projecting up to $1.2 billion a year in state revenue from 40,000 video lottery terminals, which are similar to slot machines, and more than $2.1 billion if voters permit 12 casinos and 22 related restaurants, hotels and businesses statewide.

On the other side of the issue this year, amateur lobbyists Rob Kohler and David Bales of Austin have joined the typically outspent anti-gambling lobby, delivering breakfast tacos to legislators on behalf of a nonprofit think tank they've created. Along with the tacos, they deliver a warning against buying into rosy forecasts on gambling, and they put an economic spin on an argument often framed in moral terms.

"There's a whole lot of Texans who don't buy into the idea that it's free money falling from the sky and there's really nobody out there looking at it with knowledge making sure that when people make decisions about it a spade is called a spade," said Kohler, a former Texas Lottery Commission employee who also runs a private consulting company. "This isn't a moral issue for me. This is business and economics."

Legislative options

Expanding gambling in Texas would probably require a change in the state constitution, which requires two-thirds support in both houses of the Legislature as well as voter approval.

Lawmakers have been exploring different ways to make that happen:

* State Reps. Vilma Luna, D-Corpus Christi, and Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, who heads the appropriations panel, are among 10 to 20 House members who have privately ruminated since last summer about writing a gambling proposal likely to draw House support

* Pitts and Rep. Kino Flores, D-Mission, each filed proposed constitutional amendments last week that could lead to voter action on video lottery terminals at race tracks and on Indian-owned lands, an idea pitched unsuccessfully by Gov. Rick Perry last spring.

* Another proposal by Flores includes language authorizing up to 12 casino developments statewide. Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, and Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, have filed similar proposals.

Pitts said last week he sees gambling as the only way legislators can afford more aid for schools, including money for a teacher pay raise, beyond the $3 billion the House already wants to commit by taking money from yet-to-be-finalized changes elsewhere in the budget.

The study updated for Let the People Decide by Waco economist Ray Perryman suggests the state could take in $1.2 billion a year in profits from the machines.

Last May, House members rejected 119-26 a proposed constitutional amendment that would have sought voter approval of video lottery terminals. The action contributed to the collapse of a special session on school finance and taxes.

Momentum for gambling seemed to drain in the GOP-majority Legislature, with House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, telling reporters at the time that the House can't pass video gaming.

After the session, the Republican Party of Texas inserted anti-gambling language in the party platform, saying any expanded gambling would have devastating effects on Texas families.

"We strongly oppose gambling, in any form, as a means to fund education," the platform says

Allen Blakemore of Houston, who advises conservative candidates, all but rules out a gambling measure winning this year, though he said he admires the "pluck" of those who could attempt to win the two-thirds margins in each body needed to propose constitutional changes to voters.

"There's no way the conservative grass roots will allow the Legislature to do that," Blakemore said. "The elected officials who want to stay, who want to keep their jobs, understand and won't vote for that."

Blakemore said Perry, a Republican poised to seek re-election next year, would "certainly" veto any gambling legislation that reaches his desk .

Perry has said he doesn't see video lottery having much of a chance this year. A spokeswoman said he will leave gaming issues up to legislators.

Betting on the ballot

Against that opposition, most advocates now echo an argument that worked to send the state lottery to the ballot in 1991: Let voters decide.

"A lot of people are questioning why they can't vote on gambling," said Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, who watches buses routinely hauling Texans past his hometown to gambling houses in nearby Louisiana. "Society has changed. A lot of people view it as entertainment, no different than going to a picture show."

Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, likened the economic effect of casinos to 20 new truck plants like the Toyota factory under construction in San Antonio.

Among gambling foes, Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, took issue with turning to voters. "Why don't we do that with everything we do up here? Then we don't need to be here," he said. "We are elected representatives. Some (members) don't have the guts to take a position."

Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, said he's found a way to make it easier to approve gaming at the Capitol.

He suggested that lawmakers authorize county gaming districts to oversee video lottery terminals, a step he said would avoid the need to amend the constitution. The untested strategy would reduce to a majority of each body the margin needed to expand gambling.

As the debate plays out, nearly 200 lobbyists list gambling as an interest in reports to the Texas Ethics Commission, though fewer than 20 lobbyists appear to be representing big-dollar clients.

Big City Capital, a Nevada-incorporated business headed by former Fort Worth nightclub owner Billy Bob Barnett, has enlisted six lobbyists, including Mike Toomey, who stepped down as Perry's chief of staff last fall. The lobbyists estimate their "prospective" fees total $600,000 to nearly $1 million. The company was founded in 2002 and, so far, has applied for permits to stage concerts in Galveston, according to a report by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice.

Kohler and Bales, the newcomers to the anti-gambling cause, represent the Common Sense & Sound Public Policy Think Tank. They base their opposition on analyses of Lottery Commission data.

Kohler and Bales, a real estate businessman whose late father, Larry, owned the Scholz Garten restaurant in downtown Austin and was a state representative from Travis County, said they have paired up drawing from Kohler's money to make a case that slot-style machines and other gaming amount to gimmicks likely to cost people more than they help government. They say their motivation is simple: avoid bad public policy that will rely too heavily on low-income Texans and provide a bad return for the state.

Kohler said other state governments that draw money from slot-style machines generally receive only about 4 cents from every dollar spent on the machines, far lower than the traditional return on lottery sales of about 30 cents on the dollar.

He said Texans would have to spend $37 billion on gambling in a single year, equal to the money they've spent on the lottery since September 2002, for the state to net the $1.2 billion proponents promise.

Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, fielded a taco from Kohler and a document stating that low-income people disproportionately play the lottery and estimating the costs to local government of treating people who become gambling addicts.

Strama, undecided on gambling before the visit, said later: "I can't see a way that I can stomach gambling. His argument is persuasive."

wgselby@statesman.com; 445-3644

Playing the numbers

Lobbyists on both sides of the issue point to statistics to show how Texas will be affected by video lottery terminals at racetracks or a broader proposal to build a network of casinos across the state.

Supporters say:

Jobs created

* 15,000 from video lottery terminals

* 200,000 from casinos

Government revenue generated:

* $1.2 billion a year from video terminals

* $2.8 billion from casinos

Critics counter:

Costs to society:

* $1.5 billion to $3 billion a year because of pathological gambling

Money lost:

* $250 by nearby businesses for every $1,000 gambled

Sources: The Perryman Group, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Legislative Budget Board, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Common Sense and Sound Policy Think Tank, Center for Public Policy Priorities drawing on historic participation in Texas lottery

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/monday/news_24e3f70437f5f00f0061.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 1:05 PM 1 comments Links to this post

By NICOLE C. BRAMBILA
nbrambila@sastandardtimes.com
March 20, 2005

Forget the dropout rate. Education researchers have dubbed the exodus from public school ''the push-out rate.''

For more than 15 years, the San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association has tracked statewide attrition rates. Originally commissioned by the Texas Department of Commerce, the IDRA conducted a study that looked at the number of dropouts and the economic cost to the state, Executive Director Maria Robledo Montecel said.

The result of the inaugural report, Montecel said, was the creation of a state law defining dropouts and counts being conducted.

According to an IRDA newsletter, the initial study found 86,000 students did not graduate in the 1986-87 school year. Although the Texas Education Agency counted for dropouts differently, the numbers were comparable to those produced by the IDRA, Montecel said.

That was then. Today's numbers, she said, show a slight of hand.

The IDRA reported a 40-percent attrition rate in 2000 while the TEA reported a dropout rate of 1 percent for the same year.

Why the discrepancy?

The number of TEA-approved ''leaver codes,'' or acceptable exits of students from public schools, has increased - from obtaining a General Equivalency Diploma to being incarcerated.

''As more leaver codes are added, the dropout number becomes lower and lower,'' Montecel said. ''The method that is being used allows for these more than 30 ways of exempting them from the count.

''As long as the dropout counts are not accurate and credible, then it's quite difficult to know whether what we're doing is helping or not.''

The way school districts calculate the dropout rate, as mandated by state law, masks the scope of the problem, Montecel said.

The San Angelo Independent School District reported a 1.3-percent dropout rate in 2000. Census data from 2000 showed 18.6 percent of San Angeloans age 18-24 had not obtained a high school diploma or equivalent.

Sue Vanhoozer, the district's executive director of east-side campuses, noted that the census counts everyone, whether educated in San Angelo or not.

The school district's report to the TEA in 2000 showed the four-year completion rate - including those who dropped out and took the GED - at 86 percent. Completion rates account for students who earn a high school diploma or an equivalent, namely a GED certificate.

''I feel like we're doing better,'' said Joanne Rice, assistant superintendent of educational support services. ''We're nowhere near where we need to be.''

Rice conceded some of the leaver codes - such as for incarceration - shouldn't be considered a ''positive exit.''

''I don't agree with all the leaver codes,'' Rice said. ''But that's something we have to report.''

Some of the identified 30 codes include withdrawing to join the military or pursue a job, to marry or because of pregnancy. Of the 30 leaver codes districts use to identify why a student leaves school, 20 are not included in calculating the dropout rate for accountability purposes, according to the TEA Web site.

With a person's earning power related to education level, Montecel said, it is high time schools be held accountable for the number of students who graduate. Children, she said, count.

''There are still too many children that are thought to be expendable in school,'' Montecel said.

Copyright 2005, San Angelo Standard-Times. All Rights Reserved.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 11:02 PM 1 comments Links to this post

San Angelo schools accused of using 'home schooling' to skew dropout rate

By NICOLE C. BRAMBILA nbrambila@sastandardtimes.com
March 20, 2005

Vanessa Martinez never thought one of her biggest obstacles to graduating high school would be her teachers.

Martinez wanted a diploma - especially after her older sister, who would have been the first in her family to graduate, was run over while walking home from a New Year's Eve party.

After her sister's death, Martinez found herself in and out of alternative school because of a litany of disciplinary issues - failure to display school ID, fighting and truancy.

That's when a Central High School teacher, she said, encouraged her to quit.

Martinez was 16 - and a mother.

''They would discourage me,'' said Martinez, now 18. ''They don't give those kids a chance. They don't see how much potential they have. ... They just throw 'em to the dogs.''

Encouraging Martinez to leave school would make sense if the goal was to rid the campus of a problem student. But as school districts are aware, the state frowns on high dropout rates.

If, however, Martinez agreed to ''transfer'' out of the San Angelo Independent School District so she could be ''home schooled,'' the school would be rid of a problem student, and the dropout rate would remain unchanged. It might even improve with the transfer of a student who was likely to drop out eventually.

Parents, social workers and municipal judges say that is exactly what is happening in San Angelo. Some students are being pressured, they charge, into ''home schooling,'' even in cases in which their parents are illiterate.

Rise in home schooling

More than 130 students left the SAISD in the 2002-03 academic year to home school. That figure had risen steadily since the 1998-99 school year, when 43 students left the district to home school.

The Texas Education Agency considers home-school students as transfers.

As the number of dropouts in the district declined in recent years, the number of students opting to home school increased,


according to data obtained in a Freedom of Information request. Of the 430 students the district lost in the 2002-03 school year, 138, or 32 percent, withdrew to home school.

The following school year, 126 students withdrew to home school.

The number of San Angelo students who left public schools to home school is about double the number in the Abilene, Ector County and Midland districts - similar-sized West Texas school systems.

To date, approximately 90 San Angelo students have withdrawn from public schools this year to home school.

SAISD officials dispute that the schools have driven the rise in home schoolers. They note that the administration has created a myriad of services - programs for migrant families, young scholars and after-school care, among them - to serve students who are at risk of dropping out, to keep them in school and to help them earn a diploma.

Marty Jonas, the district's executive director of west-side campuses, contends that parents, not the schools, initiate the move to home schooling.

''By state law, a parent does have a right to educate their children if they so choose,'' Jonas said. ''I personally have a hard time with the home schooling. Home schooling is good. There are strong home school organizations locally and statewide.

''What I'm concerned with is the parent who, to get out of the court system or who is worn down by the child, decides to go and home school.''

Jonas said she has seen many such cases, recalling an illiterate woman who couldn't sign her name on district documents, yet removed her child to home school.

''I closed my door and cried because I know that child isn't going to get an education,'' Jonas said. ''Every time I sign one of those sheets, it breaks my heart.''

Jonas blamed the increasing home-school numbers not on pressure from school officials but on ''word of mouth'' among parents of problem students wanting to avoid courts and fines for truancy.

Parents of elementary school students, not secondary school students having difficulty in public schools, typically join the San Angelo Christian Home School Association, said former association board member Becca Levesque.

The number of families in the association has not generally increased as the number of SAISD students who transfer to home schools has risen. The association's membership has fluctuated between 65 and 100 families in the past five years, Levesque said.

Illiterate 'teachers'
Dee Guerra, a Healthy Families of San Angelo support worker, backed Martinez's version of her split with the SAISD, recalling Central High officials telling Martinez they didn't want her back.

Healthy Families is a nonprofit in-home visitation program for first-time parents of newborns.

Family-support worker Ruby Harlow said everyone at Healthy Families has ''a story like'' Martinez's.

Carolyn Wiseheart, director of Healthy Families, said her agency's family-support workers have witnessed teen moms wanting to go back to school being told ''they're not a candidate for graduation.'' She estimated the agency serves a dozen home-schooled teen moms and dads - some, she said, ''taught'' by parents who are illiterate or can't speak English.

Parents such as Laura Perez, a high school dropout and single mom who could not read aloud the materials that her son's Lincoln Junior High School teachers sent home.

After years of struggling with her son, who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, special education teachers gave up on him and pressured her to home school last year, Perez said. Her son was 12.

When the home-school books that Perez said administrators promised never materialized, she abandoned the idea of home schooling. For the past year, her seventh-grade son - who reads on a third-grade level, according to district documents from a year ago - has received no schooling.

''The way I felt,'' she said, ''was I didn't have a decision.''

Parents who remove their children from public schools to home school often contact a local home-school association for help picking a curriculum. As the new member coordinator for the San Angelo Christian Home School Association, Susan Clearley said she has fielded calls from distraught parents saying district officials pressured them into home schooling their children.

''These parents were panicked because they were told this is what they needed to do,'' Clearley said. ''Some felt they had no choice. They saw that they couldn't afford private school and if the school district was telling them there wasn't anything else they could do for them, they felt like there weren't any other options.''

Municipal judges Jay Daniel and Allen Gilbert, who deal with truant students and those facing disciplinary action, said such stories are all too familiar.

''I'm getting the same story you are,'' Daniel said. ''Parents tell me the school said, 'Why don't you home school?'''

In a year's time, Gilbert estimated a half-dozen parents have said district officials suggested they home school rather than drop out.

Because the municipal court is not an investigative agency, neither judge has pursued the complaints, Daniel said.

The state's 'hammer'
The rise in home-school transfer students began after the school district fell into non-compliance with the Texas Education Agency, when its Hispanic dropout rate climbed to 6.8 percent in the 1994-95 school year. The maximum acceptable rate is 6 percent.

Students are considered dropouts if they miss 30 straight days of class or, if after pre-enrolling, fail to show up.

Suzanne Marchman, a TEA spokeswoman, said dropout rates can adversely affect campus and district rates.

''That's a pretty good motivator,'' Marchman said. ''That's like having an 'F' you have to display everywhere.''

The ripple effects of a bad rating can be far reaching, Marchman said, from parents choosing to move to better-performing districts to administrators and teachers losing pay increases.

''Public scrutiny is the biggest hammer there is, and that's a good thing,'' said David Smith, executive director for the Region XV Education Service Center in San Angelo. The center is a staff-development organization that serves 43 school districts in 18 counties.

A campus that fails to comply with TEA guidelines on academic performance or the dropout rate could face on-site scrutiny, or, in extreme cases, be closed and consolidated with another campus, Smith said.

The bottom line
At the end of the day, accountability is about students such as Vanessa Martinez, whose school years were often troubled.

A district progress report indicates she was enrolled in gifted-and-talented classes in junior high school and performed well - A's and B's - when she completed her work.

Martinez also appeared - again and again - before judges in municipal court for many of the same problems that landed her in alternative school.

As a 16-year-old mother who was no longer enrolled in school, Martinez could have easily been another statistic. Under the law, Martinez was not eligible to take the exam for a General Equivalency Diploma for another year.

Healthy Families, however, petitioned a judge on her behalf for an exemption. Today Martinez is engaged to be married and planning to take classes at Howard College to become a pharmacy technician. Without support, Wiseheart said, the outcome could have been different.

Students who sit out a couple of years are not likely to go back and get their GED certificate, she said.

The way Wiseheart sees it, playing with the dropout numbers hurts students.

''Whatever pressure that the school district is under to reduce dropouts,'' she said, ''this isn't the way to do it.''

http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/news_local/article/0,1897,SAST_4956_3636643,00.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:57 PM 0 comments Links to this post

March 20, 2005, 7:18PM

What do lawmakers hope paltry funding will achieve?
By F. SCOTT MCCOWN


The Texas House has finished its education and tax bills. Now the Senate goes to work. Let's compare what the House has adopted with where the Senate is starting.

The House provides an increase of about $3 billion for the biennium. Sounds like a lot, except that 1) it doesn't get us out of the hole we dug in 2003 with cuts and cost shifts in education; 2) a big chunk, perhaps a billion, is merely money to schools for things the state normally pays for directly such as textbooks, so it isn't really new money for education; 3) in any event, the money doesn't cover inflation; and 4) it must mostly pay for new state mandates anyway.

Texas is simply not doing what we must to ensure a highly educated citizenry and workforce. We have one of the most ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged student populations in the nation. Yet, average per student spending nationally is about 12 percent higher than Texas spending.

Even so, over the last decade, our public schools have made gains. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation's report card, Texas student demographic groups are now performing near the top compared to their counterparts in other states. Nevertheless, we have a long way to go to close the gaps between groups. Poor and minority students still fall far behind. If adequately funded, our public schools can help them catch up.

The House does give some favored districts more money — much more money. For example, under the House plan, even before local enrichment, Highland Park in Dallas would see their per student spending increase by as much as $3,000, while Houston Independent School District would see increased per student spending of about $250. After local enrichment, the gap grows even larger.

While the number of children in our public schools will almost double from the current 4.3 million by 2040, the House provides nothing for school facilities, claiming there will be a second bill for facilities, even though there is no money to fund such a bill.

Indeed, the House insisted that all new money for education come from cuts in the budget, even though state government is underfunded and went through devastating cuts in 2003.

The House does propose to raise state taxes, but only to lower school district property taxes. The House calls this a revenue neutral tax swap, but it actually increases taxes for the bottom 80 percent of Texas households, while lowering taxes for the top 20 percent.

To make matters worse, the House dedicates 15 percent of state revenue growth to reduce property taxes more in the future. Given our underfunded state budget, we can't afford to set aside revenue growth to continue to reduce taxes.

In contrast, the Senate has tentatively proposed $4.3 billion in new money over the biennium; not enough, but more than the House. Its plan is somewhat more equitable than the House plan, though it still allows the gap between the rich and poor to grow. The Senate doesn't confront our facilities problem but does provide some new money for fast-growing districts.

Like the House, the Senate raises state taxes to lower school property taxes, but unlike the House, the Senate is considering a partial exemption from the state sales tax for very low-income families and a requirement that landlords pass through property tax relief for renters. Unlike the House, the Senate is not proposing to divert revenue growth from vital needs to reduce property taxes even more.

The Senate does propose a state property tax for education, but this is in lieu of, not on top of, a local tax. Some oppose a state property tax, suggesting that school districts will lose local control. In fact, however, school districts have already lost local control because most are at or near their property tax cap.

The Senate plan actually gives back local control by providing a 15 cent local enrichment tax, while still leaving total property taxes below what we now pay. Perhaps 15 cents is not quite enough, and certainly it isn't adequately equalized, but the approach is basically sound. With a state property tax, all districts would share in the growing property wealth of the state.

Where the Senate ends up remains to be seen, as does whether the Senate out wrestles the House in conference, but our only hope is that the Senate will support public education to secure a prosperous future for Texas.

McCown was the Travis County district judge who heard Texas' school finance cases from 1990 until he retired in 2002 to become director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3094393

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post

by JOHN YOUNG Opinion page editor

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Let's hear it for bicameralism.

That's is the concept of government, our government, that takes pains not to put too much power in the hands of a single legislative body.

A lot of schools and education associations this week are cheering on bicameralism as they hiss at a House-passed bill chock full of dubious and out-of-the-blue reforms.

Indeed, few pieces of legislation in the last 20 years seem to have raised such universal enmity among education forces as House Bill 2.

It ladles on new mandates. It changes school dates. It changes school board election dates. It sets in motion the privatization of low-performing schools. It could change how principals are certified.

On the issue of money, it barely provides enough to schools to keep pace with inflation and enrollment growth. Then it tells them that almost half of the money must go to teacher pay raises including raises based on merit. But when school officials calculate mandates and costs, particularly factoring in enrollment growth, they don't see how they can deliver on the pay raises.

Education groups swarmed the capital to protest the many provisions of HB 2, hard-pressed, mainly, in choosing where to begin.

After its passage on a mostly party-line vote, Republicans said, effectively, that those critics from the world of education had their say and that the people had spoken through the House majority.

When Democrats offered an alternative that had more support from schools and education groups, Waco Republican State Rep. Charles Anderson told the Trib's Dan Genz, "There have been hundreds of folks down there [in Austin] testifying, and it seems like their ideas should have been brought up at that time."

But representatives of education groups who were in on the hearing process, or observing it, say that too often input that veered from or was critical of education chairman Kent Grusendorf's blueprint got the brushoff. Much of the testimony in hearings was by invitation.

This is a continuation of trends in Tom Craddick's first session as House speaker in 2003, when debate was minimized and the public was frozen out of deliberations on congressional redistricting.

Critics of this bill can only hope that the Senate is the deliberative body it advertises. Its counterpart has become the denuded body, denuded of any pretenses of true deliberation outside of the GOP caucus.

Ken McCraw, executive director of the Texas Association of Community Schools, said this approach almost guarantees lawmaking debacles.

"Without hearing some dissent you make bad policy. [The bill's problems are] going to come out," McCraw said. "It's just a matter of whether it's before or after the bill is adopted."

Bad policy can be well-meant, said McCraw, like a directive in HB 2 that 44 percent of new money or an average of $3,000 apiece go to teacher pay hikes. Schools obviously want to pay their teachers more. But McCraw said that once some of the districts put the calculator to the requirement, with what else the state is requiring, and factoring in inflation and new enrollment, "all that money is spent" before teachers could get it.

Possibly the most draconian and dangerous intrusion is the mandate under which schools rated among the bottom 5 percent based on state standards two years in a row could be subject to "alternative management" by for-profit firms.

Since Texas' school reforms of the 1980s, state takeover, the "death penalty" of school governance, has been an extraordinary action reserved for the most grievous and chronic offenders. Under HB 2, state takeover would get bumped into the ordinary, with for-profit firms feasting on all those tax dollars.

It is stunning that such a death-star scheme made it out of a chamber of our Legislature. Right now schools are counting on the fact that it takes two.

John Young's column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.

© 2005 Cox Texas Newspapers, L.P. - The Waco Tribune-Herald

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:53 PM 0 comments Links to this post

by JOHN YOUNG Opinion page editor

Tuesday, March 15, 2005
WACO TRIBUNE

Where was the clamor for changing Texas' school year?

Did I miss the popular tumult, the sea swell of insistence, for changing the way school board members are elected? I must have.

And just when did Texans decide that awarding the management of public schools to for-profit groups was an imperative?

They didn't. But the Texas House of Representatives did last week when a party-line vote produced House Bill 2. It would do all of the above and a lot more.

HB 2 is a monster bill. It not only dictates how money is divided up but sets in motion new requirements for teacher merit pay, administrator certification and how schools are managed if they are at the top or bottom of the state curve in state standards.

For instance, those at the top would be freed of state mandates such as the kindergarten-through-grade four class-size ratio that many people considered the most important school reform of the 1980s.

Meanwhile, those in the lowest 5 percent based on state criteria two years in a row would be subject to "alternative management," which could include for-profit firms.

If that were to become law, Texas would become a mecca for profiteers who just know they can run public schools better than the public can. Ominously for our schools, HB 2 is only the beginning.

In the days ahead, undoubtedly the House leadership will bump to the forefront other initiatives for which support on the street is so faint you'd need a stethoscope to hear it:

* To spend millions of dollars on school vouchers;

* To fund "virtual" schools in which the taxpayers buy (and profiteers sell) computers and software for home-schoolers.

All of this we'd fund with money we'd have to find "somewhere" in the state budget, because we're not going to raise more revenue under the House plan. We're going to reallocate the dollars we have.

Does any of the above, with the possible exception of raising no new money, sound remotely like the will of the clamoring masses? I didn't think so.

But if any of these measures becomes law, it will be because Kent Grusendorf is in a position to help make it so. The Arlington Republican, chairman of the House Public Education Committee and author of HB 2, is an ardent supporter of school vouchers and other wrinkles like "virtual charters." Having been growing gray on the "outs" as a critic of public schools while Democrats held power, Grusendorf now is the kid who inherited a gumball factory.

Fortunately, not many of his initiatives have made it through all the wickets that representative government entails, even a government dominated by his party.

It will be fascinating to see how much of HB 2 survives. It is based on curious assumptions about money. It provides public schools with an additional $3 billion, but the money is not to come from new revenue. It's to come from scrubbing a budget that since 2003 is already beyond "bare bones." It is down to "dried and bleached." Another curiosity: It would give teachers a $3,000-a-year pay raise, but without visible means of paying for it.

So much else about HB 2 makes one wonder.

From where comes the requirement that school start after Labor Day? Certainly some resort areas want it. But why make everyone start at the same time? Most districts start in August for the expressed purpose of getting the first semester done before Christmas break. What business has the state in forbidding this?

Then there are local school board seats. They would become four-year seats, elected in November, rather than in the spring as they are now. What is the imperative for this? The state meddles in so much. Why this, too?

Fortunately, Texas has two houses. Though controlled by the same party, they don't necessarily think as one.

John Young's column appears Thursday, Sunday and occasionally Tuesday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 1:27 PM 4 comments Links to this post

COMMENTARY

It's a Different Battle, but a Similar Struggle

Tobias Barrington Wolff, EQUAL JUSTICE SOCIETY
Saturday, March 19, 2005

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer made a bold choice in Monday's opinion recognizing the equal right of gay couples to marry: He invoked Brown v. Board of Education and the American legacy of segregation to explain a part of his ruling.

Isn't it sufficient, the state had asked in its briefs, to allow gay couples to enter into "domestic partnerships" with all the basic rights of marriage under a different name? Absolutely not, responded Kramer in his decision, because such a "separate but equal" institution would give gay people a "feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community" — the same type of harm that segregated students experienced under Jim Crow and that led the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 to outlaw school segregation.

It was bold to wrap the marriage ruling in the mantle of Brown because, frankly, many blacks take offense when people draw parallels between gay rights and the issue of race in the United States. The comparison, many say, feels like a misappropriation of their history. The problem is made worse by the fact that the public face of the gay community is too often exclusively white.

I come to the issue as both a gay white man and a constitutional scholar who has tried hard to understand the history of slavery and Jim Crow in our nation. From that vantage, I see the need for more care on all sides in making these arguments.

First, there is a historical reality that we must acknowledge. The oppression of gay people in the United States is not morally equivalent to the oppression that black Americans have endured. It just isn't. I cringe when gay people, rightly outraged at the discrimination that they face, take that extra step and say, "Excluding us from the right to marry is like telling us that we're three-fifths of a person."

This nation's treatment of black Americans is its defining, original sin. Black people survived 250 years of chattel slavery and a century more of segregation, disenfranchisement and lynchings.

The effect of that history continues to define their struggle for equal opportunity and advancement. Only the genocide of Native Americans occupies a similar place in the nation's moral ledger.

When the Supreme Court declared in Brown that the tradition of "separate but equal" has no place in our public institutions and recognized individual dignity as a constitutional value that must be respected, that statement was uniquely the result of the black experience in the United States.

But the enduring power of Brown derives from the fact that its principles are not limited to black Americans. In the same year that the court decided Brown, it also recognized the right of Mexican Americans to equal citizenship through jury service. Within 20 years, the court had applied those same principles to women and religious minorities. And just two years ago, in Lawrence v. Texas, the court finally began to recognize the equal dignity of gay Americans when it struck down the sodomy laws that had sought to criminalize their relationships.

Gay people do have a right to claim a place in that constitutional tradition. The second-class citizenship that gay people continue to endure may not be as bad as Jim Crow and slavery, but it is bad enough.

Excluded from open military service, unable to claim federal workplace protection and denied equal support for their families in most parts of the country, gay people can have little doubt what it means for their place within the community when the state refuses to allow them to marry.

Gay people enter a house built by the labor of others when they invoke the tradition of Brown, and they should claim that place with a degree of humility. Nonetheless, they have earned that place through blood and tears. It is no threat to the legacy of the civil rights movement to recognize their claim. It is a vindication.

Thus, the San Francisco court was correct to rely upon Brown in analyzing the exclusion of gay couples from civil marriage. Brown does not require us to ask who among us is the most oppressed. It requires us to ask how discrimination against any group of people affects their status as equal citizens.

Wolff, a professor at University of California, Davis Law School, is on the executive board of the Equal Justice Society, a civil rights advocacy group. He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/03/19Gay_edit.html
 

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:20 PM 1 comments Links to this post

FROM ED POLICY UPDATE, ASCD
March 2005—Vol. 4, No. 2

States Weigh In on Education Reform
State legislators and governors are stepping up the dialogue around education reform. On separate occasions last month, state legislators and governors called for changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and rallied around the need to make high school more rigorous.
 
State Legislators Challenge NCLB
The National Conference of State Legislatures released a bipartisan report criticizing NCLB and asserting that states need more authority in implementing the law. Task force cochair Steve Saland, a Republican state senator from New York, said the law is excessively intrusive and has turned states that were once pioneers into prisoners by undermining their ability to innovate.

Calling for fundamental changes to the law, the report lists 43 recommendations for revising how student progress is measured, resolving conflicts between NCLB and the nation's main special education law, and granting states flexibility to address schools' and districts' unique needs and situations. Finding that there are minimal new federal resources, the report also calls for a federal study to determine the costs associated with NCLB.
Although the newly appointed Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has stressed her willingness to work with states, it remains to be seen how flexible the Department of Education will be. Reacting to the report, Ray Simon, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, said "the report could be interpreted as wanting to reverse the progress we've made … We will not reverse course."
 
Federal-State Negotiations
Meanwhile, however, the Department of Education is engaged in ongoing negotiations with states to shape the rules that govern the implementation of NCLB, even though it is not scheduled for reauthorization until 2007.
In Utah, state officials have halted the progress of a bill that would give the state's educational goals priority over NCLB, saying they will take more time to negotiate with the Department of Education. State leaders credit the legislation and the national attention it has garnered for increasing the federal government's willingness to listen to them.
Texas recently became the second state to outright refuse to follow NCLB requirements. While the law allows no more than 1 percent of students to be exempted from grade-level tests because of learning disabilities, Texas allowed nearly 10 times that amount to take an alternate state test. Although the state had requested a waiver to do so last April, that request was denied by the Department of Education in July. The repercussions of Texas' action are yet to be determined. The only other state to consciously defy NCLB, Minnesota, was fined $113,000 in 2003.
A waiver also was refused to Connecticut recently when officials in that state sought to continue its 20-year practice of testing students every other year. In response to the request, the Department of Education said some aspects of NCLB are "not negotiable," including the requirement that students are tested every year in grades 3 through 8. Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty Sternberg expressed disappointment that they were not able to have a "real discussion" about the issue. Connecticut also announced this week that $41.6 million of the state's own money will be required to implement NCLB through 2008.
Virginia also is concerned about the cost of NCLB. Its state legislature has requested a cost analysis to be completed by October 1 to aid the state in weighing the cost of withdrawing from NCLB. Virginia lawmakers have said the federal government is interfering with the state's preexisting accountability system.
 
Governors Call for Rigor in High Schools
State governors, who called for raising high school standards at a recent education summit, are also concerned about the cost and ramifications of NCLB implementation, including a proposed expansion of the law's goals to high schools. Republican governors from Vermont and Nebraska said they would need to hear the details of the expansion before deciding, but both expressed resistance. "We don't want another burdensome federal program," said Vermont governor James Douglas.
What the governors want is to boost high school graduation rates and college and work-readiness. However, Virginia's Democratic governor, Mark Warner, asserted that NCLB "is not a model for legislation." At the summit, a coalition of 13 states announced plans to raise diploma requirements and require more difficult high school classes. The coalition states serve more than a third of the nation's high school students and their work will be supported by $42 million dollars from six foundations and public grants.
 
With lawmakers and business leaders rallying around the need to better align high school with the demands of college and the workforce, other goals of education, such as preparing students for citizenship, received little attention.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more information about EDPolicy Update, please contact Christy Guilfoyle (cguilfoyle@ascd.org).
 
 
© 2005 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:53 PM 0 comments Links to this post

HIGH-STAKES TESTS FOR STUDENTS OFTEN FAIL TO MAKE THE GRADE,
NATIONAL ANALYSIS FINDS

The Education Policy Studies Laboratory (EPSL) would like to call your
attention to “The Inevitable Corruption of Indicators and Educators Through
High-Stakes Testing,” released by the Great Lakes Center for Education
Research and Practice.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (Friday, March 18, 2005)—America’s public schools are
setting goals and making harmful, irreversible decisions based on test
results that in an increasing number of cases can’t be trusted, said an
independent study from the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State
University.

The report, made possible by a grant from the Great Lakes Center for
Education Research and Practice, determined that the pressure of high-stakes
tests is forcing school districts to take short cuts to avoid being labeled
as failing for not meeting certain benchmarks. As a result, their scores
are subject to corruption.

“Policy makers have oversold the public on the notion that high-stakes test
scores are the best way to hold schools accountable,” said Teri Moblo,
director of the Great Lakes Center. “Because of No Child Left Behind and
other measures, school districts know that the results of one or two tests
determine if they are considered successful. This creates enormous pressure
on educators and their students, because long-term decisions are being made
based on scores that can’t be trusted.”

David Berliner and Sharon Nichols, co-authors of the report, “The Inevitable
Corruption of Indicators and Educators Through High-Stakes Testing,” point
to examples of how unbridled pressure to reach unrealistic goals, whether in
the boardroom, on the playing field, or in our own government, can
inevitably lead to a “beat-the-system” mentality.

“Now we see this kind of mentality seeping into our schools, where future
generations are training merely to beat the system,” Berliner said.
“Learning subject matter in depth is no longer the goal of schools in
high-stakes states. We are witnessing proof of a well-known social science
law, which basically says the greater the pressure to perform at a certain
level, the more likely people will find a way to distort and corrupt the
system to achieve favorable results.”

Dr. Berliner suggests scrapping high-stakes tests and building an
accountability system that is less inviting to cheating and distortions, and
better measures students’ and schools’ achievement. A second report on
high-stakes testing commissioned by the Great Lakes Center due out in the
coming weeks will look at the relationship between the pressures to succeed
on high-stakes tests in a particular state, and whether that pressure
actually does improve student learning.

In this study, however, the researchers looked at other effects that
high-stakes tests have on our nation’s school systems. Hundreds of news
articles about high-stakes testing were examined. “Because it would be
impossible to comprehensively catalogue every incident where high-stakes
testing led to serious problems, our survey seems only to have uncovered the
tip of the iceberg,” said Berliner.

Some of the findings included:

• Teachers’ and administrators’ inability to be flexible about test
administration meant a 14-year-old student whose brother was recently
murdered was not allowed to be excused from a test;

• Eighty percent of North Carolina’s elementary school teachers report
they spent more than 20 percent of their total teaching time practicing for
high-stakes tests;

• In New York, city school officials were accused of pushing thousands
of students out of high school and into high school equivalency programs.
Students who enrolled in such programs did not count as dropouts and didn’t
have to pass the Regents’ exams necessary for a high school diploma; and

• A Georgia science teacher estimated 10 percent of the questions on
the science section lacked a “best” answer because of errors in the
information provided to students. State administrators acknowledged the
errors even as some students failed to receive a high school diploma because
they didn’t pass the tests.

“Teachers are desperate to help their students and schools succeed. We
found example after example where teachers worked very hard to help students
from challenged schools raise their scores, but in the end they were still
labeled as failing,” said Berliner.

Drs. Berliner and Nichols identified 10 trends that outline the consequences
of high-stakes testing, which ultimately all negatively impact the quality
of education for our nation’s children. The trends are:

• Administrator and Teacher Cheating;
• Student Cheating;
• Exclusion of Low-Performance Students from Testing;
• Misrepresentation of Student Dropouts;
• Teaching to the Test;
• Narrowing the Curriculum;
• Conflicting Accountability Ratings;
• Questions about the Meaning of Proficiency;
• Declining Teacher Morale; and
• Score Reporting Errors.

The full report is available at www.greatlakescenter.org. The mission of
the Great Lakes Center is to identify, develop, support, publish, and widely
disseminate empirically sound research on education policy and practices
with the explicit goal of improving the quality of public education for all
students within the Great Lakes Region.

This document is also available on the web at:
http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/documents/EPSL-0503-101-EPRU.pdf

Contact: David C. Berliner (480) 965-3921 (email) berliner@asu.edu or Teri
Moblo (248) 444-7071 (email) tmoblo@mymea.org or Alex Molnar (480) 965-1886
(email) epsl@asu.edu

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:24 PM 1 comments Links to this post

State of the Beat: How Are the Kids
Publication Date: 2005-03-14

By LynNell Hancock


The author, former education editor at Newsweek, is an assistant professor
in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She observes that
the scandal in Houston shines a Texas-sized spotlight on the new world
facing education reporters around the nation, reporters too tied to top-down
reporting habits.


Columbia Journalism Review
March-April 2005


"We have no dropouts!” Robert Kimball declared in a sarcastic e-mail to his
boss, the principal of Houston’s Sharpstown High School, in November 2002.
Sharpstown had just reported that none of its 1,650 students had left
without graduating or transferring elsewhere, and the assistant principal
could not believe the math. “Amazing! We go from 1,000 freshmen to less than
300 seniors with no dropouts.”

Kimball soon learned that Sharpstown’s strange statistics were no anomaly.
Two other inner-city Houston high schools that ordinarily lost about half
their students by graduation also reported zero dropouts. A dozen more
schools reported losses of less than 1 percent. His suspicion grew when he
calculated that Sharpstown’s teachers and administrators had received
$75,000 in bonuses as accountability rewards for keeping children in school.

In February 2003 a local television station checked out Kimball’s worst
fears. Investigative reporters at the CBS affiliate KHOU-TV tracked down
several actual dropouts, including a seventeen-year-old student who
Sharpstown officials claimed was enrolled in a private school. In fact, she
was working behind the counter at a Wendy’s. Following up on the story,
Texas state auditors discovered that the district including Sharpstown
falsely recorded nearly 3,000 high schoolers as “moved away” or
“transferred” instead of as “dropouts.”

Months later, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and 60 Minutes
weighed in with their own analyses of Houston’s dropout data, finding more
inconsistencies along the way. The big media were attracted to the story
because Houston was at the epicenter of the “Texas Miracle,” the standards
and accountability reform movement championed by former Governor George W.
Bush. Their stories revealed that scores of mostly black and Latino students
in Houston were held back in the ninth grade for several years, enabling
them to avoid taking the tenth-grade graduation exam, a test that had been
diluted over time to include many questions better suited to sixth- through
eighth-graders. Children who repeated ninth grade ended up dropping out in
large numbers, and only half the students who did graduate went on to higher
education. Not exactly the stuff of miracles.

The tricks and truths were buried by the numbers, and all but ignored for
years by The Houston Chronicle. The city’s only remaining daily paper should
have owned the story, and years earlier, but its coverage habits were
cemented in a model that kept reporters out of classrooms. Education
reporters were conditioned to cover “schools” instead of “education,” to
come at the beat from the top down by reporting on district policies without
comparing them to real-life results or assessing their classroom relevance.
So the Chronicle’s initial dropout stories simply repeated the district’s
1.5 percent rate, and gave critics the token, brush-off-for-balance
treatment at a story’s end.

The scandal in Houston shines a Texas-sized spotlight on the new world
facing education reporters around the nation. It’s a complex beat, in flux,
under new scrutiny. Old top-down reporting habits — never adequate to begin
with — become even more dangerous when used to analyze the impact of such
far-reaching, top-down reforms as the elimination of social promotion and No
Child Left Behind, the landmark federal act that brings President Bush’s
twin philosophies of accountability and market competition to bear on the
messy business of education. Not surprisingly, these reforms, which have
more to do with managing school systems than teaching kids, work best when
they operate in a centralized, businesslike manner. Since management systems
depend heavily on measuring tools, the standardized test — education’s most
popular assessment measure — takes on added importance. All this exacerbates
the press’s tendency to rely on official sources, and on the seductive power
of the test score as the sole measure of success. To avoid the trap of
oversimplification, reporters need a working knowledge of everything from
psychometrics to education theory in order to untangle where the numbers end
and the truth begins.

At the same time, education reporters are continually trying to figure out
who’s really in charge as they negotiate a changing bureaucratic terrain. At
least seven big-city mayors have assumed control over their school systems
from school boards in recent years. And as their appointees, often
tight-lipped lawyers and corporate executives, replace educators as school
superintendents, accessible sources such as principals or school board
members have become scarce. Parents, often the most credible school sources,
have been effectively pushed further down in the pecking order.

Ironically, just when some reporters are losing touch with their true
subjects — children — many parents are becoming more curious about what
exactly is happening in the classroom. In wealthier districts, so-called
“helicopter parents” hover over every aspect of their children’s lives,
scouring relevant reports as they groom their offspring for success in the
world of high-stakes testing and college admissions. In low-income
neighborhoods, parents rely on the media to help them negotiate the new
rules and new tests, along with the new possibilities for tutoring or
transferring as they angle to keep their children from being left behind.
Both groups of parents want to know the difference between standards and
standardized tests, between reading scores and real knowledge. But such
stories don’t lend themselves to simple answers, and so are too often missed
by reporters who come at the beat from the wrong end.

Education reporters at The Houston Chronicle could have provided their
readers with trustworthy coverage of the high school dropout paradox had
they looked for stories in closer proximity to the blackboard. A simple head
count of freshmen and seniors in homerooms on any given day would have
confirmed suspicions. How could there be so many more ninth-graders than
twelfth-graders? Where had all those kids gone? Any high school student or
teacher would have been able to tell a reporter about one or two people who
had left school before graduating, thereby disproving the zero-dropout
assertions.

But no one was there to tell.

It’s always tempting to say that today’s pressures on journalists are more
overwhelming than those of the recent past. But in the world of public
education, the evidence is stark. The story has branched off into broader
and more complex directions in a relatively short span of time. Large-scale
school reforms in the works for more than two decades are becoming more
prevalent, the tools that measure them more potent, and the punishment for
failure more dire. Voters and parents demand more and better information in
order to know where their kids and their schools stand. At the same time,
the high-level politicians in charge have a pressing interest in keeping a
lid on unfavorable school data, and in keeping journalists away from the
schoolhouse door. Their political lives are at stake.

President Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind Act is one such politically
charged management plan that has altered the reporting landscape. The
federal government has never played such a powerful monitoring role in the
life of individual public school students, even though it still contributes
less than 10 percent of total school funding. The measure glided through
Congress with unprecedented bipartisan back-slapping during the tumultuous
months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Both sides of the aisle were
eager to find something positive to unite them, and in No Child Left Behind
— the fruit of decades of growing centralization — they found goals that few
could reasonably debate. No Child is based on the premise that all children
in public schools should receive a high-quality education from a
well-prepared teacher, and that schools should be accountable for serving
every child, regardless of race or disability. Children in failing schools
are technically eligible to transfer to better ones or receive free
tutoring. The law seeks to close the achievement gap between whites and
minorities by requiring schools to openly report their data by race and
ethnicity, and by imposing a variety of sanctions on any school that fails
to improve learning for all students.

But the devil is in the solutions, which have little to say about proven but
expensive goals like reducing class size or offering incentives for highly
qualified teachers. The act recognizes standardized test scores alone as
measurements of achievement; it ignores performance assessments that can
include students’ writing skills and teachers’ views. (Close to $400 million
was added to No Child Left Behind for testing companies to design new
high-stakes exams, and a burgeoning $2 billion test-preparation industry has
moved into a place of national prominence.)

The second part of No Child Left Behind reflects Bush’s belief that the
private sector is best equipped to carry out public reforms. Schools that
don’t report adequate test scores over time could face being taken over by
for-profit companies or charter schools. Students in failing schools can
technically transfer to better ones or receive tutoring, preferably from
private test-prep companies. Other hidden line items betray the law’s
politically conservative agenda. Federal money to train history teachers can
be used only for “traditional” American history, meaning a fact-based
curriculum about national leaders, and not a multicultural approach about
social movements. Sex education must emphasize abstinence even though no
scientific data show that this curriculum approach helps reduce AIDS or teen
pregnancy. The public was largely unaware of these consequences when the
bill passed.

If No Child Left Behind raised the stakes for school districts, it also
raised the stakes for those who cover them. The education story became a
national political story (read: more important) the day the bill passed, and
its initial handler was the Washington press corps. The coverage underscored
the benefits of the unusual Democratic-Republican alliance that helped push
the bill into being. It heralded the importance of imposing high standards
and requiring full disclosure for schools that can no longer hide the
failure of their most vulnerable students. And it forecast four years of
welcome attention to the public schools. In other words, the news was good.
But Washington reporters did little to shed light on the 1,000-page
measure’s finer points, at least initially, preferring instead to parse its
political implications.

Now that the law’s full effects are settling into elementary and middle
school classroom reality, more critics are speaking out against it, and
talking to reporters. The Department of Education was so concerned about the
growing bipartisan wave of criticism that it paid $700,000 to a public
relations firm to promote No Child and rank individual reporters’ coverage
of it. Then, in January, USA Today broke the story that the department had
paid Armstrong Williams, a conservative black pundit and radio host,
$240,000 to shill for the Bush administration’s main education initiative.

Everyone agrees that quality standardized tests can be useful as one of many
measures of success, or of failure, but they’ve been given an elevated role
that they cannot sustain. Under No Child Left Behind, mandatory testing for
third- through eighth-graders will be used to make decisions that the test
makers agree their products were never meant for — whether a child passes, a
teacher fails, a principal is rewarded, or an entire school is shut down.
During the next four years, the Bush administration plans to spend another
$1.5 billion to expand this testing strategy into the nation’s high schools.

Assessing the meaning and validity of such tests requires a pool of
sophisticated reporters who can navigate the world of statistics, business,
human development, teaching and learning methods, neuroscience, politics,
race, and culture. A few news organizations, like the Baltimore Sun, are
responding to the changes wrought by the federal act by redesigning the
education beat as an investigative challenge. And the Chicago Tribune now
employs five reporters to cover a beat with more than 400,000 students. Less
impressively, The New York Times deploys just three writers to cover a local
school system more than twice the size of Chicago’s. Most papers, though,
like The Houston Chronicle, have undergone cutbacks, leaving their education
reporter, if they even have one, with little time for much more than chasing
the latest press release. Lisa Walker, executive director of the Education
Writers’ Association, estimates that newspapers lost as many as 15 percent
of their reporter positions nationwide over the last five years, up to 30
percent at some larger papers. “We’re concerned,” she says. “With fewer
people, are they going to be able to go beyond the surface?”

National education reporters such as Sam Dillon and Diana Jean Schemo of The
New York Times have made the new federal law a natural focus within their
beat, contributing insight into the general knowledge of its impact on
education. Each has probed the law’s positive impact as well as chronicling
the games states play by lowering their passing grade or finding ways to
keep disabled and new immigrant children from taking the tests at all.
Dillon wrote movingly about the absurdity of holding troubled children to
the same standards as those whose parents do not routinely lose their jobs
and move their families from school to school. For some of those children,
it’s a triumph to get them inside the school building, without further
traumatizing them as test failures.

Still, by far the best No Child Left Behind stories have percolated straight
up from local schools, where the voices of teachers and children bring the
national policy home to readers. The Chicago Tribune has devoted rare energy
to such a project. Its city and metro staff have produced more than 400
stories on the subject since the act was passed, many of them memorable.
Instead of battling a torrent of numbers or playing poker with test
rankings, Tribune reporters dug behind the data, analyzing their origins and
putting a human face on their percentages.

Tracy Dell’Angela told the story of a public elementary school in the suburb
of Aurora that had turned around its failing school, pouring efforts into
new reading specialists and extra programs. Morale at Rollins elementary was
high, as children began responding and Rollins’s reputation grew. But then
low results from a test for new-immigrant children, required by No Child
Left Behind, pummeled the school into a failing category. “We celebrated our
scores. We know we did well. But we’re still considered a failure,”
Principal Karen Hart told Dell’Angela. “It’s just hard to put on your game
face and keep going when it’s not recognized beyond our four walls.” The
Rollins school, Hart explained, now faces the “painful prospect of setting
aside money that once went to reading specialists and after-school programs”
for tutoring and transportation costs.

Another Tribune reporter examined the fruit of moving children out of
failing schools. Stephanie Banchero followed third-grader Rayola Carwell
from her South Side Chicago home in the morning until she arrived, two hours
later, tired, hungry, and late at a better school thirteen miles away.
Banchero illustrated through the experience of a nine-year-old why only 500
out of 270,000 eligible children transferred out of their failing Chicago
schools last year, and why 37 percent who left ended up leaving their new
schools as well.

Media coverage in Chicago was not always this probing. During the
mid-nineties, when the dynamic ceo Paul Vallas was running the schools,
reporting hewed more closely to his aggressive agenda. Vallas, who now heads
Philadelphia’s schools, understood that strategic media relations would be
vital to his success. Reporters complained they could not get him off the
phone, an odd phenomenon for big-city beat reporters. And the coverage in
the heady early years of reform in Chicago was held captive by Vallas’s
announcements, rarely leavened by the reality, or analytic research, on the
ground.

Vallas was pushing a top-down, high-stakes policy that has become popular
with the new breed of mayors and businessmen leading public schools:
preventing “social promotion” by holding underperforming students back a
grade. The strategy appeals to educational bureaucrats because it advertises
their zero tolerance for mediocrity. And it appeals to bored education
reporters in search of stories charged with the drama of sink-or-swim
scores.

Unfortunately, like No Child Left Behind, the story of social promotion is
rarely reported from a student’s or school’s perspective. Even more
surprising, stories about the campaign against social promotion barely hint
at the raft of research showing that retention in grade does more harm than
good. Philadelphia has tried it, as have Baltimore, Houston, Washington,
D.C., and New York City (three times), along with about twenty-one other
school districts nationwide, all with similar results. Instead of infusing
coverage with knowledge of the past, reporters hungry for some excitement on
the beat tend to embroider official pronouncements, writing as if the policy
is a new idea.

Just last year, New York City residents were subjected to yet another ritual
of misleading stories about grade-retention policies. New York’s education
reporters should be well schooled on the subject, but they’re not. In the
early 1980s, the city school system installed a massive “Gates” program that
held back students in the fourth and seventh grades who failed a
standardized test. In other words, the test serves as a “gate” that opens
and closes for fourth- and seventh-graders, depending on the scorer. The
program was eventually scrapped as an ineffective waste of money. Then, more
than fifteen years later, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani famously and ambitiously
revived the practice late in his second term, imposing grade retention in
six consecutive grades, third through eighth, at a cost estimated at $564
million a year. At the time, most reporters seemed too absorbed in the
squabbles between the mayor and his chancellor to pay much attention to
behind-the-scenes program details. The “Gates” fiasco was almost never
mentioned. Education research assessing grade retention was not considered
in the coverage. Few in the media revisited Giuliani’s big initiative after
the initial burst of confetti was swept away.

The clearest indication that Giuliani’s idea was an academic bust came five
years later, at a March 2004 press conference held by his successor, Michael
Bloomberg. The current chancellor, Joel Klein, a former antitrust lawyer and
Clinton White House deputy counsel, lamented that 37 percent of the city’s
ninth graders were failing. “We can’t continue the way we’re going,” Klein
told reporters, “which is pushing children through the elementary schools.”
The chancellor was endorsing the mayor’s idea, announced a few weeks
earlier. Bloomberg, the first mayor in more than 130 years to have direct
control over the school system, said he would launch a program to hold
failing third-graders back. No one in the press noted that the same
ninth-graders whose failure Klein deplored had already been subjected to a
far more sweeping grade retention plan for six straight years — which
apparently hadn’t done much good. “It’s as if collective amnesia had
overtaken everyone,” lamented Noreen Connell, executive director of
Education Priorities Panel, a New York City research group. “Reporters and
politicians.”

The New York Daily News has since clambered onto Bloomberg’s grade retention
plan as a civic cause, printing editorials extolling the “glorious” numbers
of third graders passing out of mandatory summer school. News stories about
the plan in the tabloid, meanwhile, tend to be free of analysis and barely
mention the conflicting research. Both Daily News editorials and news
stories framed the policy as a political volley: a “win” for the mayor and a
“loss” for status-quo critics. Only The New York Times examined this third
attempt to hold third graders back with a data-based glance at the past. A
Times education beat reporter, David Herszenhorn, dug up a seminal 1998
study by the National Research Council on the issue. He spoke to a range of
respected education experts. In the midst of the controversy a University of
Chicago research group released a long-term study showing that Chicago’s
aggressive eight-year practice of holding third-graders back did more harm
than good.

Herszenhorn needed only to pull the clips of a predecessor’s 1997 school
coverage to understand the complexities of teaching a class of
eight-year-olds to read, mysteries that remote test results could never hope
to capture. Nearly a decade ago, after convincing his editors at the Times
that an immersion approach would be the best way to document the new era of
high-stakes testing among those who were supposed to matter most, Jacques
Steinberg spent a full year ducking in and out of Ted Kesler’s third-grade
class at Public School 75 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The result was a
potent glimpse into the stew of human triumphs and tragedies in the city’s
public school classrooms.

Steinberg followed Kesler from home to work, brambling through the nine-year
teaching veteran’s whims and tragedies. He entered the homes of many of the
third-graders, watching one eight-year-old vie for homework space with her
five siblings. An immigrant boy struggled with kindergarten-level books. The
series of stories showed on a profound level the daunting daily journey of
thirty children, all at different stages of reading, with varying capacities
and passion for English. Their education was far more daunting and far more
miraculous than an end-of-the-year test could gauge, yet the test loomed
like the story’s villain, waiting to deliver its defining judgment.

Of course, blending this level of depth and color into education stories
requires that educators open their classrooms to reporters, an invitation
that has grown even rarer under the new era of top-down management regimes.
In New York City, Joel Klein heads a newly centralized school system that
tries to shield itself from public scrutiny more scrupulously than any
previous administration. Most principals now routinely tell reporters they
need permission from central headquarters before speaking to the press —
permission that rarely materializes, and certainly not on deadline.
Herszenhorn said a story he wanted to pursue on changes, including the new
standardized math and reading curriculum, was put on hold because the
chancellor’s office initially insisted on choosing which schools he could
observe — obviously, an unacceptable bargain. By the time the Department of
Education relented, the Times had dropped the idea.

Access to public school systems should be a given in a democracy (a right
that demands a large helping of media responsibility). Narratives from
inside and outside the classroom are powerful testaments to a shared sense
of civic values, and an understanding of the role of education in sustaining
a democracy. The best coverage confronts the complicated world of education
not as a managed system of test results and ordered reforms, but as a busy
intersection of culture, race, child development, pedagogy, neuroscience,
and politics.

Ira Glass painted on such a canvas last October with a piece on This
American Life he called “Two Steps Back.” Glass focused on a gregarious
Chicago public school teacher on the verge of quitting because of changes
wrought in her school by the city bureaucracy.

The piece is distinguished by a ten-year journey back into the archives.
Glass dug up tapes he compiled in 1994 when he spent a year for NPR’s All
Things Considered inside two schools, including Washington Irving Elementary
School, which had transformed itself into a model of urban success amid
Chicago’s ambitious reforms. Glass had wanted to know how. It had no extra
money, no special status as a magnet. What he learned about Washington
Irving was this: kids simply wrote all the time and read all the time. The
crusading principal was a master at fending off bureaucratic mandates.
Teachers took over the curriculum. They made sure the parents came to school
at least three times a year. The faculty designed elaborate narrative report
cards that guided their curriculum. They stayed late, came in early, and
found ways to keep respect for learning and for each other alive in the
classroom.

Ten years later, Glass found the exemplary Washington Irving teacher, Cathy
La Luz, in her classroom, near tears on his first day of reporting. La Luz
was watching helplessly as the teachers’ carefully honed programs were
slowly unraveling. Mandates from central headquarters were flooding in, and
the new principal was doing little to divert them. Little indignities, like
a new requirement to turn in daily lesson plans, were eroding the teachers’
sense of autonomy. Their self-designed report cards were scrapped. Teachers
were required to write the state education goal of the day every day on the
blackboard. The demand for uniformity from Chicago Public Schools
headquarters had become overbearing. Officials were setting goals that La
Luz felt were vague and lower than the school’s own.

Glass took listeners inside La Luz’s classroom, where children’s voices took
over as they hashed out new endings for a book they were reading. We hear La
Luz coax a daydreaming child to find where his attention had disappeared to.
We hear the children banter with her about her new hairstyle and her new
outfit. Then we hear the despair in her voice as she agonizes over whether
she can endure the slow erosion of the profession she deeply loves. It is
education journalism at its best, rich with nuances and context, alive with
children’s voices and conflicts. The story said as much about the future of
high-stakes, top-down reforms as it did about the future of urban teaching.
Glass noted that the X factor in school reform is the chemistry between
teachers and children, a fragile eloquence that can easily be garbled if it
is not respected by outside contractors, outside authorities, outside
monitors. “Not that anybody wants to hear that,” Glass commented at the end.
“They don’t want to hear it.”

But perhaps they do.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 1:13 PM 2 comments Links to this post

First battle in Lege's schools package is contentious, narrow, and roughly partisan
BY AMY SMITH
March 18, 2005


As public education advocates see it, one of the most frightening features of the school finance bill that limped out of the House last week is a provision that could spell the beginning of the end of public schools in Texas. This unraveling process would start by empowering the state education commissioner to turn over control of low-performing schools to private, for-profit companies. If the bill were in effect today, some estimates reflect that as many as 375 school campuses would qualify as candidates for private takeover.

This is just one of the things about House Bill 2 that worries Rep. Mark Strama. The Austin Democrat had at one point considered supporting the bill, if only because of the property-tax relief it would bring to people in his middle-income swing district in northeast Travis Co. But in the end, Strama concluded, "You shouldn't have to hold your nose to vote on the most important issue of the session." Strama had in fact gone back and forth on the bill until an hour before the second-reading vote last Wednesday evening. He had spent the day wearing a look of visible anguish as he moved across the House floor, conferring with one senior colleague or another. Every once in a while he would study a running stream of notes, or add a new entry, like this one: "Takeover of public schools by for-profit corporations ... could affect several Travis County schools, including Connally HS, Johnston HS, Lanier HS, Reagan HS, McCallum HS."

Strama credits the plainspoken advice he received from a former school superintendent, Rep. Bob Griggs, R-North Richland Hills, for helping him make up his mind. Griggs, one of only nine Republicans to vote against the GOP bill, shared similar wisdom with the entire House just moments before the vote: "This bill is just plain old junk food," he told members. "It provides that sugar rush immediately, but the funding falls apart after a very short period of time."

Switched Votes and Twisted Arms

All things considered, no amount of funding above the existing $3 billion in "new" money – which, if it materializes, will be sufficient only to return funding to 2003 levels – could wipe out the concerns public school advocates have about placing at-risk schools in the hands of for-profit companies. The provision was troubling enough for the Republican-dominated House to nearly support an amendment by Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, to remove the offending language, and only some extraordinary maneuvering by the leadership allowed them to defeat Coleman's amendment. Houston Republican Martha Wong moved to table, but the amendment survived, 73-70. A few moments later, Speaker Tom Craddick abruptly identified four Republicans whose voting machines had "malfunctioned" – reversing their votes and tabling the anti-privatization provision.

Of course, the only "malfunction" Coleman noticed was the arm-twisting used to scare up just enough votes to sink his amendment. "People across the board, regardless of party, are concerned about this," Coleman said a couple of days later. "But sometimes people who agree with you are reluctant to push [voting] buttons."

Coleman's beef with the private education companies – Edison Schools Inc. is the outfit most frequently mentioned, but there are others waiting in wings for Texas schools – is that they have a history of failing students while draining precious tax dollars from public schools. HB 2 provides the latest wrinkle to allow privatization in the door, via private charter companies. Because charter schools currently don't get state funding for facilities, the bill would essentially remove that financial hurdle by handing existing facilities over to private corporations. "This isn't a voucher for a child," Coleman says, "it's a voucher for an entire school." From a broader perspective, Coleman sees the bill as just another piece of the GOP's privatization puzzle, in Texas and nationally. "This is about the undoing of the social compact – the undoing of public schools, the undoing of Social Security, the undoing of Medicaid. They run their agenda and they run it hard."

HB 2 now rests in the hands of the Senate, where Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has promised to improve the bill and its equally controversial tax companion, HB 3, which was still stumbling at the gate early this week. Assuming the bills survive that process, the education package will go to conference committees to work out any differences. Opponents of both plans express only a little hope of dramatic improvement down the line.

A Mortgaged Future

The litany of complaints against HB 2 continues to mount from teachers, administrators, school districts, parents, and other school advocacy groups – everyone involved in education, it seems, except voucher proponents, the wealthiest school districts, and major business interests. The Coalition to Invest in Texas Schools, which represents organizations from every school district, defends its opposition to the bill with findings from a study by state demographer Steve Murdock. His oft-cited demographic indicators predict a lackluster economic future for Texas unless state leaders invest more dollars to close the academic gap between economically disadvantaged students and their peers. The House leadership insists that the bill brings new money to public schools, but the Texas Federation of Teachers points out that the $3,000 teacher pay raise lawmakers added to the bill "is nothing more than a sham, part of an elaborate shell game that the teachers and school children of Texas have no hope of winning." Critics point out that lawmakers have yet to identify the funding source for the proposed raise and see it as little more than an empty promise – or a threat to other social programs that will be held hostage against the education bill and meet the axe when the appropriations bill finally hits the House floor.

Copyright © 2005 Austin Chronicle Corporation. All rights reserved.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:57 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Task Force on No Child Left Behind--Final Report
Thursday Mar 10, 2005

Executive Summary

The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB): to close or dramatically narrow the differences in achievement among American students that cross lines of skin color, ethnicity, immigrant status and wealth. The success of American democracy and our economic future depend on a society in which everyone is educated to their full potential.

State legislatures and local schools have been working for many years to improve the quality of education for all students and to close the achievement gap. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) does not encompass a new goal handed down from the national level; rather, it crystallizes efforts that were under way in states and classrooms all over the country.

Passage of NCLB in the fall of 2001 generated immediate interest among state legislators and prompted an unprecedented number of inquiries to the National Conference of State Legislatures regarding the content of the law and its relation to existing state education statutes. It was clear that the law had struck a chord across the political spectrum, eliciting both passionate support and fiery opposition in both political parties and among liberals, conservatives and moderates. Legislators’ questions fell into two categories: What do we need to do to make the law work and how can we effect improvements to it through additional congressional or administrative actions?

In March 2004, the Executive Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures created a Task Force of state legislators and legislative staff and asked them to focus on the latter of the two questions. It directed the Task Force to dissect the law, conduct hearings throughout the country, consult with practitioners and other experts, examine the pertinent literature and research, and formulate a comprehensive set of recommendations geared toward improving the No Child Left Behind law, making it more workable, more responsive to variations among states and more effective in improving elementary and secondary education.

The bipartisan Task Force met eight times in 10 months and, on January 29, 2005, presented the attached final report to the NCSL Executive Committee, which unanimously approved it. The report has six chapters. Most of it—chapters two through five—recommends very specific changes that could be made to the law. The first chapter, in contrast, raises fundamental questions about the act’s underlying philosophy, and the last chapter addresses one of the most vexing questions raised by legislators: the federal funding available for NCLB. The balance of this summary provides a chapter-by-chapter overview of the report.

For entire report, go to http://www.ncsl.org/programs/educ/nclb_report.htm

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 10:05 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Note: This entire report is a worthwhile read. -Angela

March 16, 2005
LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
Public education depends upon public support and involvement to work effectively. Schools educate our children, create knowledgeable citizens, and contribute to a qualified workforce for our communities. They are the backbone of our democracy, and a fundamental building block of our communities. Yet, the promise of good schools for all will not be fully realized until every member of the public—business leaders, parents, grandparents, community leaders, and ordinary people—demands that schools be the best they can be. Schools must have the advantage of the resources the public can provide—not least of which is our concern and active involvement.

Fortunately, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act offers the nation powerful tools to know and demand more of our schools. NCLB puts into law what the public has long believed: that every child should have the opportunity of a high-quality public education. NCLB is not self-enforcing. It must be implemented with knowledge and accountability to achieve its ambitious and worthy goals for our children and for the nation.

Over the past nine months, Public Education Network (PEN) held a series of public hearings around the country, and conducted an online survey to gauge Americans’ reactions to NCLB. The purpose of these hearings was not to hear from government leaders or professional educators entrusted to manage the nation’s schools, but to hear from people from every walk of life—parents, students, civic leaders, service providers, and voters—about how NCLB has affected their communities, and what is going well or needs to be improved in the implementation of the law.

We want to thank you, the American public, for coming to the hearings to tell us your views, and for responding to our online survey. Your experiences were compelling, your answers thoughtful, and your messages powerful. We will carry your words back to the public, and to policymakers and media across this country. You spoke loud and clear.

The public wants NCLB to meet its goals. The hearings and the survey also revealed that the public has serious concerns about the way the law is being implemented. And there are numerous factors outside NCLB’s purview—such as local funding inequities and educators’ reluctance or inability to engage with low-income parents and communities—that thwart the ability of this law to succeed.

In this letter, we want to share with you some of the key findings from the hearings and the survey, and to suggest ways that NCLB can be improved. These suggested changes would make it more likely that our collective goals would be achieved, and that the law would receive the full support of the American people. As Maria Leon, a parent from Los Angeles put it (in Spanish): “I don’t want No Child Left Behind to stay a wonderful idea. I want it to really become as it should be and have it really serve to improve our children's education and that way, better our community as a whole.”
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Gauging Public Opinion

No Child Left Behind has generated an often-heated public debate, probably the most intense discussion of public education policy in the last half-century. For the most part, the reported discussions have been among leaders of education organizations and elected officials. There has been little attempt to find out what students, parents, community members and the public think about the law.

To find out, Public Education Network fanned across the country from May to October 2004 and held a series of hearings in eight states: Pennsylvania; Massachusetts; California; Ohio; Texas; Tennessee; New York; and Illinois. Hundreds of people attended the sessions. In addition to the hearings, PEN conducted an online survey to which some 12,000 people responded.

Many participants said the hearings and the survey provided a very welcome opportunity for citizens to voice their opinions about an important public policy. They are rarely invited to offer their views; when they are, the invitation is often a token gesture with minimal attention given to their perspective. While not all of the participants shared a detailed knowledge about the workings of the law, parents and other members of the public have strong, valid ideas that should be heeded.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


What PEN Learned

Strong Support for the Goals.
The American public strongly supports the goals of NCLB. Only one public hearing participant, and only a fourth of the survey respondents, wanted to repeal the act.

The public understands the President’s and Congress’ message about accountability for student performance. There was particularly strong support for the notion of holding schools accountable for improving student performance, which many participants said was far too low for too many young people. “Passing the buck cannot continue when it comes to our children,” said one Lancaster, Pennsylvania parent. “There should be no
reason why our children are graduating without the necessary skills to be productive members of society, and far too many are.”

Parents and the public also strongly praised the idea of performance data disaggregated by racial, ethnic, socio-economic, language minority, and special education status. They said that showing the performance of each group sheds light on the inequities often hidden by reports of overall school performance.

Most expressed concern that the strength of the law—accountability for the performance of all students—could also be a weakness. The stigma resulting from a school being labeled “in need of improvement,” commonly understood as a euphemism for “failing,” is hugely demoralizing to students, parents, and communities, particularly in those places where we need the law to succeed. Students report that their diploma is “worth less” if it comes from a “failing” school, and good teachers often leave such schools.

Perhaps the most troubling issue raised in PEN’s hearings is NCLB’s unintended consequence of pitting parents’ concerns for their children against their desire for acknowledgement and respect. There is tremendous blaming of those students seen as more responsible than others for a school’s failure to meet its Adequate Yearly Progress goals. The children most often singled out are those with disabilities.

In order to ensure that accountability, the heart of standards-based reform, succeeds at the local level, and that public backlash doesn’t build sufficient momentum to eviscerate it, every means possible should be used to counteract the stigma associated with the labeling of schools.

Concern over the limits of tests.
While the public appreciates the light that NCLB shines on student performance, many are also concerned that the picture that is revealed is not always accurate. Nine of ten survey respondents said a single annual test cannot tell if individual students are performing satisfactorily, or if a school needs improvement.

Moreover, many said the tests that are in use focus on too limited a set of skills. And, they argued, test-based accountability has led many schools to resort to irrational practices. “The tests completely took over the school,” said one Columbus, Ohio student, “but if you look deeply, students haven't really learned anything. So the school is failing, in a way.”

Concern over a lowering of standards.
Although NCLB was intended to raise standards for all students and eliminate achievement gaps, participants at the public hearings pointed out that some states, in an effort to ensure that schools meet their annual targets, have actually lowered those targets. And many schools have abandoned earlier, more ambitious learning experiences in order to achieve short-term gains in test scores.

Some pointed out that Advanced Placement classes and programs for gifted and talented students have been sacrificed to support remediation for low-performing students. Others noted that alternative programs for students at risk of dropping out, which often provide more time to reach standards, have been eliminated because of graduation-rate statistics that measure whether students graduate “on time.” Some said the proficiency demands for students with disabilities and English-language learners are unreasonable. Said one grandmother from Erie, Pennsylvania: “Setting standards that are impossible for these children to achieve only sets them up for failure.”

Concern over standards for teacher quality.
Public hearing participants and survey respondents praised NCLB for focusing attention on teacher quality and for requiring states and districts to hire highly qualified teachers. Despite the law’s requirement for public reports on teacher quality, few parents knew what the qualifications of their school’s teachers were. Only a fourth of the non-educators responding to the survey had received information on teacher qualifications.

Although nearly all teachers are “highly qualified,” according to state reports to the U.S. Department of Education, few survey respondents believe that teachers meet that standard. Only 20 percent of non-educators think all teachers are qualified, and only 54 percent think “most” teachers are qualified. And many parents testified that the standards for ‘teacher quality’ may be too low. In addition to certification, they want teachers who have real teaching skills and high expectations of their children.

Concern over the lack of information.
Despite NCLB mandates to the contrary, few members of the public have information about the assessments, the quality of teachers, or the availability of choice or supplemental educational services in their schools and districts. Almost two-thirds of the respondents in the online survey said that NCLB had not made a difference in the amount or quality of information they received about schools.

Moreover, many said that when information is provided, it is often too late to be useful and is filled with jargon. The public must go to extraordinary efforts to become well-informed. The public wants specifics—the climate of the school, teacher qualifications, classroom size, sources and use of funding, and comparisons with schools in other districts—in accessible language.

Concern about an unwillingness to involve parents or community organizations.
Although the law expressly provides for parent involvement, many schools have resisted these provisions and have worked actively to exclude parents who wish to become involved in improvement activities. Some parents said that they felt that they were allowed to participate in school improvement efforts only as tokens to fulfill paperwork requirements; others reported that they were even subjected to restraining orders.

“I went to a conference where [NCLB] was first introduced, and I was so excited because it felt like they were talking to me,” said Martha Alvarado, a parent from Edgewood, Texas. “And they kept saying, ‘We need parents involved.’ And I said, ‘I’m right here…’ But the schools don't know how to deal with parents. For some reasons, they feel threatened.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
What We Are Asking Federal, State and Local Officials to Do

The hearings and the survey made clear that the American public strongly endorses the goals of No Child Left Behind and supports its continuation. And the public has some very strong opinions about how the law and its implementation can be improved so that it achieves its goals.

In particular, President Bush, this Administration, and Congress should:
• Enforce NCLB's parent involvement provisions. The law includes a number of important provisions that enable parents to play active roles in school improvement. In most school districts these provisions have languished and parents have met resistance from school officials when they tried to get involved. This is particularly true among minority parents. By enforcing the provisions already in the law, the federal government can send a strong signal to states and school districts that parents can and should be active partners in school improvement.
States and districts should provide professional development for school personnel to help make this happen.

• Enforce the law's information requirements. Because of NCLB, states and districts have produced a wealth of information on school performance, teacher quality, and other factors. This information is not widely available, and much of it is difficult for parents and the public to understand. To make parent involvement meaningful, the Administration should enforce the law so that states and local school districts provide more information about state accountability, the uses of assessments, and teachers’ qualifications in their schools in a comprehensive, timely, and accessible manner, translated into home languages as necessary.
States should set and enforce standards of quality for information dissemination, and provide redress for people not receiving appropriate information.

In particular, as long as the law's choice provisions remain unchanged, school districts must provide information in a timely and accurate basis in order for placement decisions to be made before a school year begins.
• Keep the public in the conversation. Few states and school districts have the capacity to carry out all of the functions they are expected to perform under NCLB. They can expand their capacity by forming partnerships with community-based organizations—if the Administration would provide flexibility to allow such partnerships.

Community-based education organizations (CBEOs) can serve many roles in supporting district implementation of NCLB. They can, for example, be a channel for public voice and help communities develop a consensus about the qualities they want their school graduates to have; how assessments can support those goals; what qualities teachers need to help students attain those goals; and what responsibilities parents and communities must assume. This consensus can be integrated with NCLB reporting requirements so that it becomes part of the “report card” to the public.

CBEOs can also provide information to parents and communities about the purpose and use of the assessments used by the district; they can assist in the collection, interpretation and presentation of data about assessment results, qualifications of teachers, and the designation of schools. CBEOs can educate communities about what “needing improvement” means, what the consequences of such a designation are, and what the entire community can do to help the schools.

In addition, CBEOs can support districts in implementing the supplemental services provisions of the law by issuing their own “report cards” about available supplemental services.

In addition to these administrative changes, we believe that Congress should fine-tune the law when it comes up for reconsideration, so that it works more effectively. In particular, Congress should amend the law to:
• Hold states accountable for performance and for enforcing the law. Currently, children, their schools, and school districts are accountable for meeting annual targets for student performance. The states, which set the targets and establish the NCLB structure, face no consequences when large numbers of students fail to meet these targets. Penalties should be imposed upon states, parallel to those imposed upon school districts, when insufficient numbers of children within the state meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets. These should include the
designation of states as “in need of improvement” or “in corrective action” with the concomitant assistance and sanctions described in NCLB.

In addition, the Administration should enforce states’ compliance with NCLB. And states, school districts, and schools must allocate adequate resources and equitably distribute them to ensure that all children have the opportunity to meet proficiency standards.

Federal, state, and local officials should provide financial incentives to ensure that highly qualified teachers are teaching in low-performing schools.
• Count school progress toward AYP. The reaction of teachers and administrators to test pressure has put enormous stress on students, and has led to significant narrowing of the curriculum, with teachers focused primarily on test preparation while ignoring other subjects. Immigrant students report being pushed out of school. To reduce these incidents, schools should receive AYP “credit” for making
significant progress toward proficiency targets, as well as for crossing over the bar.

• Provide supplemental services before allowing choice, and ensure quality services. Although parents of children in low-performing schools desperately want improvement, they would much prefer the option of receiving supplemental education services before the option to transfer their child to another school. In practice, the choice option is not working because there are not enough spaces in higher-performing schools and because parents value neighborhood schools. By providing support to students first, Congress could help support neighborhood
schools while giving them time to improve, rather than abandoning them. When choice is provided, if insufficient slots are available in higher performing schools, students should be permitted to transfer to schools in neighboring school districts.

At the same time, supplemental service providers need to be held to higher standards. Some parents have found that services for English language learners are not available, and that the quality of service is variable. Federal officials and states should require SES providers to adhere to the “highly qualified teacher” provisions and the research-based requirements of NCLB, in addition to the other criteria specified in the law.

Given the magnitude of NCLB’s intent to transform public education and the opportunity that the legislation proffers, it is especially critical that public officials work closely with educators, community members, parents, and students affected by this law. The main thrust of the federal law is to make public schools function transparently, on the theory that an informed public will demand that students, teachers, and schools perform as they should. If they have easy access to information on standards, teacher qualifications,
curriculum designs, and test scores, then parents, policymakers, and the public will have the leverage they need to call their schools and educators to account. With the knowledge they have, the public has validated the law’s goals, and they have also demanded important changes to ensure that the needs of every segment of the community are met.

The education of our children is one of the most central responsibilities we have as citizens in a democratic society. Let us work together to make certain that this law achieves all of its promise to offer the next generation a democracy even stronger than the one we inherited.

Thank you, again, to the thousands of Americans that participated in this process.

Report may be accessed at:
http://www.publiceducation.org/portals/nclb/hearings/national/Open_to_the_Public.asp

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:56 AM 0 comments Links to this post

by Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Co-Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810    fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org

The National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) invited a group of its members to participate in a discussion with FairTest staff, at the NABE conference in January, on two documents, the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB and the Draft Principles for Authentic Accountability. We focused on our discussion on what accountability should be for bilingual/bicultural students. I found a rich and complex discussion, getting deep into questions of culture and community, what it means to be educated, the complex needs of assessment for bilingual students, and more. I am belatedly writing up my somewhat sketchy notes. Each new paragraph represents a different speaker. Monty Neill, FairTest
 
How to hold politicians accountable? Money is needed for adequate ESL and training, for libraries. Money has to buy the right things. Public schools are the only chance for ESL kids.
 
NCLB is misguided. How can Congress vote No when the mood of the electorate is punitive?
 
On the Principles, I liked the idea of tracking progress over time. Need to add that accountability is now based on subject-area tests without acknowledging that these are language tests as well. Need assessments in different languages. The system does not accommodate children.
 
Must create assessments for ELL students. Other language is one option. Alternate ways to respond – paper and pencil and other statewide measures. Most reliable assessment is the test; there is a tension between psychometric rigor and what can be useful in a classroom. ELL population is the least politically savvy and recognized. Kids need sustained native language instruction.
 
Who is advocating for the learners? If you reject the language of the child you also reject the child's culture.
 
In the draft, you talk about ends. Need to talk about system and processes, not just ends or end state tests. NCLB says you can test in native language. The goal is not just assessment, needs to be instruction and curriculum. Need also to refrain from using negative terms to define kids, including LEP. Even ELL implies only learning English. Need new terms so kids are not defined by their deficiency.
 
Need a stronger statement on ends and purposes of schools. Parents and communities don't see NCLB as defining what they see as important. Statement says society can set goals, but in Native American and Latino communities we have profound concerns about what it means to be a person and an educated person. NCLB implements a vision that is abusive. Not everyone wants access to the mainstream.
 
A good education is much more expansive than NCLB. NCLB should espouse good educational pedagogy for all learners; we must attack bad policy.
 
What is the locus of decision-making, the role of the community. Never had a centralized education policy like NCLB; it runs rampant over community.
 
Assessment and instruction for ELL interacts with many factors. Who are the students; they evade classification; standardized achievement tests are used, we all know those problems. E.g., use LAS for ELL and non-ELL, big overlap. Large number of ELLs have higher language proficiency than non-ELLs. So is issue of classification, we lack good classifications. Under NCLB, when become proficient in English they are out of ELL (after 2 years, for counting purposes), so the group can never make AYP. Legislators may have good intentions, but they don't know about assessment or children. In NCLB, 200 pages on ELL, say assessments must be valid and reliable, but do not define it or say how to get it.
 
There are questions we all face around tensions between national and local, as was raised earlier. How do we ensure rights without doing it in a way that damages education?
 
Standards and accountability is playing into the hands of those who way they want kids simply to learn English. People have been conditioned to buy into the English focus. Need a strong statement on national language assessment and strong support for that. Need to say other languages are legitimate and support learning English. Assess reading in native language – can be reading proficiency not in English. NCLB does not speak to native language instruction and assessment. NCLB legitimizes the inferior status of minority groups based on mainstream, English. Yes, learn English, content can be in any language. English cannot be measuring stick.
 
Every major organization supports native language instruction: IRA, NCTE, NAEYC, TESOL, NABE, etc – but they are not used as a resource. Need to provide native language instruction and connect to kids lives, hold systems accountable for that.
 
Accountability must look at schools' responsiveness to learners.
 
Need accountability at the state level. If you don't have a person at state level to be sure school district is accountable.
 
Work toward holding states and districts accountable.
 
There is no data on the graduates of ELL bilingual programs.
 
We need a reality-based policy. Find out truth and base policy on that. How long does it really take to learn English? The kids are often not in the system long enough to find out – they leave.
 
The Hispanic caucus was mildly supportive of NCLB, said would end the hiding of achievement gaps. These folks don't understand the way the law works. LEP always below by definition – if meet the standard, are not included. Now they are ready to look at major changes – but they do not want a system that does not count, find gaps; they want something.
 
Convey damage that bad accountability causes. Some in Congress say either must be punitive or we are giving excuses. A program in Oregon that is excellent, but 70 percent of students are ELL and now they face sanctions. We have to look at inputs and outputs.
 
We are losing public relations in the ELL area, even among parents, the media is too strong. New NABE will play an active and important role in reversing this. We are setting up an advisory committee on this, and need support.
 
We should have NABE town hall meetings in Congressional districts. Score card on members.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:16 AM 0 comments Links to this post

by William E. Davis, Ph.D., Director, Institute for the Study of Students At Risk, College of Education and Human Development, The University of Maine.

Your recent editorial, Room To Improve NCLB (Feb. 26-27) succinctly and accurately addresses many of the key problems related to this national educational reform law, particularly those involving its critical Adequately Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability provision. As cited in your editorial, the National Conference of State Legislatures Final Report on NCLB, just released, offered several constructive
criticisms of NCLB along with specific recommendations to remedy its shortcomings. Many of the recommendations for improvement are sound, particularly those involving the need for increased financial support and for greater flexibility at the state and local levels. However, it is suggested that the problems with NCLB are much more substantial and more pervasive.
The stated overall goal of NCLB is to close or dramatically narrow the achievement gap among all American students: between poor kids and affluent kids; between racial/ethnic minority students and White students; between students with disabilities and non-disabled students; between immigrant children and those children born in this country. A noble goal, indeed. Yet, the unfortunate reality is that many of policies and practices that have been put in place in American schools in an effort to conform with NCLB provisions are destined to produce severe, negative consequences for the very students this law was designed to help: those students assumed to be at greatest risk for dropping out of school.
The major underlying problem with NCLB is that it confuses “measuring” students and schools for “helping” them. The laudable standards-based educational reform effort has degenerated into little more than a “standardized testing” movement. Clearly, valid and reliable assessments are important, and indeed, necessary - primarily to inform instruction. However, NCLB currently has transformed into a “test and punish” law. Seemingly countless are the numbers of ways that students and schools can be deemed “failing” as a result of this test-driven law.
Frequently lost sight of in discussions involving the AYP provision of NCLB is the “third indicator” of academic achievement [in addition to reading and math proficiency] required for high schools to meet AYP accountability - the high school graduation rate. This provision was intended to serve as a safeguard to discourage schools from raising the achievement levels by “pushing out” lower-performing students. However, U.S. Department of Education regulations and guidelines issued since the passage of NCLB, have gradually “watered down” the “high school graduation rate” indicator of academic improvement required for AYP accountability. First, states are required only to set a graduation rate for students in the aggregate. States are not required to collect and report graduation data by subgroups which is not the case for collecting and reporting academic testing data (achievement test scores in reading and math).
Second, yearly progress is strictly required in “test scores” but to a much lesser extent with respect to graduation rates. Schools and districts need only to set a fixed goal for graduation rates, which can be whatever a state chooses it to be - 50 percent, 40 percent. 90 percent, or whatever. These actions arguably provide strong support for the argument that NCLB is being interpreted essentially as a test-driven accountability measure. The graduation academic indicator largely is being ignored. It is suggested that this can have devastating consequences for many of our nation's students who are considered to be at “high risk” for dropping out. Given the nation's unacceptably low high school completion rate[suggested to be 68 percent according to one recent study] it is critical that we need to pay more attention to those students who are most likely to drop out of school - and to provide them with both the academic and the social supports that they require to remain in school.
As stated by Gary Orfield , Director of the Civil Rights Project, Harvard University (2004), “The real incentive exits for schools to discharge or push out these students [low academically achieving students] -- or to encourage these students to leave school early in order to keep schools from being sanctioned. Without a strong graduation rate requirement as a measure of AYP -- schools can simply continue to focus on academic tests - deal with a smaller number of achieving students -- and other students will be lost. Why? Because whether these students actually graduate or not is not being recognized or valued as a measure of AYP.”
Another very disturbing consequence of NCLB is suggested to be the large increase in the number of students who are being retained in grade because of their academic problems, failure to pass required assessments etc. Results of several recent studies yield strong evidence that student grade retentions in many of our schools have significantly increased since the passage of NCLB, with its high stakes testing and its discouraging of social promotion provisions. The results of one recent study (Haney et. al, 2004) indicated that the national attrition rate for students between the ninth and tenth grades has nearly tripled [students are disappearing between the ninth grade and tenth grade] strongly suggesting that significantly larger numbers of students are being retained in the ninth grade. Promoting students who are not adequately prepared certainly is not the solution. However, it is clear that neither is retention.
Virtually all empirical studies conducted to date suggest that retention, even in the lower elementary grades, significantly increases the likelihood of dropping out of school. It has been widely reported that even one retention strongly increases the likelihood of a student dropping out [four times the likelihood] and that more than one retention almost assures that a student will eventually drop out. The current high academic achievement and high-stakes testing educational reform movement, one which discourages social promotion, and, as many researchers suggest, encourages student retention, presumably will have a major impact on the number of students who drop out of school and who will fail to receive their regular high school diploma - widely regarded a minimum requirement for successfully “making it in today's society.” Arguably, increasing numbers of students will leave school early.
Finally, several national studies have identified the most important features or elements common among successful student dropout prevention programs. An academically challenging curriculum was one important element identified. Skilled and committed teachers who have the administrative support, encouragement, and flexibility to provide students with an intensive and highly individualized program (both academically and socially) was another element identified. However, by far, the most important element identified in these studies was the importance of close, personal relationships between teachers and students. One might seriously question, given the excessive demands and expectations currently being placed on today's teachers as a result of NCLB., as well as Maine's own additional student testing requirements, just how much time and energy will be left for real teacher-student personalization. Unfortunately, I suspect, in many cases, very little.
As suggested in your editorial piece, it is encouraging that rigorous reviews currently are underway to improve key provisions of NCLB, most notably its AYP provision. This is a good start. However, I suggest that the real problems with NCLB are more substantive and pervasive - essentially its “test and punish” underling assumption. In order to remedy these problems, it likely will require a good deal more than “tweaking aspects” of the law. In its present framework, NCLB is attempting to apply a “one-size fits all” solution for the multiple and complex problems being faced by many of our nation's, and Maine's, most vulnerable children and youth -- and their schools.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:49 AM 1 comments Links to this post

Kids Who Need Help Don't Get it Under No Child Left Behind Law
James Walsh,  Minnesota Star Tribune
March 13, 2005

The No Child Left Behind law makes ambitious promises to hold all schools accountable for student achievement and to raise all children to their grade levels in reading and math. But the law's loopholes allow hundreds of schools and more than 82,000 struggling Minnesota students to slip through untouched, a Star Tribune analysis has found.
In all, nearly 10 percent of Minnesota's students last year -- and 83 percent of all the students who scored poorly on state tests -- were overlooked by the law.
The law is beginning its fourth year. But even when it is fully implemented in 2014, more than half of Minnesota's students could fail and still receive scant attention from No Child Left Behind.
That's because the law focuses only on schools it labels "underperforming" -- that is, schools where students don't improve enough on standardized tests.

Of those underperforming schools, the law imposes consequences only on the schools that receive federal funding for students living in poverty.
Schools that are not on the underperforming list might have many students who don't score at grade level on tests. But if enough of their students do well, the school escapes any consequences of the law and those kids get no extra help.
And schools that are on the underperforming list but don't receive the federal money also receive no consequences from the law, other than the embarrassment of being placed on the list. Even in 2014, those schools' underperforming students will get no help.

What this means is that a vast majority of underperforming students are not currently helped by No Child Left Behind and won't be for years to come, if ever. Out of the 98,556 Minnesota students who scored below grade level in reading or math on the 2004 Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, 82,140 got no help from the law. Just 16,416 of the 98,556 struggling students went to schools that receive the most scrutiny under the law.
The Star Tribune's analysis has found six ways in which struggling students are overlooked:

• Their school never makes the underperforming list. Last year, nearly 1,600 Minnesota schools were not on the list. At those schools, 54,415 students scored below grade level, but because the schools aren't on the list, they'll get no extra help. Avoiding the list hasn't been that hard. Until this year, nearly 35 percent of students could fail statewide tests and their school would still be considered adequate. The law requires higher passing rates over time, but it still will be many years before the law will require most schools to address their underperforming students.

• Their school doesn't have enough poor kids. Another 27,725 children who scored below grade level last year attended schools that were on the list but did not receive the Title I money meant to help low-income students. The remedies of No Child Left Behind -- allowing students to leave failing schools, requiring that money be set aside for tutoring and even the potential restructuring or closure of failing schools -- apply only to Title I schools. Out of the 481 schools that were on the list in Minnesota in 2004, 283 were not Title I. Overall, only about 40 percent of U.S. schools are Title I.

• There aren't enough special-needs or minority kids to count. The law judges schools by the achievement of smaller groups of students, based on race and ethnicity, special needs or income. But states can decide if there are enough students to warrant counting in a particular group. In Minnesota, schools must have at least 20 students in any minority group tested for their scores to count; there must be at least 40 special-education or children learning English for their scores to count.

• Wiggle room can keep a school off the list. States can set their passing scores very low to begin with, making it appear that more kids are doing well and protecting schools from penalties. The law also lets states adjust those goals even lower if they have more minority or special-needs students. That makes it even easier for schools to stay off the list and results in more children failing without the law taking notice. 

• Someone else is getting the help. When the law requires a school to provide extra services, such as tutoring, the services don't necessarily go to the lowest-scoring kids. Those services go to kids based on poverty, not on test scores.

• Changes are likely to make more kids go uncounted in the future. While every child is supposed to do well by 2014, the law comes up for congressional reauthorization in 2007. Already Minnesota and other states are demanding more flexibility -- flexibility that will keep more schools off the list. Many local education officials suspect that No Child Left Behind will never require every child to do well.
State Education Commissioner Alice Seagren agrees that the law doesn't pay attention to thousands of struggling Minnesota students. But, she said, she believes that will change as people learn more -- and expect more -- from their schools.
"That's the next level of discussion," she said. "The public is not going to let us off the hook. The public is going to demand it. I think the fact that you're raising the issue is good. We need to have this hard discussion, and we will."
Bob Brick of the PACER Center, a Minnesota advocacy group for students with disabilities, lamented that so many struggling students are being overlooked.
"It's very disappointing that the rhetoric of No Child Left Behind doesn't match the reality," he said. "If we've created a significantly sized loophole, so that not only students with disabilities but those who have limited English proficiency or other minority populations are being systematically excluded from having their test scores released, I think it's a very sad state of affairs for Minnesota education."
James Walsh is at jwalsh@startribune.com
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1592/5285180.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 6:32 PM 1 comments Links to this post

EL PASO TIMES
Thursday, March 10, 2005

Gary Scharrer
Austin Bureau

AUSTIN -- More than 90 percent of El Pasoans could end up paying higher taxes under legislation designed to pay for lower school property taxes, according to an analysis of the tax bill that Texas lawmakers will consider today.
The tax measure pushed by House Republican leaders would partly swap school property taxes for new and higher sales taxes and a payroll tax. It follows a narrow (76-71) House vote Wednesday night for a controversial school-funding plan.
All five House members from El Paso voted against the school-funding measure, House Bill 2, which requires final but routine action today before it advances to the Senate.
El Paso grandparent Richard Morales made a trip to the Capitol to tell lawmakers "no thanks" to the school property tax cut they are proposing because, he said, he can't afford it.
"I am highly disappointed at what I'm seeing. It's a double whammy and a bigger burden for the people who can least afford it," Morales said. "Thanks, but no thanks."
Morales said the school finance bill and the tax bill both harm lower-income families: "I am definitely frustrated, and I'm getting pretty angry because we've been fighting for more equity on the border.
"We're trying to get more equity for poor school districts, such as we have in El Paso," said Morales, who has four grandchildren. "My concern for them is, what will they do for their education? My concern, obviously, is the future of the younger generation."
Only households making more than $100,593 a year would pay fewer taxes if House Bill 3 passed, according to a report by the Legislative Budget Board. Families earning less than $100,000 would pay more taxes than they do today.
Only about 6 percent of El Paso households had incomes of more than $100,000 in 2003, according to Census Bureau estimates.
Put another way, 94 percent of El Paso households would see their total tax bills go up under HB3, based on census estimates and the budget board analysis.
El Paso's median household income was just under $30,000, suggesting that the typical El Paso family would incur about a 5 percent increase in their tax payments under HB3.
Morales, a member of the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization, said he was pleased that El Paso legislators are opposing both the school-funding plan and the tax reform proposal.
The school-funding bill will become void unless lawmakers approve the even more controversial tax measure that counts on more sales taxes and a new payroll tax.
In addition to benefiting wealthier Texans at the expense of middle- and lower-income families, the tax bill has also come under assault by an assortment of consumer and conservative groups.
Lawmakers who vote for the tax bill do so at their own political peril, Rep. Paul Moreno, D-El Paso, said.
"I suppose there will be some empty seats here come next election," he said.
But Republican leaders are pushing GOP legislators to support the tax bill.
"To ensure that the effort to reform our education system and to reduce property taxes stays on course, it is vital that the members of the House follow the leadership of Speaker (Tom) Craddick and Chairman (Jim) Keffer and pass HB3," Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday night. "I urge the House of Representatives to pass HB3 and send the entire education reform proposal to the Senate so that work can continue and the process can proceed."
Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, has warned for months that state leaders would try to pass a tax plan that hurt lower-income Texans more than others.
"This debate should be about great schools, not tax cuts for the wealthy," Shapleigh said. "What HB2 and 3 do is the great Texas tax shift. The top 3 percent win, and everybody else loses. In the end there's nothing for schools. I see no support for HB3 in the Senate."
One of the few groups actively supporting the tax plan is the Texas Association of Realtors, which cites economic studies showing that proposed property tax cuts would create jobs.
"Many are ignoring that the benefits of the property tax cut for those in lower-income groups," said Tom Morgan, a spokesman for the Texas Association of Realtors.
"If someone earning $20,000 a year purchases a $100,000 home, they will save $500 on their property taxes with the tax cut. That is close to a third of one month's paycheck, which is a significant savings and makes them that much more able to afford the house."
House members this week are tackling two of the most contentious issues in the Capitol -- taxes and school funding.
The vote against the school-funding plan was easy for El Paso legislators, partly because the measure did not address a court order to spend more money on students who are harder to teach -- those from low-income families and students who are deficient in English. About 75 percent of El Paso's 165,000 students come from low-income families.
The school-funding bill is "just not good for El Paso, simply because it creates a caste system," said Rep. Chente Quintanilla, D-El Paso, a retired school administrator.
But Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, said his school-funding bill takes "a historic step toward creating a world-class education system."
"This legislation adds $3 billion new dollars for teacher pay, schools, and students, cuts local school property taxes by a third and creates new standards for more efficient spending of education dollars," Grusendorf said.
Every education and teacher group opposed the plan.
"HB2 is not an education bill. It is an empty promise. It promises a pay raise -- without the money to make it happen. It promises a health insurance stipend -- but not to the people who need it most," said Donna New Haschke, president of the Texas State Teachers Association.
"In the final analysis, it is really a scheme that uses our schoolchildren to promote a tax system to reward only the wealthiest Texans," she said.
Gary Scharrer may be reached at gscharrer@elpasotimes.com; (512) 479-6606.
Inside
* How our representatives voted 2A
* How the tax proposal will affect Texans 2A
* Details of HB3 2A
* Senate bill would penalize universities that increase tuition 2A
Copyright © 2004 El Paso Times.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:42 PM 6 comments Links to this post

Note: A colleague from the northeast just sent this to me. It's still getting circulated. -Angela

Afro-American Newspaper, Baltimore, Oct. 29, 2005

By Henry A. Hurst
AFRO Staff Writer "Today, Nancy Grasmick, I place you under citizen's arrest," roared Lorne Francis, 17, a senior at Baltimore City College and a spokesperson for the Baltimore Algebra Project, as he presented his arguments to the Maryland State Department of Education during a board meeting.
"You are charged with two counts of refusal to obey a court order and 85,000 counts of reckless endangerment."
On Oct. 26, students rallied outside the offices of the State Department of Education to pursue a request that State Superintendent Nancy Grasmick be placed under citizen's arrest for her non-compliance with Circuit Court Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan's June 2000 order and August 20 ruling that an immediate $30-45 million be given to the Baltimore City Public School System by the state.
In his ruling, Judge Kaplan stated: For the fiscal years 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 alone, the state unlawfully under-funded the Baltimore City Public School System by an amount ranging from $439.35 million to $834.68 million. The state cannot avoid its constitutional obligation to provide adequate funding to BCPSS by focusing on management deficiencies.
Affirming the constitutional right of children to an adequate education, Judge Kaplan ruled that the education of city school children could not be shortchanged to "pay down" the school system's debt.
Kaplan ruled four years ago that the state should provide the school system with about $2,000 more per student per year.
"The ruling is currently on appeal," said William Reinhard, spokesperson for state education department. "It should be emphasized that neither the state board nor the state superintendent appropriates funds. I'm not certain the students or their sponsoring teachers understand this important part of the equation. Funds for Baltimore City are appropriated by the General Assembly and the Baltimore City Council."
Inside, however, the rally proceeded. With signs in hand, dozens of students from schools around the city filled the board meeting room, their eyes focused on Grasmick. Many were part of the Baltimore Algebra Project, a Baltimore City student-run non-profit organization that tutors middle- and high-school students in math.
While students inside confronted the board members, others continued to rally outside, passing out flyers and with a bullhorn, telling the downtown crowd about the inadequacies that persist at their schools.
"It is terrible that these adults are not mature enough to comply with a simple order," said Chelsea Carson, 16, a junior at Baltimore City College and demonstration coordinator, as she forcefully vented her frustrations.
"Because of this, the school system is in total disarray. We have unqualified teachers. We have over-crowded classrooms. We have a lack of books, so people have to share books in class. In my math class at City College, we have to use dittos every day because there are not enough books to distribute to the class. This is ridiculous. They have the money, but they just don't want to give it to us."Â Â
Back in the board room, Lorne Francis, a representative of the Algebra Project, approached the speaker's desk, saying: "Under normal circumstances, my address might begin with good evening, but truth be told, I saw my last good evening eons ago. Where's the money?"
Dr. Edward Root, president of the state education board, repeatedly banged his gavel, saying, "You're out of order!" As the standard three-minute time limit expired, Francis continued until he finished his speech. As Root banged the gavel again, one gentleman shouted, "What happened to freedom of speech?"
When Francis stepped away from the speaker's table, Root announced, as he sent for police, "We will not tolerate another outburst like that."
Another student, also representing the Algebra Project, approached the speaker's table. "The school board will not act until there is a 'Columbine' here in Baltimore," asserted Charnell Colbert, 17, a senior at Baltimore City College. After her three minutes expired, Colbert continued, saying, "We ask that Nancy Grasmick be placed under citizen's arrest." Root banged his gavel, stopping her in mid-sentence. As Colbert continued, the board members walked out of the room, leaving the students, parents and teachers livid.
"I think the board's actions in response to the speech speak for themselves," said Francis. "The board has yet to show it cares for the children of Baltimore City. I think that's a testament to their refusal to obey court orders. And when they walked out, I'm honestly convinced that they don't care."
The board was not available for comment, but released a statement concerning their departure from the room:
"The state board is eager to hear from students and has done so on an almost monthly basis for decades. To make the process fair for everyone, the state board's rules limit public comment to three minutes. Written testimony of any length is accepted and encouraged. It is unfortunate that the students refused to adhere to the rules they had agreed to before appearing. It also was unfortunate that some of the students resorted to personal attacks rather than speaking directly to the issues they had interest in."
"I expected them to walk out and I'm glad that they did, because it proved what we've been saying all along," said Colbert. "When they walked out on us, they showed that children really are being left behind."

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I want to thank all for a very successful statewide Teleconference on high-stakes testing. It was a multi-voiced event that included the views of children, including the powerful views and commentary by eleven-year-old Macario Guajardo and Luz Valenzuela Zamora, my nine-year-old daughter. A second Teleconference with other cities may be in the works, as well as an Austin rally, press conference and lobby day. To receive information on these next steps, please log on to www.doraolivo.com or you may call Representative Dora Olivo’s office directly at 512-463-0494 or toll free at 888-777-0033.

The hard, organizing work was carried out by Josh Cinelli in Representative Olivo’s office, as well as by his wonderful UT-based team, including Florencia Gutierrez, Linda Prieto, Linda Jackson, and Mary Ellen Alsobrook. Thanks as well to our participating sites, University of Texas Health Sciences in Houston with Dr. Linda McNeil from Rice University; University of Texas Pan American with Dr. Francisco Guajardo; and the University of Texas San Antonio site with Drs. Belinda Flores and Ellen Riojas Clark. Thanks also to Al Kauffman who joined us via telephone from Harvard University. Notwithstanding a few glitches, I want to congratulate everybody on excellent teamwork on pulling off what appears to be the first statewide teleconference out of our state capitol.

Our primary intent was twofold: First, to inform the public on Representative Olivo’s legislation addressing high-stakes testing, namely HB 1612 and HB 1613; secondly, to address the subject of the end-of-course (EOC) exams that are contained within House Bill 2 which passed out of the Texas House this week.

HB 1612 addresses high-stakes testing at the third, fifth, and soon, at the eighth grade levels, meaning that you cannot be promoted to the next grade without passing the TAKS exam. The Olivo legislation says that children should be evaluated holistically, using multiple measures (like grades, test score information, teacher recommendation, etc.) that can compensate for poor test performance. (The bills are on her website, www.doraolivo.com).

HB 1613 addresses high-stakes testing at the eleventh grade or exit level. That is, currently, high-stakes consequences are attached to the exit test. Specifically, children cannot graduate from high school unless they pass the eleventh grade TAKS exam. Again, the Olivo legislation calls for a holistic assessment of students’ abilities in meriting graduation from high school.

Regarding the 14 additional proposed end-of-course exams (see what these courses are below), Texas LULAC’s position was offered last night as well—as per the critique and analysis of these specific provisions within HB2 appearing below. Collectively, as well, we feel that adding more high-stakes testing to schools is wrong-headed and pedagogically unsound. There is nothing in scholarship on child development or student assessment to suggest that scaring children into learning is good policy. Our own children expressed these views last night.

Feel free to circulate this information. In closing, I wish to underscore that those of us involved do not see the Olivo legislation as Republican or Democrat. It is pro-child and pro-assessment. Our goals are not to support any party, but rather to bring our experiences, knowledge and expertise to the fore in order to promote sound educational policies for children in Texas. Thank you for your interest and support.

Angela Valenzuela

Analysis of the CSHB2 Testing Provisions

By

Angela Valenzuela, Education Committee Chair
Texas League of United Latin American Citizens
(with assistance from Oscar Cardenas and Anna Alicia Romero, IDRA)
March 8, 2005

A student may not receive course credit unless they perform satisfactorily on the end-of-course (EOC) assessment for the course (actual courses appear at bottom). That is, they have to pass all their EOC tests to obtain course credit.

A student may graduate and receive a diploma only if they 1) pass the TAKS test and pass their EOC exams, or, 2) for special education students, successfully complete an individualized education program.

A school district may issue a certificate of coursework completion to a student who successfully completes or passes the EOC exams (and thusly receives course credit) but who fails to pass the TAKS test.

Finally, student transcripts will indicate whether the student received a diploma or a certificate of completion based on the new end-of-course exam criteria. [Note: The law already differentiates on student transcripts the following: 1) whether the student took the minimum, recommended, or advanced high school program; and 2) whether students receive a certificate of completion based on the regular route of obtaining course credit.]

Administration of end-of-course assessment are to begin no later than the 2008-2009 year. During the transition time, the commissioner may retain TAKS for school and district ratings.
Analysis

The most positive aspect of the new end-of-course (EOC) testing requirements is that students are able to be assessed on material in the semester that they take the course, rather than being held accountable for material that they took 1 or 2 years prior to the exit exam.

This benefit, however, is effectively neutralized by the fact that students will still have to take the TAKS exam with this built-in problem.

TAKS will be phased out by 2008, but there is no indications whether the EOC process will itself be the substitute or whether the EOC will be used in combination with another state-mandated exam.

Because of the way in which the TAKS exam is beneficial to generating campus and district ratings, there is probably little incentive to eliminate the use of standardized testing via the use of a standardized exam.

The proposed changes place the student in double jeopardy; that is, through additional testing requirements, their chances of not receiving a diploma are substantially increased.

The new end-of-course (EOC) testing requirements are being pursued without studying the effectiveness of the current system.

For students on low-performing campuses, the problem is exacerbated. Under the bill, low-performing campuses could either get closed down or be taken over by private management companies (such as the Edison Project, a for-profit firm) that have no record of success.

This level of extreme state intervention is based on the grossly implausible premise that a level playing field in the quality of personnel and instruction exists across all courses offered in every school and in every classroom in our state.
?
Proposed End-of-course exams in HB2

(c) The agency shall also adopt end-of-course [secondary exit-level] assessment instruments for secondary-level courses in
Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Integrated Physics and Chemistry, English I, English II, English III, World Geography, World History, United States History, and any other course as determined by rule by the commissioner [designed to be administered to students in grade 11 to assess essential knowledge and skills in mathematics, English language arts, social studies, and science. The mathematics section must include at least Algebra I and geometry with the aid of technology. The English language arts section must include at least English III and must include the assessment of essential knowledge and skills in writing. The social studies section must include early American and United States history. The science section must include at least biology and integrated chemistry and physics.

FOR THE ENTIRE BILL, GO TO: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/textframe.cmd?LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER=H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=00002&VERSION=2&TYPE=B

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 12:33 PM 0 comments Links to this post

I can't locate the source of this article. Got it off of Gerry Birnberg's blog. -Angela

Lawmakers from MALC give House Bill 2 an “F”

HB 2 fails kids, fails teachers, and fails the test of leadership
AUSTIN - Members of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus - Texas House of Representatives (MALC) joined together today to criticize the current version of House Bill 2 saying that the bill fails kids, fails teachers, and fails the test of leadership.
“Right now, I give House Bill 2 an ‘F’,” said State Rep. Pete Gallego, Chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. “House Bill 2 fails our kids, fails our teachers, and fails the test of leadership.”
House Bill 2 fails Texas children because it does not provide enough money to guarantee every Texas child an exemplary public education. It also widens the equity gap equity between a handful of haves in 23 school districts, and every other child in Texas. For example, under the current version of HB 2, Highland Park gets a 52% increase in per pupil funding while Houston ISD and San Antonio ISD only receive a 4% and 3% increase, respectively. The funding increase for the vast majority of Texas kids (approximately 90%) will barely outpace the rate of inflation.
“HB 2 leaves 90% of the children in Texas behind,” said State Rep. Pete P. Gallego. “The disconnect between this bill and the basic needs of Texas school children is appalling. We need a system that ensures 100% equity, not one that widens the gap between rich and poor, leaving 90% of our Texas school kids behind.”
HB 2 also fails Texas kids by institutionally under funding critical educational elements identified in the state’s adequacy study. Currently, the state provides $877 for economically disadvantaged kids. HB 2 cuts that amount to $665. The state’s own adequacy study suggested spending $1960 for economically disadvantaged kids. The same adequacy study suggested that the cost for limited English proficiency was $1248 per student. HB 2 cuts funding for limited English proficiency to $450 per student. “House Bill 2 does not even live up to the woeful standards of adequacy outlined in the state’s own study,” noted Gallego.
House Bill 2 also fails our teachers because it lacks an across the board teacher pay raise, opting instead for an arbitrary and problematic incentive program that would likely result in 90% of our teachers being out of luck. Teacher salaries in Texas are currently $6,252 below the national average. A great education begins with a great teacher, and an across the board pay raise is the best way to recruit and reward great teachers.
“We need to put our money where our mouth is,” said Representative Aaron Peña. “The Texas Legislature must send a clear message to the school teachers around the state: that we value their hard work.”
Finally, House Bill 2 fails the test of leadership by systematically under funding the educational system in Texas. Not only does the bill provide no new money for education, it does not even fully restore the $3.7 billion in cuts and cost shifts enacted last session.
“House Bill 2 doesn’t even get us back to par,” said Gallego. “You can’t start talking about ‘new money’ until you restore the $3.7 billion in cuts and cost shifts that were enacted last session.”
In its current form, House Bill 2 will merely put the State of Texas on the fast track to more school finance litigation. House Bill 2 is a roadmap for disaster. It does not provide the promise of hope and opportunity to all Texas school children.
“We all know what the problem is,” said Gallego. “The system is starved. It needs more resources, and I hope the leadership will have the courage to offer a real solution. A judge has ruled that our current school finance system is unconstitutional. I don’t see how House Bill 2 changes that fact or keeps us out of court.”

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 1:38 PM 0 comments Links to this post

by Kathy Miller, TEXAS FREEDOM NETWORK
Thursday, March 10, 2005
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Parents have made it clear that they know what's needed to improve their neighborhood public schools. Yet too many of our state's leaders in Austin don't seem to be listening.

A recent bipartisan poll found that nearly three-fourths of Texans want more state money for public schools. Sixty-two percent want that money to pay for proven reforms that have been helping improve public schools for two decades.

Those reforms have included standards for small class sizes, early reading intervention, strong accountability measures and more equitable funding for poorer school districts. These standards have been so successful that the governor and state education commissioner have both touted rising student test scores.

But instead of building on these successes, our state's leaders are pushing radical and even reckless proposals that would undermine public schools. Sadly, these lawmakers are bowing to the demands of wealthy political donors and for-profit corporations whose primary interests conflict with the expressed wishes of Texas parents.

A voucher program tops the list of irresponsible proposals. Vouchers would drain hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools to pay for tuition at private and religious schools. A recent Texas Poll found that Texans oppose vouchers by 55 percent to 39 percent. Yet Gov. Rick Perry and House Speaker Tom Craddick have both made it clear that they will press ahead with a voucher scheme this legislative session.

Support for vouchers is tied to big money. Perry, in particular, has received huge political campaign contributions from wealthy voucher backers such as James Leininger of San Antonio. In fact, Leininger picked up the tab last year when he and other voucher supporters met with the governor in the Bahamas to plot strategy on overhauling public education.

Legislators have already filed two bills (House Bills 12 and 1263) that would create enormously expensive pilot voucher programs in the state's largest school districts. Such a scheme could divert hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools — nearly a third of the additional public school funding pledged so far by House leaders.

The education overhaul bill by Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, (House Bill 2) also includes a number of reckless proposals. One would allow "exemplary" schools to ignore the very standards that have helped their students succeed in the first place. Those are also the same standards that Texans clearly support, including limits on class size and having certified teachers in every classroom.

Another proposal in Grusendorf's bill would turn over struggling schools to for-profit companies. Studies have shown, however, that private education companies have a poor record of improving academic performance. The disastrous experiments with Edison Schools, Inc., in various Texas school districts support this.

Private education companies also would get a place at the public trough under House Bill 1445's "virtual school network." This bill opens the door for public school districts to pay private companies to provide classes over the Internet. The state would be forced to pick up the tab for home-schooled students who sign up for these "virtual" courses.

Other irresponsible legislation would make it easier for extremists to censor our children's textbooks. House Bills 220 and 973 would give the State Board of Education free rein to change textbooks to conform to board members' personal political and religious beliefs. Textbooks would be based on "facts" that change as elections bring a new majority of members to the state board.

Taken together, these proposals reveal a Legislature that has lost its way on public education. Frustrated Texas families already know what needs to be done. Are our lawmakers listening?

Miller is president of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that monitors public education, religious freedom and individual liberties.

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/03/10bill2_edit.html
 

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 1:11 PM 1 comments Links to this post

79th LEGISLATURE
House passes GOP's school finance plan
Critics say plan is inadequate, unfair.

By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, March 09, 2005

The Texas House narrowly approved legislation Wednesday that would reduce school property taxes, slightly increase school funding and trigger major changes in the state's system of testing students and rating schools.

Lawmakers passed House Bill 2 with a 76-71 vote that fell largely along party lines. The vote was the first of two steps to push the dominant issue of this year's legislative session to the Senate.

The second step could come Thursday, when the House debates shifting about $5.4 billion a year in property taxes to, among other things, higher sales taxes and a new payroll tax.

The Senate is expected to debate a significantly different version of school and tax reform that, if passed, would set up a showdown between the two chambers in a conference committee.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst hinted at the changes coming in the Senate on Wednesday, when he said he was looking forward to receiving the House's plans for school finance.

"Then, with all due respect, we'll make them better," Dewhurst said.

The House bill calls for about $3 billion in additional spending on education over two years, giving many school districts what roughly amounts to an inflationary adjustment. Texas currently spends about $33 billion in local, state and federal money a year on public schools.

It requires schools to start after Labor Day, allows private companies to take over low-performing schools, toughens the state rating system and requires schools to give state tests on computers instead of paper.

"The genius of this bill is, the finance is inexorably linked to the reform, and the reform will deliver results," said Rep. Dianne Delisi, R-Temple.

It shifts several costs onto local school districts, such as paying for textbooks, and requires new systems for tracking financial and academic data. It also requires schools to develop incentive pay programs for teachers.

"This bill is just plain old junk food," said Rep. Bob Griggs of North Richland Hills, one of a few Republicans to oppose the bill. "It's junk food for school finance. It provides that sugar rush immediately, but the funding falls apart after a very short period of time."

Locally, GOP Reps. Mike Krusee of Williamson County, Dan Gattis of Georgetown and Terry Keel and Todd Baxter of Austin voted for the bill. Democratic Reps. Patrick Rose of Dripping Springs and Austin's Elliott Naishtat, Mark Strama, Eddie Rodriguez and Dawnna Dukes voted against it.

House leaders say the $3 billion in new education spending will come from savings in other parts of the state budget. But, foreshadowing another potential legislative battle, the head of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee said Wednesday that the House will have to expand gambling in the state if members want to spend more on education.

"That's the only way we're going to get more money for our schools," said Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie.

School and teacher groups rushed to analyze new language in the bill that would require higher salaries for teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians.

House aides say the language will require districts to give raises that average $3,000 or that account for 44 percent of the funding increases they see, whichever costs less. The raises will include the $500 that the state currently provides to help school employees pay for health insurance, so the actual average increase would be $2,500.

Critics point out that lawmakers do not plan to put more money into the bill to pay for the raises.

"We're trying to say this is new money to education to increase the level of funding that goes to directly impact academic achievement," said Rep. Vilma Luna, D-Corpus Christi. "Then we turn right around and say we're going to divert some of these funds into a pay raise. If we were really committed to a pay raise, we would be doing the first part of funding to impact student achievement and separate funding for the pay raise. We wouldn't be continuing to dip out of the same pool."

Rep. Scott Hochberg of Houston, one of the Democrats' experts on school finance, said the pay raises would be far below $3,000 for most teachers in the state. He also said the provision would hurt fast-growing districts in particular because they would have to divert much of the money intended to pay for enrollment growth to the pay raises.

But House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, said the raises make sense because districts spend roughly 80 percent of their budgets on payrolls.

"Really that money is going to go for salaries anyway," Craddick said. "I think it was a great compromise they put together because it assures that it's there."

Critics assailed the GOP bill for weeks because it did not give teachers an across-the-board raise. Republicans hoped to quiet those attacks by adding the salary provision late Tuesday.

Some education groups, however, remained unconvinced that teachers would see meaningful pay increases because lawmakers have not spelled out how to pay for them. Rob D'Amico of the Texas Federation of Teachers pointed out that previous efforts to trim the state budget have left teachers with reduced health benefits.

Teachers "are understandably skeptical about a promised 'pay raise' to be funded from such 'savings,' " D'Amico said. "Taking money out of one pocket and, at best, putting it back in another is not a pay raise."

Thursday's tax debate is expected to be hot as well. But Krusee said he believes that Craddick will round up the votes he needs to pass it.

"Tom will get us there," Krusee said. "He always does when he wants it."

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/03/10finance.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:32 PM 1 comments Links to this post

LEGISLATURE
HB 2 Opponents Fire Away
By Jason Embry | AUSTIN AM-STATESMAN.COM
Tuesday, March 8, 2005, 02:49 PM

They’re not yet talking about amendments. And they’re certainly not yet close to taking a final vote on the full bill. But the floor debate about House Bill 2 is warming up quickly.

After supporters gave their version this morning of what the bill contains, the House returned from a lunch break, and bill author Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, began taking questions from members. That’s when much of the criticism that’s been leveled in news conferences and in committee meetings for the past three weeks officially hit the floor of the full House.

Rep. Bob E. Griggs, R-North Richland Hills, asked why the bill didn’t contain enough money, according to previous studies, to enable 90 percent of students pass state tests. Rep. Vilma Luna, D-Corpus Christi, asked why the bill didn’t include money for facilities. Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, asked why the bill would allot extra money to high schools but place no requirements on how it is spent. And Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, asked why the bill and the accompanying House Bill 3 would concentrate tax cuts on Texans making more than $100,000 per year.

Grusendorf sounded some of the same themes that he has voiced repeatedly in support of the bill: that it provides more money for schools and that the money would be spent more wisely. The bill’s critics didn’t seem to be buying it.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/custom/blogs/legislature/index.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:57 AM 0 comments Links to this post

79th LEGISLATURE

By Mike Ward, W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, March 09, 2005

As House members publicly fought Tuesday over how to fund and manage schools, cracks began showing in efforts by Republican leaders to enact a multibillion-dollar tax plan to pay for proposed cuts in property taxes.

Fueling the growing dissent over the tax bill was a new state study that showed that the tax burden would increase for households earning $100,000 a year or less, even after taking into account proposed property tax cuts approved this week by a House committee.

In a surprise move, Gov. Rick Perry warned publicly that a defeat of the tax plan, House Bill 3, would prompt a special legislative session, a message he acknowledged was intended to "keep the process moving" by securing House approval of a plan, any plan.

"The most important part of what's going on right now is to move the process forward, not to kill this," Perry said, noting that the Texas Constitution prohibits action on any measure that has the same substance of a proposal already voted upon.

"If you kill it now, you don't get to take it up again. You're through. You don't get another chance at it until a special session. . . . We don't need to do that. We need to move the process forward."

House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, echoed that conviction last week in discussions with business groups and Sunday in a closed-door meeting with the House Republican Caucus as he courted support for the House tax plan, according to people who attended the sessions.

Some business groups and conservative activists worked feverishly behind the scenes Tuesday to defeat the House tax plan — a bill that would replace the current franchise tax with a new payroll tax; expand sales taxes to include newspapers, auto repairs and bottled water, among other things; and impose a 3 percent tax on snack foods.

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, the state's largest business group, said its executive committee failed to reach agreement on the plan Monday, meaning it has no position on its approval or rejection.

"You can draw your own conclusions," Hammond said.

Bill Allaway of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, who testified recently in favor of a committee version of the tax plan with reservations, said groups representing a range of business types have understandable difficulty giving "unequivocal" support to any plan.

Emblematic of the growing disquiet was this take on the topic e-mailed Tuesday to about 17,000 Texans by conservative activist Jim Cardle of Austin. Calling the payroll tax "a recipe for disaster," he said, "it stinks. It's going to kill jobs. It's a hidden income tax."

As part of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering on the bill, Craddick sought a letter last week from several groups representing business interests. By Tuesday, just two days before debate on the tax bill could begin, the letter still had not been delivered.

Ron Dipprey of the Texas Chemical Council said there has been concern that the plan favors big companies and hurts small ones.

"We want to do it in a way that reflects a diverse cross-section of business," Dipprey said. "The speaker will ultimately have to decide if he wants the letter."

A draft of the letter, obtained by the Austin American-Statesman, calls the tax plan "a meaningful first step in the process of building an effective, balanced tax system that is better able to support the growing needs of our state."

As debate continued into the night Tuesday on changes to school funding formulas, House Bill 2, Republican leaders were working with several heavyweight business groups to push the tax bill through with the payroll tax included.

Nose counting in the House indicated that the vote will be close. It takes 76 votes in the 150-member body to pass legislation.

In its new study, the Legislative Budget Board calculated that the proposed tax changes would increase the amounts paid by a large percentage of Texas families. On average, only families with incomes of more than $100,000 a year would save more from the proposed property tax cuts than they would pay in higher sales and cigarette taxes, or absorb in lower wages because of the payroll tax.

In its analysis of the proposal, the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin think tank, said Texas would have the "highest state sales tax rate in the nation": 7.25 percent, a full penny more than the current tax.

"HB 3 would appreciably increase the regressivity of Texas' tax system by increasing the tax load on lower- and middle-income families, while decreasing the taxes paid by upper-income families," the center's analysis said.

A separate analysis from Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn showed that HB 3 would help create 48,000 jobs by 2007 and 80,600 jobs by 2010. In addition, the bill would boost personal income in Texas by $4.16 billion by 2010.

By contrast, Strayhorn's office on Friday found the House's original tax plan to be more than $1 billion short of covering the cost of the proposed school property tax cuts, leading the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee to raise the proposed sales and payroll taxes and to suggest the snack tax late Monday.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, defended the plan Tuesday as a job-creator that will allow all Texans to prosper.

"If we're helping people either expand in Texas — job-wise, business-wise — or relocate in Texas where they're creating jobs hopefully with good benefits . . . if we're successful, I think we all prosper," Keffer said.

Effective tax rate change under House Bill 3

The proposed state budget would increase the effective tax rate for all households by 1.24 percent, but households with lower incomes would see a larger increase.
Family income Percent change
$0 to $13,415 5.57
$13,415 to $22,833 5.18
$22,833 to $31,735 4.96
$31,735 to $41,463 4.63
$41,463 to $51,750 4.31
$51,750 to $64,325 3.75
$64,325 to $79,271 2.68
$79,271 to $100,593 1.66
$100,593 to $140,853 -0.47
above $140,853 -2.87

Source: Legislative Budget Board

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/03/9TAXFIGHT.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:53 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Note: Not directly related to education, but a significant policy direction with myriad ramifications for all areas of public and private life. -Angela

NY TIMES
The Debt-Peonage Society
March 8, 2005

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Today the Senate is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill that
toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the bill's passage.
A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by some Democrats, has already
voted down a series of amendments that would either have closed loopholes
for the rich or provided protection for some poor and middle-class families.

The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the
industry's political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill
also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political
scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the
protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as
ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.

The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off
their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find
themselves on an endless treadmill of payments.

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been
abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from
debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result
of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of
bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are
overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's
concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty
of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect
their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.

One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection
trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer
introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such
trusts, but apparently it's O.K. to game the system if you're rich: 54
Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.

Other amendments were aimed at protecting families and individuals who have
clearly been forced into bankruptcy by events, or who would face extreme
hardship in repaying debts. Ted Kennedy introduced an exemption for cases of
medical bankruptcy. Russ Feingold introduced an amendment protecting the
homes of the elderly. Dick Durbin asked for protection for armed services
members and veterans. All were rejected.

None of this should come as a surprise: it's all part of the pattern.

As Mr. Hacker and others have documented, over the past three decades the
lives of ordinary Americans have become steadily less secure, and their
chances of plunging from the middle class into acute poverty ever larger.
Job stability has declined; spells of unemployment, when they happen, last
longer; fewer workers receive health insurance from their employers; fewer
workers have guaranteed pensions.

Some of these changes are the result of a changing economy. But the
underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven
effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For
example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but
unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining,
but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003
Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the
incentives of employers to provide coverage.

Above all, of course, at a time when ever-fewer workers can count on
pensions from their employers, the current administration wants to phase out
Social Security.

The bankruptcy bill fits right into this picture. When everything else goes
wrong, Americans can still get a measure of relief by filing for bankruptcy
- and rising insecurity means that they are forced to do this more often
than in the past. But Congress is now poised to make bankruptcy law harsher,
too.

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to
turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I
think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system,
prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work
for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old
days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.

And any senator who votes for the bill should be ashamed.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/opinion/08krugman.html
Note: Not directly related to education, but a significant policy direction with myriad ramifications for all areas of public and private life. -Angela

NY TIMES
The Debt-Peonage Society
March 8, 2005

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Today the Senate is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill that
toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the bill's passage.
A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by some Democrats, has already
voted down a series of amendments that would either have closed loopholes
for the rich or provided protection for some poor and middle-class families.

The bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies, and the
industry's political muscle is the reason it seems unstoppable. But the bill
also fits into the broader context of what Jacob Hacker, a political
scientist at Yale, calls "risk privatization": a steady erosion of the
protection the government provides against personal misfortune, even as
ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity.

The bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write off
their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors would find
themselves on an endless treadmill of payments.

The credit card companies say this is needed because people have been
abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and walking away from
debts. The facts say otherwise.

A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the result
of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more than half of
bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies. The rest are
overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of divorce.

To the extent that there is significant abuse of the system, it's
concentrated among the wealthy - including corporate executives found guilty
of misleading investors - who can exploit loopholes in the law to protect
their wealth, no matter how ill-gotten.

One increasingly popular loophole is the creation of an "asset protection
trust," which is worth doing only for the wealthy. Senator Charles Schumer
introduced an amendment that would have limited the exemption on such
trusts, but apparently it's O.K. to game the system if you're rich: 54
Republicans and 2 Democrats voted against the Schumer amendment.

Other amendments were aimed at protecting families and individuals who have
clearly been forced into bankruptcy by events, or who would face extreme
hardship in repaying debts. Ted Kennedy introduced an exemption for cases of
medical bankruptcy. Russ Feingold introduced an amendment protecting the
homes of the elderly. Dick Durbin asked for protection for armed services
members and veterans. All were rejected.

None of this should come as a surprise: it's all part of the pattern.

As Mr. Hacker and others have documented, over the past three decades the
lives of ordinary Americans have become steadily less secure, and their
chances of plunging from the middle class into acute poverty ever larger.
Job stability has declined; spells of unemployment, when they happen, last
longer; fewer workers receive health insurance from their employers; fewer
workers have guaranteed pensions.

Some of these changes are the result of a changing economy. But the
underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven
effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For
example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but
unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining,
but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003
Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the
incentives of employers to provide coverage.

Above all, of course, at a time when ever-fewer workers can count on
pensions from their employers, the current administration wants to phase out
Social Security.

The bankruptcy bill fits right into this picture. When everything else goes
wrong, Americans can still get a measure of relief by filing for bankruptcy
- and rising insecurity means that they are forced to do this more often
than in the past. But Congress is now poised to make bankruptcy law harsher,
too.

Warren Buffett recently made headlines by saying America is more likely to
turn into a "sharecroppers' society" than an "ownership society." But I
think the right term is a "debt peonage" society - after the system,
prevalent in the post-Civil War South, in which debtors were forced to work
for their creditors. The bankruptcy bill won't get us back to those bad old
days all by itself, but it's a significant step in that direction.

And any senator who votes for the bill should be ashamed.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/opinion/08krugman.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 9:18 AM 1 comments Links to this post

03/08/2005 12:00 AM CST

Jenny LaCoste-Caputo
San Antonio Express-News Staff Writer

The proposal to overhaul the way schools are funded in Texas goes to the full House today, but a final vote may take several days.

The plan, dubbed "Roadmap to Results," aims to boost education funding by $3 billion over the next two years while decreasing local property taxes by one-third.

It also includes strict school reform measures — increasing the number of tests high school students take and implementing sanctions for chronically low-performing schools, such as replacing faculty.

Those ideas have brought praise from organizations such as Texas Businesses for Educational Excellence, a coalition of business leaders.

But education groups say the plan is flawed and underfunded. Lawmakers have proposed 155 amendments.

"Instruction in Texas is already, in many places, test-driven," said Angela Valenzuela, education committee chairwoman for Texas League of United Latin American Citizens.

"The curriculum is being narrowed. The subject areas are being marginalized. We're on the wrong track here," she said.

Curtis Culwell, superintendent at Garland School District, near Dallas, and president of the Texas School Alliance, said the bill does not give schools enough money to provide the level of education demanded in the state constitution.

Lawmakers are under a court order to fix the state's education finance system by October or face a cut-off of state funding.

House Democrats plan to offer an alternate plan that would increase education spending by $5 billion over the next two years.

Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, one of the authors of the plan, dubbed "Learn and Live," said it would cost the state no more than House Bill 2 but would distribute the money differently, with more ending up in the classroom.

"Our bill is true equity," Martinez Fischer said. "Otherwise, you're just looking at 3 percent growth for most districts."

The plan also calls for raising teacher pay by $4,800 over the next two years and restoring health care benefits cut in 2003.

On the property tax front, the plan would triple the homestead exemption to $45,000 and reduce the local maintenance-and-operations property tax rate to a maximum of $1.25 per $100 valuation, compared with House Bill 2's proposal of cutting local property tax to $1 per $100 valuation.

"By in large we achieve more property tax savings because of that exemption," Martinez Fischer said.

House Republicans scored a victory Monday when a number of rural members said they now are fully behind the House bill.

Many rural Republicans protested the formula for transportation funding, saying it doesn't meet the needs of vast districts.

Led by Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, the rural lawmakers said they will vote for the bill now that House Education Committee Chairman Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, said he will accept an amendment allowing for a $1.50 per mile reimbursement to rural districts for school buses.

The amendment would allocate $126 million from the Texas Department of Transportation's gas fund to cover the cost.

jcaputo@express-news.net
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/stategov/stories/MYSA030805.04A.skulbill_advance.117512867.html

Staff writer Guillermo X. Garcia contributed to this report.

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:49 AM 1 comments Links to this post

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Angela Valenzuela - 512-232-6008
Contact: Adrian Rodriguez- 214-478-5921
March 8, 2005

Texas LULAC Says “NO” to CSHB 2

(Austin, TX) - The Texas LULAC leadership says it will not be in favor of Committee Substitute House Bill (CSHB) 2. “Couched in the rhetoric of 'accountability and reform' is an underlying agenda by the House leadership to keep minorities from advancing,” said Roger Rocha, Texas LULAC State Director. Lost in the furor over school finance and CSHB 2 is the scheme to advance privatization and vouchers at the expense of all Texas children.

Aside from the reasons being cited by other pro-children organizations opposing CSHB 2, there are 13 additional tests for high school students that would standardize curricula across Texas. Angela Valenzuela, Education Committee Chair for Texas LULAC and a critic of high stakes testing, indicated, “There is no standard child. Not only do they come in all shapes, sizes, and learning levels, the Texas educational system is not a level playing field-which, yet again, this new testing regime presupposes.”

Behind the effort to increase testing are certain members of the business community more interested in seeing privatization of public schools. These members of the business community have been duped into believing that increased privatization (vouchers and charter schools) of the public school system will mean more prosperity and a better public education system overall.

Under a voucher system, the achievement gap will widen further because it will leave the poorest children and the disabled in cash-strapped public schools while exacerbating inequalities. With the same voucher, the education that children from wealthy families will be able to purchase for their child will be of a significantly better quality than that which middle-class or poor families can afford.

Lobbying efforts by huge corporations have left the future of Texas in jeopardy. Two large testing organizations that stand to profit the most from increasing standardized testing are Pearson Education and Kaplan. According to a March 6, 2005 article appearing in the Dallas Morning News, they both have as their lobbyist in Austin, Sandy Kress, an educational advisor to the Governor who was instrumental in helping President George W. Bush craft the No Child Left Behind Act. When the Governor's advisor advocates for his clients, he is not advocating for the children of Texas. And how can so-called accountability be trusted when it serves the interests of individuals like Sandy Kress whose “solutions” to the achievement gap line the pockets of his high-dollar friends?

Our legislators want accountability from the education profession. According to Adrian Rodriguez, Texas LULAC Chief of Staff, “Accountability starts by funding schools so that all children receive a higher level of education.” Texas LULAC believes legislators have systematically reduced the effectiveness of the public education system through legislation that further advances the voucher and privatization agenda.

Texas LULAC says, “This roadmap must be redrawn so that ALL children have a chance at success!”

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:44 AM 0 comments Links to this post

79TH LEGISLATURE

Measure seeks hike in general sales tax plus extra charge on baked goods, sodas, chips.

By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Texans would pay more than 10 percent sales tax each time they buy cookies, popcorn, soda or other snack foods if the Legislature approves a revised tax bill passed by a House committee late Monday.

The bill is a new version of the tax-shift legislation that the House Ways and Means Committee passed last week. The committee reworked the bill after Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's office said it would not raise as much money as House leaders projected.


Rep. Jim Keffer: Legislator says revised plan answers comptroller's concerns.
 
 MORE ON THIS STORY
 

* Complete Legislature coverage


Under the new version, a 3 percent snack tax — which lawmakers included specifically to target obesity — would be added to the general sales tax charged for those items.

The House bill also raises the general state sales tax from 6.25 percent to 7.25 percent, which would be the highest state rate in the country, and slightly more than what was approved last week.

In addition, the bill calls for businesses to pay a payroll tax of 1.15 percent on each employee's salary, up to $90,000 per worker, which is also a slight increase from last week's proposal.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, said the tax would apply to any worker for whom an employer pays into the unemployment insurance system.

The House is considering the new and increased taxes to pay for a proposed one-third reduction in school property taxes as part of an overhaul of the way Texas pays for public schools.

Strayhorn had said the tax plan approved last week would take in about $1 billion less than what would be needed to pay for that property tax relief.

Keffer said he's confident the new version of the bill addresses Strayhorn's concern, as well as questions her office raised about how the bill should be interpreted.

"We've been working with the comptroller all day long," he said. "We are in agreement."

While some foods are exempt from sales taxes, the ones addressed in the snack tax have not been, he said. The new tax would apply to sales in stores but not restaurants.

Keffer said he expects the bill to come before the full House on Thursday. It will follow a major school reform bill that is up for debate today. The tax bill also calls for increases in the cigarette tax and the sales tax for autos and boats. It would expand the sales tax to cover bottled water, newspapers, billboard advertising and car washes and repairs.

All five Republicans on the committee and one Democrat voted for the revised bill.

Monday's events marked the second time in the last two regular legislative sessions that House Republicans had to tweak a major piece of legislation in a committee after the committee had voted on it.

In 2003, the House Civil Practices Committee had to reconsider a tort reform bill after Democrats complained the bill had been discussed at a meeting that wasn't properly announced in advance.

Also Monday, the head of the Senate Education Committee criticized the House school finance legislation because it does not specify where the state would find more than $3 billion in additional funding over the next two years.

"I think it's very difficult to just say we'll pass all this education reform, but we don't know where the money's coming from," said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.

"What if they only find $2 billion in scrubbing the budget instead of $3 billion?"

House Speaker Tom Craddick has said the new money for schools will come from savings in other parts of the state budget.

Some members of the House Appropriations Committee are reviewing the budget to look for ways to save that money.

Through a spokeswoman, House Public Education Committee Chairman Kent Grusendorf said, "I have been assured that when House Bill 2 passes, the money to fund House Bill 2 will be made available."

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/03/8finance.html

posted by Dr. Angela Valenzuela at 8:29 AM 0 comments Links to this post