"Admit it: Testing our kids has been a failure," by Fred Smith New York Daily News

And not just in New York. The only entities that are benefitting from the state's testing system are the testing companies as follows:

"Since its inception, CTB/McGraw-Hill, NCS Pearson and Questar have received state contracts to provide the tests and their scoring, amounting to $130 million. The state comptroller’s Open Book database details the combined cost of these services."

Once you factor in administrator, counselor, and teacher time in administering these tests, the actual cost of this system—and these systems nationally—is astronomical.  We don't need to keep following bad money with good money, my friends—particularly when we consider that these are folks' hard-earned taxpayer dollars going right into the coffers of these private companies. At some point, we have to cut our losses.

A healthy first step is indeed to admit that these testing systems have failed us miserably.

-Angela Valenzuela

Admit it: Testing our kids has been a failure Up to 1.2 million students, including 400,000 in New York City, will take the English Language Arts (ELA) exam. The math tests will come a few weeks later.

Too much. (Shutterstock/Shutterstock)

By FRED SMITH

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |

MAR 29, 2022 AT 5:00 AM

It’s time to end the March madness.

The program was set forth in 2001 when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, mandating annual English and math tests. Here we are 20 years later, still adhering to the regime without asking what we’ve gained and lost. A primary aim of NCLB was to close the test performance gap between Black and Hispanic students, on the one hand, and white and Asian-American students, on the other. This elusive goal has not been realized.

Since its inception, CTB/McGraw-Hill, NCS Pearson and Questar have received state contracts to provide the tests and their scoring, amounting to $130 million. The state comptroller’s Open Book database details the combined cost of these services.

Results have fluctuated wildly across the years, in large part because the state’s standards and grading procedures keep changing, pressure on students, teachers and principals to do well has been constant, stemming from functions and high-stakes decisions beyond the capacity of the test data to support. In 2006, 51% of students citywide were deemed to be proficient on CTB’s ELA exams. By 2009, the proficiency level had risen to 69%. The increase in math went from 57% to 82%. Observers knew gains of such magnitude were not plausible. One Board of Regents member questioned the wisdom of releasing the inflated, too-good-to-be-true results to the public.

More rigorous exams were then ordered by the Regents in 2010, and ELA proficiency suddenly fell to 42%. This began the transition from CTB to Pearson, ushering in tougher learning standards, aka the Common Core. By three years later, the 42% tanked to 26%, as Core-aligned exams became the new baseline. Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said it was time for students to “jump into the deep end of the pool.”

Under Mayor Bloomberg, parents began to feel the stress placed on children who could be denied promotion if they failed to reach an arbitrary test cutoff point, they were supposed to be held back. And teachers spent an inordinate amount of time preparing students for the exams, which meant bonuses if they scored high.

As if that weren’t enough, Gov. Cuomo sought an accountability system to weed out ineffective teachers and principals on the basis of scores entered into incomprehensible formulas.

In 2013, an opt-out movement took root because of the harm testing had wrought in the classroom, where weeks of time and resources were wasted drilling children for the tests and fostering anxiety. Pushback grew strong on Long Island and upstate. By 2015, proficiency stood at 31%. Pearson was despised, and the parent-led resistance peaked in 2015 and 2016, with one out of five students abstaining despite ominous warnings from school authorities of dire consequences.

Mayor de Blasio kept parents confused while his old-school chancellor, Carmen Fariña, said testing was a part of life and kids should show up for the exams.

Cuomo saw growing political risks, and had second thoughts about continuing to back the Common Core. It had been launched without sufficient instructional materials and lesson plans that are essential before tests can meaningfully measure whether learning standards have been met.

Through it all, National Assessment of Educational Progress has shown New York’s growth in achievement to be incremental, varying little over time. Based on NAEP’s carefully calibrated exams — which are given to a representative sampling of kids in grades 4 and 8 in just two hours every two years, not 200,000 students statewide per grade over a two-day period every year. The percentage of students proficient in reading ranged by only eight percentage points between 2003 and 2019.

In addition to seemingly perennial changes in publishers, standards and scales, other factors have scrambled efforts to interpret the yearly results. These include shifts in test population; the removal of time limits from the exams; and an uneven phase-in of computer-based tests. Footnotes in results released by the state concede that data cannot be compared from one year to the next.

So what are we really accomplishing here? The testing ritual was halted by COVID-19 in 2020 when the mandate was suspended, but the feds said testing had to resume in 2021. The State Education Department sought waivers. Under the disruptive circumstances, parents had the flexibility to opt out. A stunning 58% statewide and 78% citywide did not participate.

The last two years have confirmed that education can survive without the exams. Yet the testing cycle is about to begin again, even as COVID-related chaos has jolted schools the entire year. When will we come to our senses?

Smith was a testing specialist and administrative analyst for the city’s public schools.

A&M Chancellor Sharp Making His Mark, Cutting His Pay

by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
November 6, 2011

Eight weeks after he was put in charge of the Texas A&M University System, Chancellor John Sharp is shuffling the top staff, hiring management consultants to streamline the administration and cutting his own pay.

So far, none of the changes are as dramatic or headline-grabbing as his sudden firing of Deputy Chancellor Jay Kimbrough in September. In fact, they are all telegraphed in a report by his transition team (attached below).

That team included System General Counsel Ray Bonilla, Sharp's former comptroller's chief of staff Tom Duffy, former Deputy Comptroller Billy Hamilton, and E.J. Pederson, a former executive vice president of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and a close friend of the chancellor.

"Our overall conclusion is that while some organizational changes are needed, the Texas A&M University System has enormous potential to achieve sustained greatness as one of the premier public university systems in the nation — and in the world," they wrote in the introduction to their report. They said their findings are not definitive but are designed to quickly address needed organizational changes.

Sharp told The Texas Tribune he concurs with nearly all of the recommendations. One called for placing all communications and public relations staff throughout the system on annual contracts so that the system's overall messaging could be reviewed frequently. Instead, Sharp and the A&M System regents decided that such personnel will simply serve at the will of the chancellor and their respective president.

Many of the recommendations have already been met or are about to be. The report calls for an outside management review of the administration, and this week it was announced that MGT of America — which Sharp has called upon in the past — has been secured for the project. Frank Ashley, the current vice chancellor of academic affairs, has been moved into the newly recommended role of vice chancellor of diversity. A new vice chancellor for government affairs who will coordinate their federal and state relations had also been selected. Greg Anderson, previously the system's chief investment officer, is now the system's new chief financial officer.

While it was not recommended by the team, Sharp has also cut his own salary by 5 percent. He said he was inspired by Prairie View A&M University President George C. Wright, who responded to current financial difficulties to returning to the classroom. Sharp said he's not a good teacher, but hoped this sacrifice — which takes his salary down to $507,000 — might strike a similar symbolic chord. He described it as "good for the goose, good for the gander."

Ultimately, Sharp said he hoped the changes he has made — and those that are on the way — have sent a message to the A&M, legislative and Texas communities. "We just want to get everybody on the same page," he said. "We want the Legislature to know we're being inclusive all over the state of Texas. We will have our organization in place to where it's doing the most efficient job possible."

Here's the full transition team report, including what members say should be done about the system's airplanes.

Texas Board Requires the Phasing Out of 64 Degree Programs With Low Enrollments

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

Harold W. Hahn (left) and Fred W. Heldenfels IV were among the members of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board who determined which "underperforming" degree programs to cut. They are shown at Thursday's hearing, where college officials sought reprieves for some programs.

By Katherine Mangan | Chronicle of Higher Education
Austin, Tex.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board voted Thursday to phase out 64 degree programs that failed to attract enough majors under stricter enrollment guidelines the board enacted last year.

Another 145 programs the board deemed underperforming are also being voluntarily cut.

The board's decisions came program by program over four hours in which a parade of higher-education leaders pleaded with the board to spare their programs.

Board members say the cuts will allow the state to use its resources more efficiently, while critics counter that the board's actions will disproportionately hurt predominantly minority colleges and programs in mathematics and science.

Thirteen of the state's 25 undergraduate physics degree programs, for instance, were judged "underperforming." The board voted to phase out or consolidate six of them.

In all, the board identified 545 programs statewide that were underenrolled according to its new, more-stringent standards. For a bachelor's or associate degree, a program is defined as being underenrolled if it produced fewer than five majors per year, averaged over five years. The threshold for a master's degree is three per year, and for a doctorate, it's two per year.

Eliminating low-producing majors won't prevent a college from offering courses in that subject, board officials said.

"We're not losing anything. We're telling institutions, Either make all of your programs robust and successful, or concentrate on the things you do well," the state's higher-education commissioner, Raymund A. Paredes, told reporters during a conference call before the meeting. He was asked whether the move was related to calls from some regents and allies of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, for greater productivity in higher education.

"This process of accountability is something we're going to see more of," Mr. Paredes said. "We want to be able to report to Texas taxpayers how their money is being used."
Appeals for 'Core' Programs

Texas Southern University, a historically black institution, appealed the proposed elimination of five majors, in chemistry, math, physics, English, and art. (During Thursday's board meeting, the physics and math appeals were denied, and English and chemistry were given a two-year reprieve.)

Another historically black institution, Prairie View A&M University, appealed cuts in physics and chemistry. (The physics appeal was denied and chemistry was given a two-year extension). "The courses offered in the programs targeted for deletion are core components for engineering, nursing, and biology," the university's provost, E. Joahanne Thomas-Smith said in an e-mail to The Chronicle.

After being notified that they had programs that were underenrolled, Texas colleges agreed to cut 145 of those majors. The coordinating board, after an initial appeals process, then decided that colleges should be forced to phase out 95 more programs. For the rest of the programs that were deemed underenrolled, colleges were allowed to consolidate them with other departments or were given temporary reprieves while they try to increase their enrollments. Of the 95 programs that the board has recommended be forced to close, colleges made appeals to the full board to keep 44 programs.

The coordinating board has had the authority to cut low-performing majors since 1971, but this is the first time it has looked at every major at every state college and university and recommended widespread cuts.

Mr. Paredes denied criticisms that the cuts will undermine the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math. Between the 2006 and 2010 fiscal years, the programs slated for closure graduated 1.7 percent of the state's physics majors and 0.7 percent of its STEM graduates, the coordinating board reports.

Recent research also shows, Mr. Paredes said, that paring down the number of majors students can choose from can help them focus and graduate faster. "Students have so many choices and majors they can get confused," he said.

Analysts with the Texas board said their thresholds for identifying "low-producing" degrees are more lenient than those of several other states that have been analyzing enrollment and completion numbers, including Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

In April, the State of Louisiana Board of Regents voted to eliminate 109 degree programs that had low rates of completion; for bachelor's degrees, that meant that fewer than eight people completed the program per year. The Louisiana board had deemed more than 400 degree programs to be "underperforming," many of which ended up being consolidated into other departments.

Statesman Investigates: UT regents invest $10 million in startup with ties to ex-chancellor, governor

Follow-up to an earlier article titled, "UT president: School didn't seek MyEdu deal" also posted to this blog.

-Patricia

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz and Eric Dexheimer | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 10:36 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011

The governing board of the University of Texas System invested $10 million in a privately held company with close ties to the system's former chancellor, the chancellor's son and associates of Gov. Rick Perry.

The allocation of proceeds from the Permanent University Fund, a public endowment, was extremely unusual, if not unprecedented, in that it was made directly by the Board of Regents rather than by money management firms chosen by the board's investment arm.

The regents voted unanimously at a public meeting Aug. 25 to invest in Austin-based MyEdu Corp. after a brief discussion with no debate and no public input.

The regents and senior UT System staff members did not disclose publicly — nor did some of those officials apparently know — that former Chancellor William Cunningham is an investor in MyEdu and that his son, John, is the company's senior vice president of information architecture and one of its founders.

The company's chairman and CEO, Michael Crosno, served on the governor's statewide re-election finance committee last year.

MyEdu adviser Bob Pearson, who holds a stake in the company, donated to the governor's re-election campaign and is a former Perry-appointed chairman of an advisory panel that recommends proposals for state funding through the Emerging Technology Fund.

Margaret Spellings, who was secretary of education under President George W. Bush, is also an adviser to MyEdu.

The company operates a website, myedu.com, where college students can plan course schedules, track credits, rate professors, calculate costs and exchange comments with professors and fellow students.

Along with its 22.5 percent stake in the company, the UT System will get customized website functions for each of its nine academic and six health campuses under an agreement with the company concerning such "private-label services."

Crosno said that neither Cunningham nor Pearson had any involvement in negotiating the deal with UT System officials and that neither knew anything about the arrangement until it was completed — an account echoed separately by both men.

Gene Powell, chairman of the regents, and Francisco Cigarroa, the system's chancellor, said they were unaware of the investment by the former chancellor but that, in any event, they were under no obligation to disclose it.

Powell, who co-chaired Perry's re-election finance committee, said he didn't know of Crosno's and Pearson's ties to the governor.

"I have no knowledge of that, either. Nor was it pertinent to this agreement. We felt comfortable with exactly how this agreement went forward," Cigarroa said, adding that it was thoroughly vetted by the system's general counsel.

Josh Havens, a spokesman for Perry, said the governor's office was not involved with the matter.

In 2000, Texas A&M University graduate John Cunningham started the online service with a partner as Pick-A-Prof, a site where students could rate and exchange information about their teachers.

Crosno said he started MyEdu in 2009 by purchasing Pick-A-Prof.

A veteran of several successful Internet startups, he said he saw huge potential in a one-stop online destination where students and their parents could lower college costs through better planning. Studies show that students are taking longer to earn degrees, causing families to waste thousands of dollars.

The solution, Crosno said, is treating students as informed consumers so they can more efficiently navigate their time in college.

"There's one way to save money in college," he said. "Take the right, exact number of courses to get a college degree, and do it in the least amount of time."

MyEdu doesn't offer users any information not already publicly available; the company collects details about individual schools and teachers through open records requests and by scraping schools' websites.

Many universities, including Texas, offer their own schedule- and career-planning tools and post summaries of student evaluations of faculty members.

But Crosno said MyEdu arranges and presents the information better, and in a single location. "We deliver the technology in a form that students accept," he said.

Cigarroa said MyEdu, with its customized approach for each campus in the system, would help advance his plan to improve graduation rates.

"Simply put, MyEdu is, as they advertise, the best way to manage college," Cigarroa said. "For many students, it is their virtual college adviser and a specialized forum for communicating with each other and giving input about all aspects of student life."

Powell agreed. "This is a product we are going to make available for free to students on 15 campuses," he said. "We don't believe there's any other product out there that comes close to doing this. We wanted to do it as quickly as possible" because improving graduation rates is an urgent priority.

"It was not an issue we felt was controversial or required public input," Powell said.

Steven Leslie, UT-Austin's executive vice president and provost, said the school looks forward to embracing MyEdu's features but anticipates some challenges in integrating the company's systems with those in the registrar's office.

Not everyone has been impressed.

Though students like the visual course scheduling feature that allows them to plan their semesters, MyEdu's "tools are not always the most accurate," said senior Carisa Nietsche, president of UT-Austin's Senate of College Councils, which represents students in academic affairs. "The university also already has a lot of the tools available on MyEdu."

Kim Krieg, assistant dean for advising at UT-Austin's College of Liberal Arts, said a committee of university advisers and administrators convened by the registrar's office last spring examined MyEdu, as well as schedule-planning sites at other universities, in an effort to see what improvements UT could make.

"It's fine, but it wasn't anything that blew anybody away," Krieg recalled.

The site also has been criticized for pandering to students interested primarily in using it to identify faculty members who reliably give high grades. A UT-Austin student survey conducted last year confirmed most students used the site to check professors' grade distributions.

"As an educator, I'm not sure that's what we want students to focus on," Krieg said.

Still, Crosno said, the company, which earns money from advertisers, such as textbook publishers and computer companies interested in tapping the student market, has grown quickly, thanks in part to recent cash infusions from a handful of private investors.

He said MyEdu boasts 500,000 members who actively use the site's tools to plan their college education and an additional 3 million members who log in occasionally. Part of the company's growth has come through informal deals with student associations, some of which the company has donated money to in exchange for each new registered user.

It has forged partnerships with a handful of organizations and schools directly as well.

This past summer, the California Virtual Campus, a state-funded portal for nonresident college students, announced it was working with MyEdu to help students plan their schedules, although no money was exchanged, said Tim Calhoon, director of technology for the system.

'Shocking' invitation

Crosno said he wasn't actively looking to partner with any schools in a more formal way when MyEdu received an email in February from Art Martinez, the UT regents' director of board services, asking the company to come to UT and "present what we do."

At a meeting attended by a roomful of UT System officials, including a handful of regents, Crosno said, he made a "very challenging" presentation.

"I said the technology you offer students wasn't very well-used," he recalled. "I was shocked to hear everyone in the room say: 'This is cool. Let's have another meeting.'\u2009"

Following more gatherings over the next four months, Crosno said, the university in June asked if MyEdu would be interested in forming a partnership with the UT System.

"They said, 'We're willing to make an investment in you,' " he recalled.

Crosno said he resisted at first. "I said, 'We've got plenty of cash; I don't need your money.' " But, he added, "Cigarroa convinced me."

The result: The UT System's $10 million "unrestricted, unconditional" investment, which Crosno said will be used to build new platforms for MyEdu's tools, such as apps for tablets and cellphones.

Crosno said that he handled most of the negotiations with system officials himself, keeping only his four-member board of directors informed.

Cunningham, the former chancellor, who is also a former president of UT-Austin, said he is not a major shareholder in MyEdu and knew nothing about UT's investment until it was publicly announced.

Pearson, who said he advises the company on its social media strategy, said that's when he first learned of the partnership as well.

Barry Burgdorf, the UT System's vice chancellor and general counsel, said no law or regulation required public disclosure of the financial interest of Cunningham or his son. Nor did any general sense of ethics require such disclosure, he said.

Steve Hicks, a vice chairman of the regents who helped negotiate the MyEdu deal, said he wasn't informed of the Cunninghams' interest.

But "I do not feel it is a material matter," Hicks said. "It would not have influenced my vote."

Specialists in higher education governance, however, say transparency is always better than opacity.

"These things are often undertaken with positive purposes and good people, but when they're not fully disclosed, it really hurts them," said Aims McGuinness Jr., a senior associate with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a nonprofit policy center in Boulder, Colo. "It's much better to be transparent about it, and then you don't run into conflict."

Transparency has been a running theme for the UT System and its governing board in recent years. For example, the system has posted voluminous data on each of its campuses on graduation rates and other measures of student success.

But the MyEdu deal was struck almost completely behind the scenes. Indeed, the first public clue came when the regents posted a one-sentence agenda item about a forthcoming recommendation for "a business arrangement" with MyEdu regarding online academic data.

A regent's initiative

The idea to partner with MyEdu came from Regent Alex Cranberg, who learned about the company through informal conversations with UT-Austin students, Cigarroa said.

Regent Brenda Pejovich credited Cranberg for bringing the idea to a task force on excellence and productivity of which she was chairwoman and he was a member. Task force meetings, including a July presentation by MyEdu officials, were closed to the public.

Impressed by the company and its website, Cigarroa approached Powell, who agreed that a partnership could benefit the system's more than 215,000 students.

"So everybody will know, we had another unofficial committee," Powell, the regents' chairman, said at the August meeting. "Regent (Wallace) Hall, Regent Cranberg and Vice Chairman Hicks formed an unofficial committee for the chairman several weeks ago and have met continuously with MyEdu and have done a very good job of helping Barry Burgdorf bring this to fruition."

Before the board's vote on MyEdu, Powell described the company as "one of the most transformational things that we saw as a board, and the board is, I think, unanimous."

Burgdorf said officials settled on a $10 million stake to ensure that projects benefiting UT System campuses would be a first priority. "We didn't want a controlling interest because it's not our business to run MyEdu," he said.

The regents' investment arm, the University of Texas Investment Management Co., conducted a "due diligence" review to ensure that MyEdu's "people were good and financials were as represented," Hicks said.

UTIMCO CEO Bruce Zimmerman said he met with MyEdu officials, examined the company's financial statements and found no evidence of fraud or "smoke and mirrors."

Zimmerman said he advised regents and system staff members that direct investments, particularly in Internet startups, are risky, with a reasonable probability that all of the money would be lost and a small chance that huge gains would be made.

Zimmerman said he knew about the Cunninghams' involvement in the company but couldn't recall whether he mentioned that in the course of his review, which did not result in any formal report.

The former chancellor, who teaches corporate governance at UT-Austin and sits on several corporate boards, said he has made three investments totaling $175,000 in MyEdu.

Asked whether his stake should have been disclosed publicly by the regents, Cunningham replied: "I don't think so. I'm not a major shareholder in the company. I have no administrative input. I don't think that's relevant, and obviously they didn't think it was relevant."

About this story

Ralph K.M. Haurwitz, who has covered higher education since 2004, and Eric Dexheimer, a Statesman investigative reporter since 2006, examined the University of Texas System's partnership with MyEdu Corp. as part of the newspaper's ongoing focus on transparency in dealings between taxpayer-funded entities and private businesses.

UT president: School didn't seek MyEdu deal

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 5:58 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011

The president of the University of Texas said Monday that the university didn't seek an unusual partnership with MyEdu Corp., an Austin-based company that operates a website on which students can plan classes, rate professors and exchange comments.

"Would I have had different priorities for that $10 million?" UT President William Powers Jr. said at a meeting of the Faculty Council, referring to the investment of endowment funds by the UT System Board of Regents in MyEdu. "Yes."

He did not say what his priorities would have been. But Powers made it clear that it wasn't his decision to partner with MyEdu.

"That was a decision of the board. That was not a decision of the campus," Powers said. "We didn't choose to bring this to the campus. It was brought to us."

UT System regents voted unanimously Aug. 25 to invest in the privately held company and to sign on with it for customized website functions for each of the system's nine academic and six health campuses.

The American-Statesman reported in Sunday's editions that a former UT System chancellor, William Cunningham, is an investor in MyEdu and that his son, John, is a co-founder and a senior official of the company.

UT System officials and regents did not disclose the Cunninghams' involvement with the company and in some cases were unaware of it.

The elder Cunningham, who teaches corporate governance at the Austin campus, was chancellor from 1992 to 2000 and president of the campus from 1985 to 1992.

System officials said no law, rule or sense of ethics required disclosure of the Cunninghams' involvement. William Cunningham, as well as UT System and MyEdu officials, said he had no role in negotiating the partnership or even any knowledge of it until it was a done deal.

It is rare, if not unprecedented, for the Board of Regents to invest endowment funds directly in a company. Investments from the multibillion-dollar Permanent University Fund are generally made by money management firms chosen by an arm of the governing board, the University of Texas Investment Management Co.

Powers said the tools on myedu.com were demonstrated for him last week, and he observed that they can be optimized by users in various ways — for example, to offer a student the easiest courses.

"The first question I asked was, 'Can you turn some of these things off?'\u2009" he said, adding that he was assured it could be done. He said other tools on the website "seem OK to me" and could be valuable to students.

Alan Cline, a professor of computer science, asked Powers about Cunningham, the former president and chancellor.

"I don't see any influence" from Cunningham in the partnership, Powers said.

"I've known President Cunningham for a long time, and he's given great service to this university," Powers said.

Texas Regents' Potential Conflicts to Be Scrutinized

“There are two kinds of conflict...One is financial conflict. That one’s obvious. Then there’s having dual board membership where their purposes are in conflict.”
- Gordon Appleman

And this issue is just one part of the larger goals of the Oversight Committee.

-Patricia

UT Board of Regents Chairman Gene Powell asks the Board to support Chancellor Dr. Franciso Cigarroa at their Austin meeting on May 12, 2011.

At a recent hearing of the new joint higher education oversight committee, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini asked the chairmen of the University of Texas System and Texas A&M University System regents what they had done to prevent conflicts of interest on their respective boards. There was a long pause.

She asked if either board has “a statement setting forth the expectations for the conduct of its members.” Both men said they would have to get back to her.

Zaffirini, a Laredo Democrat and co-chairwoman of the committee, is likely to get an answer even if they do not. Legislators and other concerned groups are preparing for a thorough review of the conflict of interest policies — or lack of policies — that apply to regents of the state’s public university systems.

In addition to the oversight committee — which Zaffirini leads with Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas — the House speaker, Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, has directed the General Investigating and Ethics Committee to study whether the governor’s appointees, regents included, should be required to “sign additional governance documents prior to serving in an official state capacity.”

Such policies are common in higher education. A 2008 survey conducted by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges of its member institutions showed that nearly 80 percent of public boards that responded had a policy regarding conflicts of interest. Roughly 50 percent required members to sign an annual statement.

Most of the six major university systems in Texas have a policy specifically for regents. An A&M spokesman said their regents are covered by their system’s general written policies. But the UT System, one of the state’s largest, is an exception.

“There’s nothing in writing, but there’s several state laws and common laws relating to conflict of interests, especially on the financial side, that we would adhere to just like any state agency would adhere to,” said Anthony de Bruyn, a spokesman for the system.

He said that board members worked with the general counsel to prevent conflicts.

That does not satisfy some critics of the board overseeing the University of Texas at Austin. This year, a coalition largely made up of prominent U.T. alumni formed out of concern that university system regents might put into action controversial policies proposed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research organization.

Each of the UT and A&M boards has a member who also serves on the policy foundation’s board.

“There are two kinds of conflict,” said Gordon Appleman, a Fort Worth lawyer and founding member of the coalition. “One is financial conflict. That one’s obvious. Then there’s having dual board membership where their purposes are in conflict.” He said a written policy was necessary to clarify the rules surrounding both.

At the hearing, Gene Powell, the chairman of the UT System board, cautioned against infringing on the rights of regents, who serve voluntarily, and said they were aware that their chief loyalty lies with the system. “I think they have the right to participate on boards and associate with who they want to associate with,” he said.