Business Group’s Report Says Broken Education System Will Sink Texas Economy

The concerning report mentioned here is titled, "Why Investing in Education Fuels the Texas Economy."  Those involved in this conversation in Texas need to address, as well, the sociocultural (e.g., language, how to teach to the ELL population and otherwise culturally diverse student populiations) and sociopolitical dynamics (the political aspects of schooling, including harmful laws, policies, and practices that reflect these) that inform minorities' progress in schools or lack thereof.  I hope that lawmakers heed the warning of this report as matters are indeed critical and deteriorating from a school funding perspective.

-Angela 

Business Group’s Report Says Broken Education System Will Sink Texas Economy

Bekah McNeel January 26, 2017

Scott Ball / Rivard Report

SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez walks down the halls of the Young Men's Leadership Academy. 

Updated January 26, 2017

Advocates for education reform might finally be speaking the language of the Texas Legislature: economics. 

According to a new white paper released by a group of independent business leaders and academic researchers, Texas’ current education funding crisis will jeopardize the state’s economy unless comprehensive reforms are put in place. The business leaders behind the report titled Why Investing in Education Fuels the Texas Economy claim that the state’s economic future depends upon fixing a broken and underfunded public school system.

“The current state of education is unacceptable,” said John Gonzalez, founder of employment consulting firm JDG Associates Inc. and one of the project’s leaders. “We are not providing quality education to our children, and by extension, we are not addressing the needs of the business community.”

Courtesy of John Gonzalez

John Gonzalez, founder of JDG Associates Inc.

The group, which has been operating under the name Educate Fir$t, is a collaboration of independent entrepreneurs, business owners, academics, and educators. The business leaders became interested in education when they began to notice serious skill and knowledge gaps in new hires. 

“The lack of qualified personnel is a great concern to us [as business leaders],” Alamo Travel Group President Patricia Stout said. “We don’t have the workforce to attract certain companies” to Texas.

Stout served as advisor to the report, along with Matt Diana, CEO of Boerne-based Covenant Strategies Inc., and Terri L. Williams, director of the University of Texas at San Antonio’s SBDC Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC).

María “Cuca” Robledo Montecel and David Hinojosa with the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) served as special advisors. All served on a volunteer basis, and the collaboration has yet to apply for any grants or funding. The costs associated with the report were funded through member contributions.

The group’s passion for the project is partially fueled by urgency. The condition of Texas’ education system is more dire than the Legislature seems to acknowledge, Stout said, calling it “a bomb that is ticking.”

Educate Fir$t hopes that the report will be eye-opening for the business community and that its members will be moved to speak up. Because of the Legislature’s business-friendly posture, the group may succeed where others have failed, Gonzalez said. Educate Fir$t is calling on Texas’ 54 Fortune 500 companies and other influential businesses to speak up for education in hopes that money will indeed talk.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Diana said.

He said that rather than education being seen as the bedrock of growth in every sector, some in the Legislature treat it like a special interest or partisan cause. The report demonstrates that economic growth is intimately tied to education. In a way, all revenue flowing to the capital and back to taxpayers in the form of infrastructure, tax cuts, and incentives are essentially the dividends of educational investment.

“We believe that alerting the business community about what [is] potentially in store for their bottom line is the last best chance to bring about the kind of changes that are necessary,” Gonzalez said.

While the group is sympathetic to the competing demands on legislators, they hope to reframe the conversation. 

Alamo Travel Group President Patricia Stout speaks at the 86th annual San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce gala.

“While it is true that our state has many needs, the main emphasis of this paper is to illustrate how much is at stake for the business community of Texas if we continue to undereducate our children and ill-prepare them for rewarding careers that allow them to properly contribute to both the state and nation’s economy,” the report reads.

As business owners from typically conservative small towns, the members of Education Fir$t represent a different type of  education advocacy group. Diana wants to call attention to the need for proponents of the three main agendas in education reform – property tax recapture, charter schools, and finance reform – to come together to find a solution.

This business-centric approach has caught the attention of conservative lawmakers. State Sen. Donna Campbell (R-25) of New Braunfels and U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-21) have both expressed interest in the report’s findings, and Texas Economic Development Council CEO Carlton Schwab has endorsed the findings, Diana said.

Courtesy of Matt Diana

Matt Diana, CEO of Covenant Strategies Inc.

The report’s findings, which analyze current and projected demographic data, tell of a growing minority and economically disadvantaged population that will make up the workforce of coming decades. While CNBC recently ranked Texas 2nd for business and economic climate and 8th in overall workforce, the report focuses on the lack of sustainability of these standings without an educated workforce. That same CNBC report ranks Texas 37th for quality of life and 40th for education.

According to the report, the current booming economy is not benefitting everyone. Between 2008-2018 Texas will have produced 1.8 million jobs that require post-secondary degrees, but not the workforce to fill them. Importing talent at that level while the low-wage workforce falls further behind is not a sustainable model.

“The fact of the matter is that businesses must recognize that remaining profitable will, to a large extent, depend on what is happening in the classrooms at all levels. A quality education determines the quality of a future workforce and the eventual success of a company. The importance of human capital cannot be over-emphasized,” the report states.

The gap between education and jobs weakens the middle class, the report states, and people in low-wage jobs don’t have the disposable income to sustain a consumer economy.

“If the middle class is already struggling, adding more undereducated and low-paid workers to the pool will not improve matters. A lack of disposable income severely limits an individual’s ability to purchase products or services other than basic necessities, and families will likely defer or be unable to acquire many large purchases that drive our local tax base, such as homes,” according to the report.

What is a problem for Texas – currently ranked 5th for economic disparity – will also be a problem for the nation, the report states. Meanwhile, growth in the state’s population of children is far outpacing the rest of the country.

“Between 2000 and 2014, nearly 90% of child growth in the United States came from Texas. To put that in perspective, the number of children in Texas increased more than 1.2 million, while the country itself had an overall growth of 1.4 million children. The state currently has the second largest population of children, with 7.1 million,” the report states.

If that population boom consists of poorly educated – and thus low-wage earning – children, the workforce of the entire country could suffer.

“Unfortunately, if current educational trends continue, especially for economically disadvantaged and minority populations, many of these children could end up undereducated and a potential liability for the state, the nation, and the economy,” the report states.

The groups considers the paper a call to action rather than a criticism of the state.

“It’s not just about funding. It’s about taking a long, hard look at what we are doing,” Gonzalez said.

In addition to properly funding schools, the group advocates a holistic focus on workforce development even in early childhood education.

“Workforce training should start as early as pre-K,” Gonzalez said.

At that level, it might be as simple as asking children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” From there the discussion moves on to ambition, character, and goals, Diana said.

How to enhance and refocus curriculum, engage parents, and develop “soft skills” for students continues to be the subject of robust discussion. Financing education, however, is the group’s biggest emphasis. By putting the white paper into the hands of lawmakers at the beginning of the biennium, they hope to spur support for legislation aimed at significant changes in the school finance system.

“Tweaking isn’t going to work,” Gonzalez said. “It has to be reform. It has to be an overhaul.”

About Bekah McNeel

Bekah is a native San Antonian. She is a frequent contributor to The Rivard Report. You can also find her at her blog, FreeBekah.com, on Twitter @BekahMcneel, and on Instagram @wanderbekah.

My thoughts on "Another Victory for Mexican-American Studies in San Antonio" by Angela Valenzuela

This story by San Antonio educator, writer, and activist, Léo Treviño, is about the exercise of political power and how it makes a difference.  Just like the highly contested struggle against the racist textbook by Jaime Riddle and Valarie Angle currently underway, this story is also about the San Antonio Mexican American community exerting its political power. 

Note:  While I was originally concerned about this report using the Mexican flag on its cover as a way to possibly send a mixed message and stoke nativist fears, I grew less concerned when I looked up the Rivard Report that published this out of San Antonio.  Whereas nativist and some colonized Mexican Americans themselves could still scream about this, the intention appears otherwise. Good.  Now I can move on.

There is much to learn from this story about Mexican American Studies (MAS) that recently came under fire in the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) that you can read more about here.  This struggle for MAS simultaneously underscores community struggles for inclusion in the curriculum, as well as the larger politics of education that are required in order for political minorities—beyond the imperative for curricular inclusion that demographic growth would seem to imply—to achieve substantial voice and presence in the college-level, curriculum.

As with any group and as captured in this piece, the Mexican American experience is so vast that it expands far beyond its traditional boundaries of Mexican American history and literature.  Yet, even this expansion of the curriculum requires an exertion of power with respect to the wishes and preferences of a community for whom one would think in 2016, such matters would not even be an issue.

To draw from Paolo Freire, in the best of worlds, we educate not to domesticate, but to liberate.  My own motivation for going to college was precisely this, to liberate myself and all of my instruction contributed—and continues to contribute to this.  Liberation is a process, not an end state.  We, myself included, are always embarked on de-colonizing our minds that in fact so much of the educational system through its curriculum and instruction, provides.  Sociology professor at Binghamton University, Aníbal Quijano from Peru, in fact addresses this with the concept of the "coloniality of power" (PDF en español;  PDF in English).

I'll resist going on a tangent here, but one of the reasons from the very beginning in the early 1990s when the neoliberal, charter school movement got off the ground that I never saw this as either our community's or as God's redemptive, long-awaited solution to all our problems in education, precisely because it largely left our culturally chauvinist curriculum untouched, while continuing to objectify our communities as objects to whom to administer curriculum, as opposed to communities with whom, in solidarity with its long and continuing history of struggle to forge common cause in and with our civil rights organizations, nonprofits, and community-based institutions.  Never mind their insatiable consumption of public, taxpayer dollars for private ends that "education management organizations [EMOs]" today represent as a whole...

To continue.  I further presume this liberatory disposition to be true of most"ethnic studies scholars" like myself that are differentially located throughout our colleges and universities again, depending on their own respective histories of struggle for inclusion as follows:  African American Studies, Jewish American, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Puerto Rican/Boricua Studies, Asian-American, Women and Gender Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, and so on.  

The historical accounts, theoretical frameworks, core concepts, and guiding research questions that they provide help move us to challenge beyond the system of instruction that is currently wedded at the K12 level to a prescriptive and scripted curricula such as that appearing in Common Core or in existing state standards that either ignore or are largely dismissive of the scholarship, knowledge, and frameworks emanating from these fields.  And even when there is cognizance for at least some teachers and some administrators that are able to link up Common Core and state standards to ethnic studies content, this knowledge may be siloed to "the multicultural education" side of the school, rather than positioned centrally in terms of how school is done, period.

We are domesticated when we think that existing curricular offerings as coming from God or the invisible hand of the market.  As someone in policy who has studied the history of the inextricably intertwined aspects of curriculum and the historical politics of education, nothing could be further from the truth.

Kudos to our friends in San Antonio for moving the needle with respect to the intellectually-inspiring knowledge base and pedagogy that portends a bright future of liberated, as opposed to domesticated, individuals and communities armed with a critically conscious mindset bent on transforming systems and institutions for the betterment of society, domestic tranquility, and humanity as a whole.   

Felicidades!  Congratulations!

Angela Valenzuela

c/s 

#MASforTexas 

#LibroTraficante @LibroTraficante @AztecMuse

#EthnicStudiesNow  #TxTABE 

#criticalpedagogy

#AcademiaCuauhtli

 

 

Another Victory for Mexican-American Studies in San Antonio

Léo Treviño October 20, 2016

Scott Ball / Rivard Report

A Mexican flag at the 19th Annual Cesar Chavez March for Justice in 2015. Photo by Scott Ball.

Updated October 20, 2016

 

Despite the wide range of struggles that Mexican-American Studies (MAS) has faced since its inception in the 1960s, the academic field recently gained a significant victory that advocates and engaged Texans can be proud of.

Just last year, the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) came under fire when its board of trustees under Chancellor Bruce Leslie voted to remove majors from students’ academic records.

More recently, faculty, students, and supporters of San Antonio College (SAC) had ample reason to celebrate when the school’s new Mexican-American Studies Center opened its doors on the near-downtown campus.

Visitors entering the Chance Academic Center needed only follow the scent of burning sage through bland white hallways to a room where Linda Ximenes was blessing the future space of the MAS Program as well as attendees of the event.

Papel picado hung from the ceilings and lent color and authenticity to the purpose of the event. Bookshelves filled with books authored by writers of all ethnicities celebrated the essence of the Mexican-American experience solidifying the space as a center for academic excellence.

Courtesy / Léo Treviño

Son Jarocho musicians and dancers perform at the MAS center’s grand opening.

After the blessing, attendees enjoyed an excerpt of a play penned by MAS program faculty member Mariano “Mono” Aguilar titled Adelita, which opens at the Josephine Theatre on Nov. 3, as well as a local group performing Son Jarocho, a regional folk music fusion of Spanish, indigenous, and African cultures that originated in the state of Veracruz in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico.

MAS Center and Program Coordinator Lisa Ramos wrote her dissertation for her Ph.D. in history on Mexican-American Civil Rights lawsuits and how the racial categorization of Mexican Americans as white affected identity politics and relationships.

“There were no real obstacles but we did have to follow procedural guidelines which takes time but once we submitted, approval followed,” Ramos said of her longtime vision coming into fruition in May.

She credited the smooth process to existing MAS programs and degrees that are offered at other ACCD campuses such as Northwest Vista, Palo Alto, and St. Phillip’s colleges. “We just followed the models from those campuses and developed the curriculum and program from there,” she explained.
Aguilar explained that a designated MAS office had not previously existed on campus. “We were all on different parts of the campus in our respective departments but getting approval for the program gave us the ability to request this space.”

He added that the only MAS courses that were offered prior to the center’s creation were Mexican-American history and Mexican-American literature. “We’re hoping to add more in the upcoming semesters,” Ramos added by laying out the order of things. “We’d received approval for the program in May, for this space in June, and the first classes began this fall semester in August.”

According to Ramos, planning and organizing for this endeavor began more than a year ago. “We’ve been working on the budget, finding people who can teach the courses, and figuring out how to get exposure (for) the course(s) through the school.”

Ramos also gave credit to Tammy Perez, who works in the Spanish department, for getting the course titles and numbers into the SAC catalog so they’re searchable. “That for us was the biggest success because when people are looking for the courses they want to take, we’re now an option.”

Courtesy / Léo Treviño

A list of MAS courses that can be found on the SAC catalog.

As for advertising the event and bringing attention to the center, “Mono (Aguilar) planned all the Hispanic Heritage Month events and incorporated this event into the planning,” Ramos explained.
SAC students seeking to expand their cultural base or gain insight into the Mexican-American experience in the Spring 2017 semester can look in the SAC catalog for Mexican-American History, Mexican-American Literature, and Mexican-American Politics. “We’ll be adding Mexican-American Fine Arts Appreciation in the Fall 2017 semester so hopefully that will bring in more interest than we already have.”

Ramos and her colleagues hope that that interest will extend beyond students who asked questions at the grand opening event or are already enrolled in MAS classes.

According to the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, Latinos make up 54.82% of San Antonio’s population, 59.4% of Bexar County’s, and the percentage of bilingual people in the Greater San Antonio Area is 34.21%.

These numbers speak to the fact that the community centered around Mexican-American Studies is thriving and growing. Students who decide to take MAS classes will be able transfer earned credits to a four-year institution such as the University of Texas at San Antonio, where the Mexican-American Studies program and degree has been in place for more than two decades.

Programs like these set a precedent for a more thoroughly developed social consciousness toward Mexican-American studies and for people who are critically engaged in their future. SAC’s MAS courses offer narratives not traditionally found outside of higher education, inspire learning beyond commonly held truths and values, and prove that the Mexican-American experience not only complements existing history, but is an integral part of it.

About Léo Treviño

Born and raised in San Antonio, Léo Treviño is an educator who works with at-risk middle school aged students on the Southside. After serving multiple tours of combat in the U.S. Army for 10 years, he received dual B.A.s in History and Mexican-American Studies and is currently pursuing a M.A. in Bicultural Bilingual Education. Léo's fierce passion for education reform and the inclusion of Ethnic Studies in public schools serves him well as an activist in the San Antonio and Texas communities.

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