This is an important conversation happening in Georgia regarding merit-based aid. Attempts to make eligibility for Texas' state financial aid, TEXAS Grant, an increasingly merit-based program is going to be on the table again this session.
The difficult factor that few are considering in Texas is that we've increased the challenges that students will have in simply meeting the current eligibility requirements. To support increasing the merit criteria will have disproportionate effects for low-income students that attend poorly resourced high schools.
I urge everyone, and college students especially, to please keep a close watch on this issue this session!
-Patricia
By KIM SEVERSON | NY Times
Published: January 6, 2011
ATHENS, Ga. — Students here at the University of Georgia have a name for some of the fancy cars parked in the lots around campus. They call them Hopemobiles. But there may soon be fewer of them.
The cars are gifts from parents who find themselves with extra cash because their children decided to take advantage of a cherished state perk — the Hope scholarship. The largest merit-based college scholarship program in the United States it offers any Georgia high school student with a B-average four years of free college tuition.
But the Hope scholarship program is about to be cut by a new governor and Legislature facing staggering financial troubles.
The lingering effects of the recession and the end of federal stimulus funds have sunk many states into a fiscal quagmire. The seriousness of the problem, and a growing concern over how much worse it might become, have many states struggling to find ways to trim services or raise revenues.
In Georgia, that means taking a slice out of the Hope scholarship.
When it was begun in 1993, the program was covered easily by Georgia’s state lottery. Politicians enjoyed how happy it made middle-class constituents. Educators praised the way it improved SAT scores and lifted Georgia from the backwaters of higher education.
It was considered so innovative that 15 states copied it. And while the lottery-based scholarship programs in states like Tennessee are dipping into reserves to cover the costs, none have fiscal woes as big as Georgia’s.
Part of it is the program’s popularity. A majority of freshmen in Georgia have grades good enough to qualify for Hope, which covers tuition, some books and fees — but not housing costs — at any Georgia university or technical school.
And even though as many as two-thirds of Hope students let their college grades slip so much that they no longer qualify — “I’ve lost Hope,” they joke when it happens — Georgia still gives away more financial aid per student than any other state. Since the program started, 1.3 million Georgia students have received a total of $5.6 billion in educational support. The program offers as much as $6,000 a year for some students.
But the program has become so popular it cannot sustain itself. Lottery sales, which by law can pay for only the Hope scholarship and a free prekindergarten program, will be short $243 million this fiscal year and as much as $317 million the next, according to state budget estimates.
Last year, lawmakers had to pull millions of dollars from the state’s reserve fund just to cover the cost. But this year, there is nowhere to turn.
Like the other states that are facing the worst fiscal crisis in recent memory, Georgia heads into its legislative session next week staring at a budget deficit of as much as $2 billion. And that is after billions of dollars in cuts over the past two years that have reduced the state’s spending power to $17.9 billion for fiscal year 2011.
But trim the program that for years has paid to educate the children of the most reliable voters in the state?
“Undoubtedly, this is, in every sense of the word, a very strongly ingrained entitlement for a certain segment of voters, and politicians are indeed reluctant to touch it,” said Christopher Cornwell, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia, who has studied the effect of the Hope scholarship on the state, including an analysis of the positive impact the scholarship has had on car sales.
Politicians are hoping for mercy as they begin this month to make decisions that will surely have the parents of college-bound students scrambling to find new ways to pay for tuition.
“We trust and we hope the people in the state of Georgia understand the position we’re in,” said State Representative Len Walker, a Republican who leads the House Higher Education Committee.
They do and they don’t.
Cathy Ottley, a part-time office manager, and her husband, a management consultant, are raising three children in Marietta, north of Atlanta. One is a sophomore at the University of Georgia, courtesy of the Hope scholarship. A daughter who is a high school senior had her heart set on the University of North Carolina but has come to see an in-state college as the practical way to go. And then there is the youngest, a high school freshman with a promising future in athletics. Without the scholarship, Ms. Ottley said, college for her children would be a stretch at best.
“This just gives you options,” she said. “I don’t have peace about kids just starting out at 22 with $200,000 in debt for their education.”
Mr. Walker said no one was talking about cutting the program completely.
“It appears at this point that it will not be a 100 percent scholarship. It might be 90 percent. It might 80 percent,” he said. But the cost of books and fees will most certainly be eliminated.
Other options include raising the required grade-point average, which would cut the number of students who qualify, or giving more to exceptional students and less to merely above-average performers.
“That would make it so much harder,” said Myisha Price, a junior at Clayton State University in Atlanta, who relies on the scholarship and also works. “I don’t go to clubs. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke and I don’t party and it’s already hard.”
Another idea is to work economic need into the equation, though that idea does not have much support, both lawmakers and educators said.
The most likely plan, and one that Governor-elect Nathan Deal, a Republican, has indicated he supports, would be to create a flat rate for each student, regardless of the tuition bill.
At a cafeteria table here this week, a group of Hope recipients defended the program and debated a range of ideas to keep Hope alive, including raising taxes.
Allie McCullen, who is majoring in English and women’s studies, is in her fourth year at Georgia. She is the only child of a single mother who in 2006 lost her job in the mortgage industry. Ms. McCullen pieces together her living expenses and extra book costs through a small grant and two jobs.
“If I didn’t have it, I might not be able to attend at all,” she said. “Or I would just be in such severe debt that I might not ever be able to get out of it.”
If the scholarship ends or gets cut drastically, it could send the most promising students out of state and even end the era of new cars for incoming freshman.
Lauren Rice drives a Hopemobile (though, she concedes, it is only a Honda Civic). Her parents told her she could go to college anywhere. She was considering Auburn in Alabama. But her parents offered her what she called “the car incentive.” That, plus the daunting out-of-state tuition helped her select the University of Georgia.
But without Hope, Ms. Rice’s decision might have been different.
“If you’re going to have a bill in-state anyway,” she said, “then what does it matter?”
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Pomp, Circumstance — and Consequences
Nice short summary on the overarching issues coming through this session. I'd also encourage you to check out the links on the sidebar of this blog to gain even more in-depth insight and analysis on issues from different state-wide organizations.
-Patricia
The 82nd Texas Legislature convenes in Austin this week, and while it’s not as much fun as the circus — usually — it’s more important and does have its share of comedy and drama.
The subject matter is practically operatic: in the 140 days of their regular session, lawmakers must face down a multibillion-dollar shortfall, having made blanket promises not to raise taxes. They need to draw redistricting maps for seats in Congress, the Legislature and the State Board of Education — their most partisan enterprise of the decade.
Expect a heated word or two over immigration legislation and border security, threats of major cuts to education and health and human services, and continuing struggles to keep up with the state’s transportation and criminal-justice concerns. Here’s a look at some key issues coming up while the Legislature is in town.
Budget
The bane of everyone who feared story problems in math class, the budget is the central policy blueprint for the state government. And it’s deeply out of whack, with the state committed to more programs than the Legislature can finance. The size of that shortfall is estimated at $15 billion to $28 billion; the real number will be known Monday when Comptroller Susan Combs issues her revenue estimate and lawmakers unveil their starting budget proposal.
The numbers are stark: cutting everything except education and health and human services — everything — would trim a fraction of the shortfall. Local school districts could be forced to raise property taxes to cover costs if the state makes deep cuts in education; municipalities might also be able to reduce cuts in services and staff by raising their own local property taxes.
Lawmakers have just a few options: raise taxes, find other revenue, use the Rainy Day Fund (expected to be at least $8 billion), cut spending, shift costs to local governments or to the private sector, or use financial tricks.
Most of the state’s officeholders campaigned on promises not to raise taxes. Raising fees for various licenses and other state services is possible, but iffy. There’s talk of legalizing gambling to increase state income.
Using the Rainy Day Fund requires the approval of two-thirds of the Legislature. Financial tricks — like delaying payments until the next budget — are good for about $3 billion. Some state leaders want to preserve some of the state’s savings in case the budget after this one is grim, too.
WHO TO WATCH: Steve Ogden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Jim Pitts, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the head writers of the state’s spending plan. — ROSS RAMSEY
Federalism/Tea Party
To this point, most talk about states’ rights has been just that — talk. But Texas is pushing back against the federal government in substantive ways, too: There’s legal action under way over environmental regulation (whether the Environmental Protection Agency or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality should have supremacy here).
Lawmakers are talking seriously about backing out of the federal Medicaid program. Some want the federal government to give states more leeway with programs financed in part by the federal government. Texas and other states have talked about petitioning to change the 14th Amendment’s provision of automatic citizenship for babies born in the United States to parents who aren’t citizens.
The governor has been promoting his book, “Fed Up!,” focused on what he sees as an overreaching federal government, and he will be sworn in for a new term on Jan. 18, presumably to put some of his words into action.
This is also the Tea Party’s first legislative session, and the combination of people it has helped elect and its ability to spur the people inside the Capitol with phone calls and letters and social media is about to be tested.
WHO TO WATCH: Representative Wayne Christian, Republican of Center, and head of the Texas Conservative Coalition; and Senator Dan Patrick, Republican of Houston, founder of the new legislative Tea Party Caucus. — ROSS RAMSEY
Speaker’s Race
The 2011 session’s first order of business is the selection of House speaker, arguably the most powerful political post in Texas. Joe Straus of San Antonio, the Republican incumbent, is trying to keep his job amid challenges from outside grass-roots groups and socially conservative Republicans who take issue with his selection of some Democrats as committee chairmen last session, as well as his past support of groups favoring abortion rights.
His challengers smell opportunity: the election of dozens of freshmen — many of them further to the right than their predecessors — potentially gives Mr. Straus’s opponents new allies.
Warren Chisum, Republican of Pampa and a conservative, and Ken Paxton, Republican of McKinney, also want the job. Mr. Paxton has promised to use the new Republican supermajority in the House to “honestly advance conservative principles and not simply protect the status quo.” He has won the support of the Young Conservatives of Texas, the Republican Liberty Caucus and Dick Armey, the former majority leader of the United States House and a highly visible Tea Party booster.
Mr. Chisum’s candidacy isn’t generating much excitement. Beverly Woolley, Republican of Houston, who led the powerful Calendars Committee under Mr. Straus’s immediate predecessor, Tom Craddick, took an important public stand in this largely insider struggle when she threw her support to Mr. Straus in December. It was a signal that Mr. Straus’s challengers probably won’t win the support of conservative veteran members. But politics being unpredictable, Mr. Straus won’t be on solid ground until after Tuesday’s floor vote.
WHO TO WATCH: Freshman members. A handful of new lawmakers have thrown their support behind Mr. Straus’s challengers. They’ll either gain clout or give it up — depending on whether they’ve made the right bet. — ELISE HU
Immigration
Representative Debbie Riddle, a conservative Republican from Tomball, did not wait long after the midterm elections to file immigration-related legislation. Ms. Riddle camped out in the Capitol for 36 hours to be the first to file a bill that would stop the flow of state money to any local government that provided “sanctuary” — i.e., a city that does not allow its police officers to enforce federal immigration laws — to illegal immigrants.
Ms. Riddle told reporters that her willingness to spend the night in the Capitol showed she had “tenacity and fire in the belly” on the issue.
Many of her colleagues share Ms. Riddle’s fervor. Several followed suit and filed bills — more than 40 — that, if passed, would significantly increase the state’s involvement with immigration enforcement. The proposed legislation would, among other things, prohibit any state agency from printing signs or documents in any language other than English, and require the police to ask people stopped without proper ID if they are in the country legally.
Last week, a coalition of civil rights groups, business leaders and law enforcement warned that the proposed legislation would create an antibusiness climate in Texas and divert strained law enforcement resources.
Whether the new measures, if passed, would survive legal scrutiny is another question. Arizona’s immigration legislation is tied up in federal court, which has temporarily halted enforcement of some of its major provisions.
WHO TO WATCH: The always-colorful Ms. Riddle, of course. — JULIÁN AGUILAR
Redistricting
Texas picks up four seats, for a total of 36, in the United States House of Representatives, thanks to its population growth relative to the other states, but determining the boundaries of the new districts won’t be easy. Members of Congress and their staff members will be spending lots of time in Austin.
Expect cajoling, jawboning, arm-twisting — whatever it takes (including the occasional lavish display of flattery) as lawmakers seek to protect their own seats and damage their opponents’. The new districts go where the people are — each must contain about 700,000 people — so it’s likely that the Dallas and Houston suburbs will gain a seat each, and the Rio Grande Valley at least one.
State lawmakers must also redraw their own districts (150 in the House and 31 in the Senate), which must contain equal populations and be drawn with minority populations in mind. Though the Republicans have a supermajority in the House, it will still be tough for them to draw enough safe G.O.P.districts to protect all of their members from competitive elections in 2012. But they could also try to dilute Democrats’ strength by creating more swing districts.
State lawmakers must approve the maps, as with any other legislation. If they can’t agree on their own seats, the five-member Legislative Redistricting Board, composed of the lieutenant governor and other statewide elected officials, will decide. It’s possible that a special session in the summer will be required to finish drawing Congressional seats. Then come the legal challenges.
WHO TO WATCH: Attorney General Greg Abbott, who will have to defend the maps in any court challenges. — MATT STILES
Criminal Justice
Criminal-justice advocates, both liberal and conservative, agree that the biggest cost savings would come from shuttering some of the facilities that house adult and juvenile offenders. But it’s not an easy proposition to accomplish.
The Texas Youth Commission has said the only way it could slash its budget enough is to close two more facilities beyond the five it has closed since 2007. There were more than 900 empty beds in its 10 facilities in October. The commission estimates that each facility it closes would mean 230 lost jobs. In some small towns that have youth prisons, that would be a major economic blow that could create major political fallout.
As for adult prisons, Texas has never closed one. The prisoner population, however, dropped by more than 1,000 from the 2008 fiscal year to the 2009 one. Still, the department said it needed all of the bed space it had.
Of course, the keys to keeping adults and juveniles alike out of prison in the first place, advocates of reform say, are the changes Texas made in specialty programs to provide more treatment for addicts and mentally ill offenders. Lawmakers, they say, should resist cutting those programs.
Lawmakers will also have to deal with the continuing problem of wrongful convictions and the need to debate over the use of faulty evidence.
WHO TO WATCH: Scott Henson, a very knowledgeable blogger, who writes about all things criminal justice at gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com.— BRANDI GRISSOM
Health and Social Services
Expect ample political bluster — and devastating cuts. The Republican majority will continue to attack the federal health care overhaul and do everything legislatively it can to resist it.
Lawmakers will also file bills and resolutions seeking federal waivers to redesign how Medicaid is administered, or they could try to drop out of the program. At an annual cost to the state of $10 billion, Medicaid is the single biggest health-related item on the budget.
At the very least, legislators will most likely take aim at the rates at which Medicaid health care providers are reimbursed and expand Medicaid managed-care into the Rio Grande Valley and rural Texas.
Other anticipated legislation? An effort to lift Texas’ ban on hospitals directly employing doctors, and a move to expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners.
In social services, expect cuts in community-based care for people with disabilities — the state’s big institutional care facilities are largely protected under a federal Justice Department settlement. Cutbacks in community-based care for the elderly are also possible. A redesign of the state’s foster-care system is in the works, but lawmakers will be hard-pressed to approve anything that requires more money.
WHO TO WATCH: Tom Suehs, commissioner of health and human services, is trusted on both sides of the aisle and is a straight-shooter on budget cuts and Medicaid’s merits and shortcomings. — EMILY RAMSHAW
Education
In a session in which any new policy proposal with a price tag is probably dead on arrival, the most significant changes in public education could come in existing programs. To ease the burden of cuts in financing, lawmakers could relax state rules and regulations that create costs that local school districts must bear on their own or with limited help from the state.
The most controversial proposal? Removing the requirement of a 22-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio in kindergarten through fourth grade. Legislators have also promised a new school finance bill overhauling the current long-contested mechanism.
Colleges and universities are particularly vulnerable. Last year, when the state reduced the current biennium budget by 5 percent, more than 40 percent of the cuts came out of higher education. Deeper cuts loom, but even as the money disappears, institutions are under pressure to improve graduation rates.
Policy makers will consider tying state money to graduation rates instead of enrollment in order to create greater incentives for improvement. They could also raise eligibility standards for the state’s largest financial aid program, which could also be slashed.
WHO TO WATCH: The chair of the appropriations subcommittee on education. For now, that’s Scott Hochberg, Democrat of Houston, but this is a leadership position Republicans could grab. — REEVE HAMILTON and MORGAN SMITH
Energy
In the 2009 session, dozens of bills to foster the use of solar power died. Some are being introduced again this year, and they’re a priority of environmentalists.
Pro-solar action could take one of two forms: a mandate for electric companies to utilize renewable energy sources other than wind (which got its start from a mandate and has thrived) or a rebate program, specifically for solar, intended for residents and businesses. With the economic recovery still tenuous, both will face obstacles.
The Sunset Advisory Commission, which looks for waste in state agencies, will review oil and gas and electricity regulators, keeping the energy sector in the spotlight.
The hottest item may be the structure of the Railroad Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry in Texas. Will its name be changed to something more apt — like the Texas Oil and Gas Commission? And will its structure, headed by three elected commissioners, be altered?
The sunset panel’s review of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, will also be closely watched.
Texas lawmakers may also choose to dive into the regulatory fight between the state and the Environmental Protection Agency, with legislation that backs the state’s permitting system and rebuffs the federal agency.
WHO TO WATCH: Troy Fraser, Republican of Horseshoe Bay, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and a solar-rebate advocate. — KATE GALBRAITH
-Patricia
The 82nd Texas Legislature convenes in Austin this week, and while it’s not as much fun as the circus — usually — it’s more important and does have its share of comedy and drama.
The subject matter is practically operatic: in the 140 days of their regular session, lawmakers must face down a multibillion-dollar shortfall, having made blanket promises not to raise taxes. They need to draw redistricting maps for seats in Congress, the Legislature and the State Board of Education — their most partisan enterprise of the decade.
Expect a heated word or two over immigration legislation and border security, threats of major cuts to education and health and human services, and continuing struggles to keep up with the state’s transportation and criminal-justice concerns. Here’s a look at some key issues coming up while the Legislature is in town.
Budget
The bane of everyone who feared story problems in math class, the budget is the central policy blueprint for the state government. And it’s deeply out of whack, with the state committed to more programs than the Legislature can finance. The size of that shortfall is estimated at $15 billion to $28 billion; the real number will be known Monday when Comptroller Susan Combs issues her revenue estimate and lawmakers unveil their starting budget proposal.
The numbers are stark: cutting everything except education and health and human services — everything — would trim a fraction of the shortfall. Local school districts could be forced to raise property taxes to cover costs if the state makes deep cuts in education; municipalities might also be able to reduce cuts in services and staff by raising their own local property taxes.
Lawmakers have just a few options: raise taxes, find other revenue, use the Rainy Day Fund (expected to be at least $8 billion), cut spending, shift costs to local governments or to the private sector, or use financial tricks.
Most of the state’s officeholders campaigned on promises not to raise taxes. Raising fees for various licenses and other state services is possible, but iffy. There’s talk of legalizing gambling to increase state income.
Using the Rainy Day Fund requires the approval of two-thirds of the Legislature. Financial tricks — like delaying payments until the next budget — are good for about $3 billion. Some state leaders want to preserve some of the state’s savings in case the budget after this one is grim, too.
WHO TO WATCH: Steve Ogden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Jim Pitts, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the head writers of the state’s spending plan. — ROSS RAMSEY
Federalism/Tea Party
To this point, most talk about states’ rights has been just that — talk. But Texas is pushing back against the federal government in substantive ways, too: There’s legal action under way over environmental regulation (whether the Environmental Protection Agency or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality should have supremacy here).
Lawmakers are talking seriously about backing out of the federal Medicaid program. Some want the federal government to give states more leeway with programs financed in part by the federal government. Texas and other states have talked about petitioning to change the 14th Amendment’s provision of automatic citizenship for babies born in the United States to parents who aren’t citizens.
The governor has been promoting his book, “Fed Up!,” focused on what he sees as an overreaching federal government, and he will be sworn in for a new term on Jan. 18, presumably to put some of his words into action.
This is also the Tea Party’s first legislative session, and the combination of people it has helped elect and its ability to spur the people inside the Capitol with phone calls and letters and social media is about to be tested.
WHO TO WATCH: Representative Wayne Christian, Republican of Center, and head of the Texas Conservative Coalition; and Senator Dan Patrick, Republican of Houston, founder of the new legislative Tea Party Caucus. — ROSS RAMSEY
Speaker’s Race
The 2011 session’s first order of business is the selection of House speaker, arguably the most powerful political post in Texas. Joe Straus of San Antonio, the Republican incumbent, is trying to keep his job amid challenges from outside grass-roots groups and socially conservative Republicans who take issue with his selection of some Democrats as committee chairmen last session, as well as his past support of groups favoring abortion rights.
His challengers smell opportunity: the election of dozens of freshmen — many of them further to the right than their predecessors — potentially gives Mr. Straus’s opponents new allies.
Warren Chisum, Republican of Pampa and a conservative, and Ken Paxton, Republican of McKinney, also want the job. Mr. Paxton has promised to use the new Republican supermajority in the House to “honestly advance conservative principles and not simply protect the status quo.” He has won the support of the Young Conservatives of Texas, the Republican Liberty Caucus and Dick Armey, the former majority leader of the United States House and a highly visible Tea Party booster.
Mr. Chisum’s candidacy isn’t generating much excitement. Beverly Woolley, Republican of Houston, who led the powerful Calendars Committee under Mr. Straus’s immediate predecessor, Tom Craddick, took an important public stand in this largely insider struggle when she threw her support to Mr. Straus in December. It was a signal that Mr. Straus’s challengers probably won’t win the support of conservative veteran members. But politics being unpredictable, Mr. Straus won’t be on solid ground until after Tuesday’s floor vote.
WHO TO WATCH: Freshman members. A handful of new lawmakers have thrown their support behind Mr. Straus’s challengers. They’ll either gain clout or give it up — depending on whether they’ve made the right bet. — ELISE HU
Immigration
Representative Debbie Riddle, a conservative Republican from Tomball, did not wait long after the midterm elections to file immigration-related legislation. Ms. Riddle camped out in the Capitol for 36 hours to be the first to file a bill that would stop the flow of state money to any local government that provided “sanctuary” — i.e., a city that does not allow its police officers to enforce federal immigration laws — to illegal immigrants.
Ms. Riddle told reporters that her willingness to spend the night in the Capitol showed she had “tenacity and fire in the belly” on the issue.
Many of her colleagues share Ms. Riddle’s fervor. Several followed suit and filed bills — more than 40 — that, if passed, would significantly increase the state’s involvement with immigration enforcement. The proposed legislation would, among other things, prohibit any state agency from printing signs or documents in any language other than English, and require the police to ask people stopped without proper ID if they are in the country legally.
Last week, a coalition of civil rights groups, business leaders and law enforcement warned that the proposed legislation would create an antibusiness climate in Texas and divert strained law enforcement resources.
Whether the new measures, if passed, would survive legal scrutiny is another question. Arizona’s immigration legislation is tied up in federal court, which has temporarily halted enforcement of some of its major provisions.
WHO TO WATCH: The always-colorful Ms. Riddle, of course. — JULIÁN AGUILAR
Redistricting
Texas picks up four seats, for a total of 36, in the United States House of Representatives, thanks to its population growth relative to the other states, but determining the boundaries of the new districts won’t be easy. Members of Congress and their staff members will be spending lots of time in Austin.
Expect cajoling, jawboning, arm-twisting — whatever it takes (including the occasional lavish display of flattery) as lawmakers seek to protect their own seats and damage their opponents’. The new districts go where the people are — each must contain about 700,000 people — so it’s likely that the Dallas and Houston suburbs will gain a seat each, and the Rio Grande Valley at least one.
State lawmakers must also redraw their own districts (150 in the House and 31 in the Senate), which must contain equal populations and be drawn with minority populations in mind. Though the Republicans have a supermajority in the House, it will still be tough for them to draw enough safe G.O.P.districts to protect all of their members from competitive elections in 2012. But they could also try to dilute Democrats’ strength by creating more swing districts.
State lawmakers must approve the maps, as with any other legislation. If they can’t agree on their own seats, the five-member Legislative Redistricting Board, composed of the lieutenant governor and other statewide elected officials, will decide. It’s possible that a special session in the summer will be required to finish drawing Congressional seats. Then come the legal challenges.
WHO TO WATCH: Attorney General Greg Abbott, who will have to defend the maps in any court challenges. — MATT STILES
Criminal Justice
Criminal-justice advocates, both liberal and conservative, agree that the biggest cost savings would come from shuttering some of the facilities that house adult and juvenile offenders. But it’s not an easy proposition to accomplish.
The Texas Youth Commission has said the only way it could slash its budget enough is to close two more facilities beyond the five it has closed since 2007. There were more than 900 empty beds in its 10 facilities in October. The commission estimates that each facility it closes would mean 230 lost jobs. In some small towns that have youth prisons, that would be a major economic blow that could create major political fallout.
As for adult prisons, Texas has never closed one. The prisoner population, however, dropped by more than 1,000 from the 2008 fiscal year to the 2009 one. Still, the department said it needed all of the bed space it had.
Of course, the keys to keeping adults and juveniles alike out of prison in the first place, advocates of reform say, are the changes Texas made in specialty programs to provide more treatment for addicts and mentally ill offenders. Lawmakers, they say, should resist cutting those programs.
Lawmakers will also have to deal with the continuing problem of wrongful convictions and the need to debate over the use of faulty evidence.
WHO TO WATCH: Scott Henson, a very knowledgeable blogger, who writes about all things criminal justice at gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com.— BRANDI GRISSOM
Health and Social Services
Expect ample political bluster — and devastating cuts. The Republican majority will continue to attack the federal health care overhaul and do everything legislatively it can to resist it.
Lawmakers will also file bills and resolutions seeking federal waivers to redesign how Medicaid is administered, or they could try to drop out of the program. At an annual cost to the state of $10 billion, Medicaid is the single biggest health-related item on the budget.
At the very least, legislators will most likely take aim at the rates at which Medicaid health care providers are reimbursed and expand Medicaid managed-care into the Rio Grande Valley and rural Texas.
Other anticipated legislation? An effort to lift Texas’ ban on hospitals directly employing doctors, and a move to expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners.
In social services, expect cuts in community-based care for people with disabilities — the state’s big institutional care facilities are largely protected under a federal Justice Department settlement. Cutbacks in community-based care for the elderly are also possible. A redesign of the state’s foster-care system is in the works, but lawmakers will be hard-pressed to approve anything that requires more money.
WHO TO WATCH: Tom Suehs, commissioner of health and human services, is trusted on both sides of the aisle and is a straight-shooter on budget cuts and Medicaid’s merits and shortcomings. — EMILY RAMSHAW
Education
In a session in which any new policy proposal with a price tag is probably dead on arrival, the most significant changes in public education could come in existing programs. To ease the burden of cuts in financing, lawmakers could relax state rules and regulations that create costs that local school districts must bear on their own or with limited help from the state.
The most controversial proposal? Removing the requirement of a 22-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio in kindergarten through fourth grade. Legislators have also promised a new school finance bill overhauling the current long-contested mechanism.
Colleges and universities are particularly vulnerable. Last year, when the state reduced the current biennium budget by 5 percent, more than 40 percent of the cuts came out of higher education. Deeper cuts loom, but even as the money disappears, institutions are under pressure to improve graduation rates.
Policy makers will consider tying state money to graduation rates instead of enrollment in order to create greater incentives for improvement. They could also raise eligibility standards for the state’s largest financial aid program, which could also be slashed.
WHO TO WATCH: The chair of the appropriations subcommittee on education. For now, that’s Scott Hochberg, Democrat of Houston, but this is a leadership position Republicans could grab. — REEVE HAMILTON and MORGAN SMITH
Energy
In the 2009 session, dozens of bills to foster the use of solar power died. Some are being introduced again this year, and they’re a priority of environmentalists.
Pro-solar action could take one of two forms: a mandate for electric companies to utilize renewable energy sources other than wind (which got its start from a mandate and has thrived) or a rebate program, specifically for solar, intended for residents and businesses. With the economic recovery still tenuous, both will face obstacles.
The Sunset Advisory Commission, which looks for waste in state agencies, will review oil and gas and electricity regulators, keeping the energy sector in the spotlight.
The hottest item may be the structure of the Railroad Commission, which oversees the oil and gas industry in Texas. Will its name be changed to something more apt — like the Texas Oil and Gas Commission? And will its structure, headed by three elected commissioners, be altered?
The sunset panel’s review of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, will also be closely watched.
Texas lawmakers may also choose to dive into the regulatory fight between the state and the Environmental Protection Agency, with legislation that backs the state’s permitting system and rebuffs the federal agency.
WHO TO WATCH: Troy Fraser, Republican of Horseshoe Bay, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and a solar-rebate advocate. — KATE GALBRAITH
Rift in Arizona as Latino Class Is Found Illegal
In light of yesterday's events in Tucson, this article shows the dark and hate-filled sentiments that are permeating the state of Arizona, and our nation. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Tucson community.
-Patricia
By MARC LACEY | NY Times
Published: January 7, 2011
TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.
For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.
“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1.
Although Shakespeare’s “Tempest” was supposed to be the topic at hand, Mr. Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. Mr. Horne’s name came up more than once, and not in a flattering light.
It was Mr. Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at challenging Tucson’s ethnic-studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May amid the fierce protests raging over the state’s immigration crackdown.
For the state, the issue is not so much “The Tempest” as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America,” which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated.
Teaching methods in the classes are sometimes unconventional, with instructors scrutinizing hip-hop lyrics and sprinkling their lessons with Spanish words.
The state, which includes some Mexican-American studies in its official curriculum, sees the classes as less about educating students than creating future activists.
In Mr. Acosta’s literature class, students were clearly concerned. They asked if their graduation was at risk. They asked if they were considered terrorists because Mr. Horne described them as wanting to topple the government. They asked how they could protest the decision.
Then, one young woman asked Mr. Acosta how he was holding up.
“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” he said, wiping away tears. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”
At a recent news conference, Mr. Horne took pains to describe his attack on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program as one rooted in good faith. He said he had been studying Spanish for several years and had learned enough to read Mexican history books in Spanish and to give interviews on Univision and Telemundo, two Spanish-language broadcasters.
Asked whether he felt he was being likened to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner who became a symbol of bigotry in the 1960s, Mr. Horne described how he had participated in the March on Washington in 1963 as a young high school graduate. He said of his critics: “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones resegregating.”
Mr. Horne’s battle with Tucson over ethnic studies dates to 2007, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told high school students there in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. Mr. Horne, a Republican, sent a top aide, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to the school to present a different perspective. He was infuriated when some students turned their backs and raised their fists in the air.
The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic-studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of the United States government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country.
Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.
-Patricia
By MARC LACEY | NY Times
Published: January 7, 2011
TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.
For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.
“It’s propagandizing and brainwashing that’s going on there,” Tom Horne, Arizona’s newly elected attorney general, said this week as he officially declared the program in violation of a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1.
Although Shakespeare’s “Tempest” was supposed to be the topic at hand, Mr. Acosta spent most of a recent class discussing the political storm in which he, his students and the entire district have become enmeshed. Mr. Horne’s name came up more than once, and not in a flattering light.
It was Mr. Horne, as the state’s superintendent of public instruction, who wrote a law aimed at challenging Tucson’s ethnic-studies program. The Legislature passed the measure last spring, and Gov. Jan Brewer signed it into law in May amid the fierce protests raging over the state’s immigration crackdown.
For the state, the issue is not so much “The Tempest” as some of the other texts used in the classes, among them, “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Occupied America,” which Mr. Horne said inappropriately teach Latino youths that they are being mistreated.
Teaching methods in the classes are sometimes unconventional, with instructors scrutinizing hip-hop lyrics and sprinkling their lessons with Spanish words.
The state, which includes some Mexican-American studies in its official curriculum, sees the classes as less about educating students than creating future activists.
In Mr. Acosta’s literature class, students were clearly concerned. They asked if their graduation was at risk. They asked if they were considered terrorists because Mr. Horne described them as wanting to topple the government. They asked how they could protest the decision.
Then, one young woman asked Mr. Acosta how he was holding up.
“They wrote a state law to snuff this program out, just us little Chicanitos,” he said, wiping away tears. “The idea of losing this is emotional.”
At a recent news conference, Mr. Horne took pains to describe his attack on Tucson’s Mexican-American studies program as one rooted in good faith. He said he had been studying Spanish for several years and had learned enough to read Mexican history books in Spanish and to give interviews on Univision and Telemundo, two Spanish-language broadcasters.
Asked whether he felt he was being likened to Bull Connor, the Alabama police commissioner who became a symbol of bigotry in the 1960s, Mr. Horne described how he had participated in the March on Washington in 1963 as a young high school graduate. He said of his critics: “They are the ‘Bull Connors.’ They are the ones resegregating.”
Mr. Horne’s battle with Tucson over ethnic studies dates to 2007, when Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, told high school students there in a speech that Republicans hated Latinos. Mr. Horne, a Republican, sent a top aide, Margaret Garcia Dugan, to the school to present a different perspective. He was infuriated when some students turned their backs and raised their fists in the air.
The Arizona law warns school districts that they stand to lose 10 percent of their state education funds if their ethnic-studies programs are found not to comply with new state standards. Programs that promote the overthrow of the United States government are explicitly banned, and that includes the suggestion that portions of the Southwest that were once part of Mexico should be returned to that country.
Also prohibited is any promotion of resentment toward a race. Programs that are primarily for one race or that advocate ethnic solidarity instead of individuality are also outlawed.
Leave No Bubble Blank
Also check out another article previously posted to this blog titled, Rethinking Advanced Placement. Some important technical changes being made as we gear up for a national conversation on K-12 college readiness standards. Already occurring here in Texas, by the way.
-Patricia
By INYOUNG KANG | NY Times
Published: January 7, 2011
IF you don’t know the answer, guess.
Come May, the next sitting for Advanced Placement exams, the College Board is switching to right-only scoring: each correct answer counts; no deductions for wrong ones. By guessing, you have a 20 or 25 percent chance of getting it right, depending on the number of answer choices.
The new scoring mirrors other standardized tests, except the SAT. A wrong answer there comes with a 0.25-point deduction. The College Board, which owns both tests, is changing only A.P.
Psychometricians advised that right-only scoring would simplify year-to-year comparisons as new exams are phased in, according to Trevor Packer, vice president responsible for Advanced Placement.
-Patricia
By INYOUNG KANG | NY Times
Published: January 7, 2011
IF you don’t know the answer, guess.
Come May, the next sitting for Advanced Placement exams, the College Board is switching to right-only scoring: each correct answer counts; no deductions for wrong ones. By guessing, you have a 20 or 25 percent chance of getting it right, depending on the number of answer choices.
The new scoring mirrors other standardized tests, except the SAT. A wrong answer there comes with a 0.25-point deduction. The College Board, which owns both tests, is changing only A.P.
Psychometricians advised that right-only scoring would simplify year-to-year comparisons as new exams are phased in, according to Trevor Packer, vice president responsible for Advanced Placement.
Rethinking Advanced Placement
By CHRISTOPHER DREW | NY Times
Published: January 7, 2011
WHEN Joan Carlson started teaching high school biology more than 30 years ago, the Advanced Placement textbook was daunting enough, at 36 chapters and 870 pages. But as an explosion of research into cells and genes reshapes our sense of how life evolves, the flood of new material has been staggering. Mrs. Carlson’s A.P. class in Worcester, Mass., now confronts a book with 56 chapters and 1,400 pages, along with a profusion of animated videos and Web-based aids that supplement the text.
And what fuels the panic is that nearly every tongue-twisting term and microscopic fact is fair game for the year-end test that decides who will receive college credit for the course.
“Some of the students look at the book and say, ‘My gosh, it’s just like an encyclopedia,’ ” Mrs. Carlson says. And when new A.P. teachers encounter it, “they almost want to start sobbing.”
As A.P. has proliferated, spreading to more than 30 subjects with 1.8 million students taking 3.2 million tests, the program has won praise for giving students an early chance at more challenging work. But many of the courses, particularly in the sciences and history, have also been criticized for overwhelming students with facts to memorize and then rushing through important topics. Students and educators alike say that biology, with 172,000 test-takers this year, is one of the worst offenders.
A.P. teachers have long complained that lingering for an extra 10 or 15 minutes on a topic can be a zero-sum game, squeezing out something else that needs to be covered for the exam. PowerPoint lectures are the rule. The homework wears down many students. And studies show that most schools do the same canned laboratory exercises, providing little sense of the thrill of scientific discovery.
All that, says the College Board, is about to change.
Next month, the board, the nonprofit organization that owns the A.P. exams as well as the SAT, will release a wholesale revamping of A.P. biology as well as United States history — with 387,000 test-takers the most popular A.P. subject. A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests and provide, for the first time, a curriculum framework for what courses should look like. The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. In biology, a host of more creative, hands-on experiments are intended to help students think more like scientists.
The changes, which are to take effect in the 2012-13 school year, are part of a sweeping redesign of the entire A.P. program. Instead of just providing teachers with a list of points that need to be covered for the exams, the College Board will create these detailed standards for each subject and create new exams to match.
Trevor Packer, the College Board’s vice president for Advanced Placement, notes that the changes mark a new direction for the board, which has focused on the tests more than the courses. The rollout of “the New A.P.,” as the board describes it, will actually start this year with a new curriculum taking effect in two smaller programs, German and French language. Major revisions to physics, chemistry, European history, world history and art history will follow, with the hope of being ready for exams in 2014 or 2015.
“We really believe that the New A.P. needs to be anchored in a curriculum that focuses on what students need to be able to do with their knowledge,” Mr. Packer says. A.P. teachers made clear that such a shift was impossible unless the breadth of material covered was pared down. Courses in English and math are manageable, Mr. Packer says, and will not be revised until later.
The new approach is important because critical thinking skills are considered essential for advanced college courses and jobs in today’s information-based economy. College administrators and veteran A.P. teachers familiar with the new biology curriculum believe the changes could have significant reverberations for how science is taught in introductory college classes and even elementary school classrooms, and might bring some of the excitement back to science learning.
And here is one indication of how pumped up the College Board is about the revitalization: If Mr. Packer were a high school junior next year, would he take the old A.P. biology or wait till his senior year for the new one?
“I would absolutely wait,” he says.
WHEN A.P. testing began in 1956, memorization was not yet a dirty word, and it was O.K. if history classes ran out of time just after they finished World War II.
The College Board created the first exams at the behest of elite preparatory schools, which wanted to convince colleges that their best students could dart right into advanced work. The board based the exams on what colleges taught in freshman survey courses. As the testing expanded over the next several decades, the board began providing a brief description of college-course themes and breaking down the percentage of those courses — and thus the A.P. exam — devoted to each topic. But it was up to each high school to flesh out its own curriculum.
And it did not take long for instructors to start teaching to the test, treating the board’s outline as the holy grail for helping students achieve the scores of 3 or higher, out of 5, that might earn credit from a college.
That obviously became harder to do as breakthroughs in genetic research and cellular organization, and momentous events like the cold war, the civil rights movement, Watergate and the war on terror, began to elbow their way onto the lists. College professors could pick and choose what to cover in their introductory survey classes. But because the A.P. test can touch on almost anything, high school juniors and seniors must now absorb more material than most college freshmen.
So perhaps it is no surprise that while the number of students taking the A.P. biology test has more than doubled since 1997, the median score has dropped to 2.63, from 3.18. On the exam last May, slightly fewer than half of the test-takers scored a 3, which equates to a C in a college course. And while 19 percent of students earned 5’s, almost twice that many got 1’s, which could be a failing grade in college.
A committee of the National Research Council, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, called attention to these problems in 2002. It criticized A.P. science courses for cramming in too much material and failing to let students design their own lab experiments. It also said the courses had failed to keep pace with research on how people learn: instead of listening to lectures, “more real learning takes place if students spend more time going into greater depth on fewer topics, allowing them to experience problem solving, controversies and the subtleties of scholarly investigation.”
A few top universities have become more choosey about giving credit. In 2007, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, stopped giving credit for A.P. biology, and developed its own placement exam. Stuart Schmill, M.I.T.’s dean of admissions, says the biology department found that even some of the students who scored 5’s did not have the problem-solving skills needed for higher-level courses. The University of Texas has also tightened its rules for biology placement, giving credit for 5’s only, though many large universities still accept 4’s or 3’s.
Several elite private high schools have also dropped A.P. courses. In defiance, the public school district in Scarsdale, N.Y., created its own in-depth courses called Advanced Topics. (For college credit, students still have to do well on the A.P. or another placement exam.)
The College Board took the criticisms to heart, and has been working with hundreds of college professors and high school teachers to develop the new approach.
For biology, the change means paring down the entire field to four big ideas. The first is a simple statement that evolution “drives the diversity and unity of life.” The others emphasize the systematic nature of all living things: that they use energy and molecular building blocks to grow; respond to information essential to life processes; and interact in complex ways. Under each of these thoughts, a 61-page course framework lays out the most crucial knowledge students need to absorb.
And to the delight of teachers who have gotten an early peek at the plans, the board also makes clear what will not be on the exam. Part or all of at least 20 of the 56 chapters in the A.P. biology book that Mrs. Carlson’s class uses will no longer need to be covered. (One PowerPoint slide explaining the changes notes sardonically that teachers can retire their swift marches through the “Organ of the Day.”)
Similarly, the new plans divide United States history into nine time periods and seven overarching themes. But instead of requiring students to memorize the dates of the Pequot War — which, for those of you who forgot, occurred from 1634 to 1638 and eliminated the Pequot tribe in what is now Connecticut — teachers will have more leeway to focus on different events in teaching students how to craft historical arguments.
Scarsdale High School sees some synchronicity. “It appears to be clearly much more in line with what we are trying to emphasize this year,” says Beth Schoenbrun, the school’s’ co-director of Science Research. “It certainly seems to allow for a good deal more flexibility in terms of what is covered in the classroom.”
William Wood, who teaches biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was a key member of the National Research Council panel that criticized A.P. science. He says now: “I like the way they’ve tried to make it clear what the boundaries are, what they want students to actually remember and what can be left out.” He says he’s “pretty impressed” with what he’s seen so far.
MRS. CARLSON, who teaches A.P. bio at the Bancroft School, an affluent, private academy in central Massachusetts, has always made her lab an inviting place. A chalk-white skeleton watches over the students. So does Al, a rare clear gummy bear, in a paper-clip chair, surrounded by presents from students who view his lack of color as analogous to genetic mutations. He has a bag of mud from the Dead Sea, trinkets from Mount Fuji and a model of a fish from Bermuda.
Mrs. Carlson knows she is fortunate to have a board of directors that will buy whatever equipment she needs for the lab and a generous nine class periods a week for her A.P. course. Many teachers have to cover all the material in just five or six periods, and some must hold their labs after school or on holidays, if they have them at all — thanks to insufficient slots during the school day, and too many after-school activities.
Mrs. Carlson says several students drop her class each year after they realize how hard it will be. She is also frustrated by the predictable nature of many of the “dirty dozen,” the teachers’ nickname for the basic lab exercises now recommended by the College Board. In one that her class did last fall, the students looked at pre-stained slides of onion root tips to identify the stages of cell division and calculate the duration of the phases.
She and her students, who historically score 4’s and 5’s on the exam, were one of several schools asked by the College Board to road test one of the proposed new labs to see if it brought back the “Oh, wow!” factor.
The basic question: What factors affect the rate of photosynthesis in living plants? The new twist: Instead of being guided through the process, groups of two or three students had to dream up their own hypotheses and figure out how to test them.
Caroline Brown, a senior who stages the school’s plays, connected the lab to her passion for theater. She borrowed green, sky blue and “Broadway pink” filters from the playhouse to test how different shades of light affected photosynthesis in sunken spinach leaves. The pink surprised her by narrowly edging out the blue in triggering photosynthesis.
Ms. Brown had started to take both A.P. biology and A.P. United States history as a junior, but says she quickly realized that school counselors were right in warning “that’s one combination that will just about kill you.” So she stuck with history and went back to biology this year.
Robert Turley, a junior, created little disks of spinach with a hole puncher and dropped them into two beakers. He and his partner thought photosynthesis would occur more quickly in a slightly acidic solution, prompting those disks to shoot to the surface. But as they watched through safety goggles, all 10 of the disks in the basic solution rose, while none of disks in the more acidic solution budged.
“So for this lab, our hypothesis was actually wrong,” he says. “But it definitely felt more like a lab that would be done like a scientist in the real world than the other labs we’ve done.”
Even though Alyssa Kotin’s experiment was inconclusive, she and her partner presented a colorful poster with a graph of their findings to the class, just as the other groups did, to stimulate more discussion.
College Board officials say the new labs should help students learn how to frame scientific questions and assemble data, and the exam will measure how well they can apply those skills. When the new test is unveiled in 2013, biology students will need, for the first time, to use calculators, just as A.P. chemistry and physics students do. The board plans to cut the number of multiple-choice questions nearly in half on the new test, to 55. It will add five questions based on math calculations, and it will more than double the number of free-response questions, to nine.
“There won’t be any more questions like: here is a plant, and what is this tissue?” says Professor Uno of the University of Oklahoma, who is helping to decide what will be asked. Instead, early samples show that the multiple-choice questions will be more complex. They will require students to read short passages, or look at graphs, and pick the answers that explain why something happened or that predict what will occur next.
One sample essay question provides a chart with the heights of plants growing in either sunlight or shade and a graph that misinterprets the results. Students must decipher what went wrong, re-plot the data and design a better experiment to determine which grew faster.
WHILE many educators agree with the tack A.P. is taking, they also recognize that the change is going to be difficult for many teachers and schools.
Athena Vangos, who teaches A.P. biology at a public high school in Leicester, Mass., a blue-collar town where many students have part-time jobs, loves the idea of less memorization and more conceptual thinking. As is the case with many public schools, hers does not limit A.P. courses to only the top students. So while six of her students earned 4’s or 5’s on the exam last May, six others “just throw up their hands” at the amount of work and settled for 1’s.
While Ms. Vangos believes the program could inspire students who “like to think outside the box,” she worries that the new math requirements will discourage others. And with so many cutbacks these days in education budgets, she says, the need to improve lab facilities at many public schools “is absolutely going to pose a big problem.” Labs in resource-strapped urban schools often don’t have enough of even basic tools, like dissecting microscopes, for their students.
Studies indicate that relatively few high schools have laboratories equivalent to those used in first-year college courses. Professor Uno says that the new A.P. lab experiments will rely mostly on the same equipment as the old ones, and that program designers will provide “some low-cost alternatives where we can.”
Another concern is how well teachers — across the full range of A.P. subjects — will adjust to an approach that will require them to give up some control and let the students dictate more about where the class discussions go. Mr. Packer says the College Board is investing substantial resources in creating professional-development programs and online tools to help teachers make that transition.
In many ways, the changes will complete a broad turn for the College Board, from its origins as a purveyor of tests to a much more deliberate arbiter of what the nation’s top students will study. Its exams had already set that agenda indirectly, of course, and turned A.P. classes into a way of life for top students.
Yet as the board trumpets its new plans, it is also acknowledging how much the process had gotten out of hand. Students will still have to put in long hours, and there is no sign that the arms race will slow among students trying to pile up as many A.P. classes as they can to impress college admissions offices.
But, Mr. Packer says, the College Board supports the idea of schools’ placing limits on the number of A.P. classes students can take. And, he says, it sees the new courses as a step toward relieving some of the burdens.
The New A.P.
Advanced Placement is being redesigned to test more conceptual understanding. Click below for examples of the types of questions that will be found on the new U.S. history and biology tests.
Sample Questions: A.P. U.S. History»
Sample Questions: A.P. Biology »
Published: January 7, 2011
WHEN Joan Carlson started teaching high school biology more than 30 years ago, the Advanced Placement textbook was daunting enough, at 36 chapters and 870 pages. But as an explosion of research into cells and genes reshapes our sense of how life evolves, the flood of new material has been staggering. Mrs. Carlson’s A.P. class in Worcester, Mass., now confronts a book with 56 chapters and 1,400 pages, along with a profusion of animated videos and Web-based aids that supplement the text.
And what fuels the panic is that nearly every tongue-twisting term and microscopic fact is fair game for the year-end test that decides who will receive college credit for the course.
“Some of the students look at the book and say, ‘My gosh, it’s just like an encyclopedia,’ ” Mrs. Carlson says. And when new A.P. teachers encounter it, “they almost want to start sobbing.”
As A.P. has proliferated, spreading to more than 30 subjects with 1.8 million students taking 3.2 million tests, the program has won praise for giving students an early chance at more challenging work. But many of the courses, particularly in the sciences and history, have also been criticized for overwhelming students with facts to memorize and then rushing through important topics. Students and educators alike say that biology, with 172,000 test-takers this year, is one of the worst offenders.
A.P. teachers have long complained that lingering for an extra 10 or 15 minutes on a topic can be a zero-sum game, squeezing out something else that needs to be covered for the exam. PowerPoint lectures are the rule. The homework wears down many students. And studies show that most schools do the same canned laboratory exercises, providing little sense of the thrill of scientific discovery.
All that, says the College Board, is about to change.
Next month, the board, the nonprofit organization that owns the A.P. exams as well as the SAT, will release a wholesale revamping of A.P. biology as well as United States history — with 387,000 test-takers the most popular A.P. subject. A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests and provide, for the first time, a curriculum framework for what courses should look like. The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. In biology, a host of more creative, hands-on experiments are intended to help students think more like scientists.
The changes, which are to take effect in the 2012-13 school year, are part of a sweeping redesign of the entire A.P. program. Instead of just providing teachers with a list of points that need to be covered for the exams, the College Board will create these detailed standards for each subject and create new exams to match.
Trevor Packer, the College Board’s vice president for Advanced Placement, notes that the changes mark a new direction for the board, which has focused on the tests more than the courses. The rollout of “the New A.P.,” as the board describes it, will actually start this year with a new curriculum taking effect in two smaller programs, German and French language. Major revisions to physics, chemistry, European history, world history and art history will follow, with the hope of being ready for exams in 2014 or 2015.
“We really believe that the New A.P. needs to be anchored in a curriculum that focuses on what students need to be able to do with their knowledge,” Mr. Packer says. A.P. teachers made clear that such a shift was impossible unless the breadth of material covered was pared down. Courses in English and math are manageable, Mr. Packer says, and will not be revised until later.
The new approach is important because critical thinking skills are considered essential for advanced college courses and jobs in today’s information-based economy. College administrators and veteran A.P. teachers familiar with the new biology curriculum believe the changes could have significant reverberations for how science is taught in introductory college classes and even elementary school classrooms, and might bring some of the excitement back to science learning.
And here is one indication of how pumped up the College Board is about the revitalization: If Mr. Packer were a high school junior next year, would he take the old A.P. biology or wait till his senior year for the new one?
“I would absolutely wait,” he says.
WHEN A.P. testing began in 1956, memorization was not yet a dirty word, and it was O.K. if history classes ran out of time just after they finished World War II.
The College Board created the first exams at the behest of elite preparatory schools, which wanted to convince colleges that their best students could dart right into advanced work. The board based the exams on what colleges taught in freshman survey courses. As the testing expanded over the next several decades, the board began providing a brief description of college-course themes and breaking down the percentage of those courses — and thus the A.P. exam — devoted to each topic. But it was up to each high school to flesh out its own curriculum.
And it did not take long for instructors to start teaching to the test, treating the board’s outline as the holy grail for helping students achieve the scores of 3 or higher, out of 5, that might earn credit from a college.
That obviously became harder to do as breakthroughs in genetic research and cellular organization, and momentous events like the cold war, the civil rights movement, Watergate and the war on terror, began to elbow their way onto the lists. College professors could pick and choose what to cover in their introductory survey classes. But because the A.P. test can touch on almost anything, high school juniors and seniors must now absorb more material than most college freshmen.
So perhaps it is no surprise that while the number of students taking the A.P. biology test has more than doubled since 1997, the median score has dropped to 2.63, from 3.18. On the exam last May, slightly fewer than half of the test-takers scored a 3, which equates to a C in a college course. And while 19 percent of students earned 5’s, almost twice that many got 1’s, which could be a failing grade in college.
A committee of the National Research Council, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, called attention to these problems in 2002. It criticized A.P. science courses for cramming in too much material and failing to let students design their own lab experiments. It also said the courses had failed to keep pace with research on how people learn: instead of listening to lectures, “more real learning takes place if students spend more time going into greater depth on fewer topics, allowing them to experience problem solving, controversies and the subtleties of scholarly investigation.”
A few top universities have become more choosey about giving credit. In 2007, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, stopped giving credit for A.P. biology, and developed its own placement exam. Stuart Schmill, M.I.T.’s dean of admissions, says the biology department found that even some of the students who scored 5’s did not have the problem-solving skills needed for higher-level courses. The University of Texas has also tightened its rules for biology placement, giving credit for 5’s only, though many large universities still accept 4’s or 3’s.
Several elite private high schools have also dropped A.P. courses. In defiance, the public school district in Scarsdale, N.Y., created its own in-depth courses called Advanced Topics. (For college credit, students still have to do well on the A.P. or another placement exam.)
The College Board took the criticisms to heart, and has been working with hundreds of college professors and high school teachers to develop the new approach.
For biology, the change means paring down the entire field to four big ideas. The first is a simple statement that evolution “drives the diversity and unity of life.” The others emphasize the systematic nature of all living things: that they use energy and molecular building blocks to grow; respond to information essential to life processes; and interact in complex ways. Under each of these thoughts, a 61-page course framework lays out the most crucial knowledge students need to absorb.
And to the delight of teachers who have gotten an early peek at the plans, the board also makes clear what will not be on the exam. Part or all of at least 20 of the 56 chapters in the A.P. biology book that Mrs. Carlson’s class uses will no longer need to be covered. (One PowerPoint slide explaining the changes notes sardonically that teachers can retire their swift marches through the “Organ of the Day.”)
Similarly, the new plans divide United States history into nine time periods and seven overarching themes. But instead of requiring students to memorize the dates of the Pequot War — which, for those of you who forgot, occurred from 1634 to 1638 and eliminated the Pequot tribe in what is now Connecticut — teachers will have more leeway to focus on different events in teaching students how to craft historical arguments.
Scarsdale High School sees some synchronicity. “It appears to be clearly much more in line with what we are trying to emphasize this year,” says Beth Schoenbrun, the school’s’ co-director of Science Research. “It certainly seems to allow for a good deal more flexibility in terms of what is covered in the classroom.”
William Wood, who teaches biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, was a key member of the National Research Council panel that criticized A.P. science. He says now: “I like the way they’ve tried to make it clear what the boundaries are, what they want students to actually remember and what can be left out.” He says he’s “pretty impressed” with what he’s seen so far.
MRS. CARLSON, who teaches A.P. bio at the Bancroft School, an affluent, private academy in central Massachusetts, has always made her lab an inviting place. A chalk-white skeleton watches over the students. So does Al, a rare clear gummy bear, in a paper-clip chair, surrounded by presents from students who view his lack of color as analogous to genetic mutations. He has a bag of mud from the Dead Sea, trinkets from Mount Fuji and a model of a fish from Bermuda.
Mrs. Carlson knows she is fortunate to have a board of directors that will buy whatever equipment she needs for the lab and a generous nine class periods a week for her A.P. course. Many teachers have to cover all the material in just five or six periods, and some must hold their labs after school or on holidays, if they have them at all — thanks to insufficient slots during the school day, and too many after-school activities.
Mrs. Carlson says several students drop her class each year after they realize how hard it will be. She is also frustrated by the predictable nature of many of the “dirty dozen,” the teachers’ nickname for the basic lab exercises now recommended by the College Board. In one that her class did last fall, the students looked at pre-stained slides of onion root tips to identify the stages of cell division and calculate the duration of the phases.
She and her students, who historically score 4’s and 5’s on the exam, were one of several schools asked by the College Board to road test one of the proposed new labs to see if it brought back the “Oh, wow!” factor.
The basic question: What factors affect the rate of photosynthesis in living plants? The new twist: Instead of being guided through the process, groups of two or three students had to dream up their own hypotheses and figure out how to test them.
Caroline Brown, a senior who stages the school’s plays, connected the lab to her passion for theater. She borrowed green, sky blue and “Broadway pink” filters from the playhouse to test how different shades of light affected photosynthesis in sunken spinach leaves. The pink surprised her by narrowly edging out the blue in triggering photosynthesis.
Ms. Brown had started to take both A.P. biology and A.P. United States history as a junior, but says she quickly realized that school counselors were right in warning “that’s one combination that will just about kill you.” So she stuck with history and went back to biology this year.
Robert Turley, a junior, created little disks of spinach with a hole puncher and dropped them into two beakers. He and his partner thought photosynthesis would occur more quickly in a slightly acidic solution, prompting those disks to shoot to the surface. But as they watched through safety goggles, all 10 of the disks in the basic solution rose, while none of disks in the more acidic solution budged.
“So for this lab, our hypothesis was actually wrong,” he says. “But it definitely felt more like a lab that would be done like a scientist in the real world than the other labs we’ve done.”
Even though Alyssa Kotin’s experiment was inconclusive, she and her partner presented a colorful poster with a graph of their findings to the class, just as the other groups did, to stimulate more discussion.
College Board officials say the new labs should help students learn how to frame scientific questions and assemble data, and the exam will measure how well they can apply those skills. When the new test is unveiled in 2013, biology students will need, for the first time, to use calculators, just as A.P. chemistry and physics students do. The board plans to cut the number of multiple-choice questions nearly in half on the new test, to 55. It will add five questions based on math calculations, and it will more than double the number of free-response questions, to nine.
“There won’t be any more questions like: here is a plant, and what is this tissue?” says Professor Uno of the University of Oklahoma, who is helping to decide what will be asked. Instead, early samples show that the multiple-choice questions will be more complex. They will require students to read short passages, or look at graphs, and pick the answers that explain why something happened or that predict what will occur next.
One sample essay question provides a chart with the heights of plants growing in either sunlight or shade and a graph that misinterprets the results. Students must decipher what went wrong, re-plot the data and design a better experiment to determine which grew faster.
WHILE many educators agree with the tack A.P. is taking, they also recognize that the change is going to be difficult for many teachers and schools.
Athena Vangos, who teaches A.P. biology at a public high school in Leicester, Mass., a blue-collar town where many students have part-time jobs, loves the idea of less memorization and more conceptual thinking. As is the case with many public schools, hers does not limit A.P. courses to only the top students. So while six of her students earned 4’s or 5’s on the exam last May, six others “just throw up their hands” at the amount of work and settled for 1’s.
While Ms. Vangos believes the program could inspire students who “like to think outside the box,” she worries that the new math requirements will discourage others. And with so many cutbacks these days in education budgets, she says, the need to improve lab facilities at many public schools “is absolutely going to pose a big problem.” Labs in resource-strapped urban schools often don’t have enough of even basic tools, like dissecting microscopes, for their students.
Studies indicate that relatively few high schools have laboratories equivalent to those used in first-year college courses. Professor Uno says that the new A.P. lab experiments will rely mostly on the same equipment as the old ones, and that program designers will provide “some low-cost alternatives where we can.”
Another concern is how well teachers — across the full range of A.P. subjects — will adjust to an approach that will require them to give up some control and let the students dictate more about where the class discussions go. Mr. Packer says the College Board is investing substantial resources in creating professional-development programs and online tools to help teachers make that transition.
In many ways, the changes will complete a broad turn for the College Board, from its origins as a purveyor of tests to a much more deliberate arbiter of what the nation’s top students will study. Its exams had already set that agenda indirectly, of course, and turned A.P. classes into a way of life for top students.
Yet as the board trumpets its new plans, it is also acknowledging how much the process had gotten out of hand. Students will still have to put in long hours, and there is no sign that the arms race will slow among students trying to pile up as many A.P. classes as they can to impress college admissions offices.
But, Mr. Packer says, the College Board supports the idea of schools’ placing limits on the number of A.P. classes students can take. And, he says, it sees the new courses as a step toward relieving some of the burdens.
The New A.P.
Advanced Placement is being redesigned to test more conceptual understanding. Click below for examples of the types of questions that will be found on the new U.S. history and biology tests.
Sample Questions: A.P. U.S. History»
Sample Questions: A.P. Biology »
Minding the gap
by E.G. | The Economist
AUSTIN
Jan 7th 2011
TEXAS is forecasted to have a hefty budget deficit over the 2012-2013 biennium—probably more than $20 billion, although the comptroller's latest forecast isn't due until next week. Paul Krugman, shocked by the numbers, sees it as a rebuke to Texas's model:
The point, however, is that just the other day Texas was being touted as a role model (and still is by commentators who haven’t been keeping up with the news). It was the state the recession supposedly passed by, thanks to its low taxes and business-friendly policies. Its governor boasted that its budget was in good shape thanks to his “tough conservative decisions.”
We've written quite a bit about the Texas budget, including here and here. As I said last summer, Rick Perry was being overly cavalier about the budget outlook, saying that he wasn't even sure it would be a problem, even while simultaneously ordering across-the-board spending cuts at all state agencies:
...an odd stance, but not inexplicable. The budget cuts will have to go through the state legislature, which does not meet again until January. The elections, of course, are in November.
Now, of course, it is January, and when the legislature reconvenes next week they are going to have a big challenge. There is still about $8 billion in the state's "rainy day" fund, although Republicans are historically reluctant to touch it. Given the deeply conservative tilt of the new legislature, cuts are far more likely than tax increases (although not impossible; even a few Republicans have endorsed the idea of raising the petrol tax to help pay for the roads).
It would, of course, be nearly impossible for any state to avoid a severe national recession entirely. However, I don't think it follows that Texas's approach over the last few years was the wrong one. Three years of economic indicators showing Texas out well ahead in lots of measures (unemployment, foreclosure rates, job creation) translates into a tremendous amount of foregone suffering and distress. That's one of the reasons Texas has seen significant population growth over those years—a kind of economic osmosis as people came here to work—and, in fact, the more recent rise in unemployment is partly because the rate of job creation hasn't quite kept up with population growth. At the moment, the state's economic performance is still better than that of the nation as a whole, although the gap has narrowed on measures such as unemployment. Going forward, the companies that relocated to Texas in the past few years aren't going to pull up stakes and vanish overnight, and in growing industries such as wind and solar energy, Texas has made inroads that position it well for decades to come.
As Mr Krugman points out, the most serious costs are Texas's relative underinvestment in education, health care, and social services. It's partly a philosophical question. Is it more important to focus on building a good safety net, or to try to create the conditions that would reduce the chances of people needing the net? Ideally you'd have both; in practice, sometimes, neither. Texas's approach has favoured the latter, with demonstrable results in the form of the economic osmosis I mentioned earlier. There appears to be a coalescing consensus in Texas that more attention needs to be paid to schools (although, Texas-ishly, the argument is being made on the grounds that a substandard educational pipeline will undermine global competitiveness). However, the political will is lagging. In my view, that's one adverse effect of Texas's comparative success during these past few years. The state hasn't experienced the kind of crises that occasionally stimulate productive risk or visionary change. However, it's a bargain that most Texans were happy to take.
AUSTIN
Jan 7th 2011
TEXAS is forecasted to have a hefty budget deficit over the 2012-2013 biennium—probably more than $20 billion, although the comptroller's latest forecast isn't due until next week. Paul Krugman, shocked by the numbers, sees it as a rebuke to Texas's model:
The point, however, is that just the other day Texas was being touted as a role model (and still is by commentators who haven’t been keeping up with the news). It was the state the recession supposedly passed by, thanks to its low taxes and business-friendly policies. Its governor boasted that its budget was in good shape thanks to his “tough conservative decisions.”
We've written quite a bit about the Texas budget, including here and here. As I said last summer, Rick Perry was being overly cavalier about the budget outlook, saying that he wasn't even sure it would be a problem, even while simultaneously ordering across-the-board spending cuts at all state agencies:
...an odd stance, but not inexplicable. The budget cuts will have to go through the state legislature, which does not meet again until January. The elections, of course, are in November.
Now, of course, it is January, and when the legislature reconvenes next week they are going to have a big challenge. There is still about $8 billion in the state's "rainy day" fund, although Republicans are historically reluctant to touch it. Given the deeply conservative tilt of the new legislature, cuts are far more likely than tax increases (although not impossible; even a few Republicans have endorsed the idea of raising the petrol tax to help pay for the roads).
It would, of course, be nearly impossible for any state to avoid a severe national recession entirely. However, I don't think it follows that Texas's approach over the last few years was the wrong one. Three years of economic indicators showing Texas out well ahead in lots of measures (unemployment, foreclosure rates, job creation) translates into a tremendous amount of foregone suffering and distress. That's one of the reasons Texas has seen significant population growth over those years—a kind of economic osmosis as people came here to work—and, in fact, the more recent rise in unemployment is partly because the rate of job creation hasn't quite kept up with population growth. At the moment, the state's economic performance is still better than that of the nation as a whole, although the gap has narrowed on measures such as unemployment. Going forward, the companies that relocated to Texas in the past few years aren't going to pull up stakes and vanish overnight, and in growing industries such as wind and solar energy, Texas has made inroads that position it well for decades to come.
As Mr Krugman points out, the most serious costs are Texas's relative underinvestment in education, health care, and social services. It's partly a philosophical question. Is it more important to focus on building a good safety net, or to try to create the conditions that would reduce the chances of people needing the net? Ideally you'd have both; in practice, sometimes, neither. Texas's approach has favoured the latter, with demonstrable results in the form of the economic osmosis I mentioned earlier. There appears to be a coalescing consensus in Texas that more attention needs to be paid to schools (although, Texas-ishly, the argument is being made on the grounds that a substandard educational pipeline will undermine global competitiveness). However, the political will is lagging. In my view, that's one adverse effect of Texas's comparative success during these past few years. The state hasn't experienced the kind of crises that occasionally stimulate productive risk or visionary change. However, it's a bargain that most Texans were happy to take.
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Full Standards System in States Several Years Away
By Catherine Gewertz | Ed Week
January 6, 2011
Most states plan to revise professional development for teachers by next year to help them teach to the new common standards, but it will take two or more years to complete anticipated changes in curriculum, assessment, and other elements of the K-12 system to adapt to the new learning goals, according to a survey released today.
The survey is the first national snapshot of where states stand in their plans to implement the new standards. It shows that more than 30 states plan changes in the curriculum they teach, how they train and evaluate teachers, and how they size up students’ learning. But few of those changes will be fully realized before 2013.
State feedback was gathered by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and policy group. Survey responses came from K-12 education officials in 42 states and the District of Columbia in October and November. Thirty-six of the responding states had fully or provisionally adopted the common standards then; as of this week, 44 have done so. Survey respondents also included 11 of the 12 states that won grants under the federal government’s Race to the Top program.
The survey results illustrate “the immensity of the task” of implementing the common standards, said CEP President Jack Jennings.
“It’s going to take a while, and it’s going to be very complicated to make these standards mean anything,” he said. “Yet if states don’t do everything, then they won’t mean what they should mean.”
Change on the Way
Most states plan key changes in their education systems to respond the common-core state standards, but timelines vary.
SOURCE: Center on Education Policy
Read on...
January 6, 2011
Most states plan to revise professional development for teachers by next year to help them teach to the new common standards, but it will take two or more years to complete anticipated changes in curriculum, assessment, and other elements of the K-12 system to adapt to the new learning goals, according to a survey released today.
The survey is the first national snapshot of where states stand in their plans to implement the new standards. It shows that more than 30 states plan changes in the curriculum they teach, how they train and evaluate teachers, and how they size up students’ learning. But few of those changes will be fully realized before 2013.
State feedback was gathered by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research and policy group. Survey responses came from K-12 education officials in 42 states and the District of Columbia in October and November. Thirty-six of the responding states had fully or provisionally adopted the common standards then; as of this week, 44 have done so. Survey respondents also included 11 of the 12 states that won grants under the federal government’s Race to the Top program.
The survey results illustrate “the immensity of the task” of implementing the common standards, said CEP President Jack Jennings.
“It’s going to take a while, and it’s going to be very complicated to make these standards mean anything,” he said. “Yet if states don’t do everything, then they won’t mean what they should mean.”
Change on the Way
Most states plan key changes in their education systems to respond the common-core state standards, but timelines vary.
Read on...
HB 505: César Chávez Holiday To Be Eliminated in Texas? "I Don't Think so," Says Rep. Alonzo
OPINION EDITORIAL
by Texas State Representative Roberto R. Alonzo (District 104 - Dallas)
January 5, 2011
Legislation has been filed for the 82n Legislature by Texas lawmaker, State Rep. Tyron Lewis of Odessa which would eliminate "Cesar Chavez Day" as a state optional holiday in Texas. That is shameful. That is unfortunate, especially when we consider everything that the civil rights icon, human rights advocate and civil rights activist has done for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed, not only in Texas but all over the country. Rep. Lewis yesterday filed House Bill 505 which would eliminate "Cesar Chavez Day," and replace it with "Texas Hispanic Heritage Day," in Texas as an optional state holiday.
Cesar Chavez was a passionate advocate for social justice and civil rights for the poor and the disenfranchised, not only in Texas, but all over the United States. He was a role model for many hard-working average Americans, especially farm workers. He was truly an American hero and icon. Chavez rallied for and succeeded in improving the wages, schooling, housing, and other living conditions of farm workers of all ethnic backgrounds. In 1991, Chavez received one of Mexico's premier awards, Aguila Azteca (Aztec Eagle) for contributions made outside Mexico. Additionally, in 1994, he was posthumously presented with our nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a former migrant worker myself, my family and I - like so many others across every geographic corner of the great United States - are honored and humbled indeed every year when we gather in unison to commemorate the day that honors this great man, this role model and giant, and the many accomplishments he achieved so that the rest of us could have a better quality of life and success in the future.
I am certain Chavez's legacy will impact positively our children and our grandchildren in much the same way, even if they did not get to live during his lifetime, or ever set foot on the toiling and unpleasant soils of a hot migrant field like so many of us did while growing up with our poor families. Chavez's decades of experiences on the hot and toiling migrant fields transcended more than just farmworkers alone; those experiences live and continue to this day and impact daily the lives of so many of us in many ways. Chavez was an icon for labor and civil rights, championing the causes of minorities and the poor for many decades before he died at 66 on April 23, 1993. Whether it was rounding up everyday workers on or off the migrant fields, rallying support in our local communities, boycotting at our supermarkets, or even speaking before local, state, or federal agencies or congressional committees, Chavez consistently rallied for and succeeded in improving the wages, schooling, housing, and other living conditions of farm workers and average day workers of all ethnic backgrounds in similar fashion. It is for this very reason that session after session, I consistently filed and will continue to file and support legislation that recognizes the legacy and many achievements of Cesar Chavez. During the 81st legislative session in 2009, I authored and successfully passed two house resolutions, commemorating the birth, significant contributions, and death of Chavez. The first House Resolution, HR 300, honored the life of Cesar E. Chavez on March 31, 2009, by commemorating the 82nd anniversary of his birth. Likewise, HR 308 honored the life of Cesar Chavez and recognized the month beginning March 31, 2009, as Cesar Chavez Farmworker Appreciation Month in Texas. And in 2010, HR 324 and HR 325, respectively, paid the same tributes to Chavez in Texas in the same annual tradition. And respectfully and appropriately, I have done the same for the 82nd session which will start next week, through HR 26 and HR 27, for the years 2011 and 2012, respectively.
And in early February 2010, I was among the first of a growing list of public officials at the local, county, state, and federal levels alike, along with a number of other civic and business leaders, in Dallas who applauded members of the Dallas City Council on the brave and historical vote they took when they renamed Cesar Street in Dallas. The council voted unanimously to rename the stretch of South Central Expressway between Pacific Avenue and Grand Avenue as Cesar Chavez Street in recognition of all the exemplary achievements by this great icon.
In short, I find the filing of HB 505 by my colleague Rep. Lewis eliminating Cesar Chavez Day in Texas as an optional holiday, as a slap in the face, not only to migrant farmworkers, but to Hispanics all over the state and nation, but most particularly in Texas where we have already become the majority population in the state, and growing. The monumental civil rights icon, labor rights activists, representative for so many average day workers deserves better. By eliminating Cesar Chavez Day as a holiday in Texas we are in essence turning back history and telling all Hispanics, particularly our children and grandchildren, that if you accomplish great things and make a positive difference in improving the quality of life for others, you will not be recognized if you are a migrant, Hispanic, or other minority. That to me, is shameful. HB 505 is nothing more than an ultra-conservative, right-wing, anti-Hispanic, and anti-immigrant measure that will only serve to continue to hold back and reverse the advancements that we as Hispanics have struggled so much and hard for to improve the lives of Hispanics all over Texas and the nation.
by Texas State Representative Roberto R. Alonzo (District 104 - Dallas)
January 5, 2011
Legislation has been filed for the 82n Legislature by Texas lawmaker, State Rep. Tyron Lewis of Odessa which would eliminate "Cesar Chavez Day" as a state optional holiday in Texas. That is shameful. That is unfortunate, especially when we consider everything that the civil rights icon, human rights advocate and civil rights activist has done for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed, not only in Texas but all over the country. Rep. Lewis yesterday filed House Bill 505 which would eliminate "Cesar Chavez Day," and replace it with "Texas Hispanic Heritage Day," in Texas as an optional state holiday.
Cesar Chavez was a passionate advocate for social justice and civil rights for the poor and the disenfranchised, not only in Texas, but all over the United States. He was a role model for many hard-working average Americans, especially farm workers. He was truly an American hero and icon. Chavez rallied for and succeeded in improving the wages, schooling, housing, and other living conditions of farm workers of all ethnic backgrounds. In 1991, Chavez received one of Mexico's premier awards, Aguila Azteca (Aztec Eagle) for contributions made outside Mexico. Additionally, in 1994, he was posthumously presented with our nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a former migrant worker myself, my family and I - like so many others across every geographic corner of the great United States - are honored and humbled indeed every year when we gather in unison to commemorate the day that honors this great man, this role model and giant, and the many accomplishments he achieved so that the rest of us could have a better quality of life and success in the future.
I am certain Chavez's legacy will impact positively our children and our grandchildren in much the same way, even if they did not get to live during his lifetime, or ever set foot on the toiling and unpleasant soils of a hot migrant field like so many of us did while growing up with our poor families. Chavez's decades of experiences on the hot and toiling migrant fields transcended more than just farmworkers alone; those experiences live and continue to this day and impact daily the lives of so many of us in many ways. Chavez was an icon for labor and civil rights, championing the causes of minorities and the poor for many decades before he died at 66 on April 23, 1993. Whether it was rounding up everyday workers on or off the migrant fields, rallying support in our local communities, boycotting at our supermarkets, or even speaking before local, state, or federal agencies or congressional committees, Chavez consistently rallied for and succeeded in improving the wages, schooling, housing, and other living conditions of farm workers and average day workers of all ethnic backgrounds in similar fashion. It is for this very reason that session after session, I consistently filed and will continue to file and support legislation that recognizes the legacy and many achievements of Cesar Chavez. During the 81st legislative session in 2009, I authored and successfully passed two house resolutions, commemorating the birth, significant contributions, and death of Chavez. The first House Resolution, HR 300, honored the life of Cesar E. Chavez on March 31, 2009, by commemorating the 82nd anniversary of his birth. Likewise, HR 308 honored the life of Cesar Chavez and recognized the month beginning March 31, 2009, as Cesar Chavez Farmworker Appreciation Month in Texas. And in 2010, HR 324 and HR 325, respectively, paid the same tributes to Chavez in Texas in the same annual tradition. And respectfully and appropriately, I have done the same for the 82nd session which will start next week, through HR 26 and HR 27, for the years 2011 and 2012, respectively.
And in early February 2010, I was among the first of a growing list of public officials at the local, county, state, and federal levels alike, along with a number of other civic and business leaders, in Dallas who applauded members of the Dallas City Council on the brave and historical vote they took when they renamed Cesar Street in Dallas. The council voted unanimously to rename the stretch of South Central Expressway between Pacific Avenue and Grand Avenue as Cesar Chavez Street in recognition of all the exemplary achievements by this great icon.
In short, I find the filing of HB 505 by my colleague Rep. Lewis eliminating Cesar Chavez Day in Texas as an optional holiday, as a slap in the face, not only to migrant farmworkers, but to Hispanics all over the state and nation, but most particularly in Texas where we have already become the majority population in the state, and growing. The monumental civil rights icon, labor rights activists, representative for so many average day workers deserves better. By eliminating Cesar Chavez Day as a holiday in Texas we are in essence turning back history and telling all Hispanics, particularly our children and grandchildren, that if you accomplish great things and make a positive difference in improving the quality of life for others, you will not be recognized if you are a migrant, Hispanic, or other minority. That to me, is shameful. HB 505 is nothing more than an ultra-conservative, right-wing, anti-Hispanic, and anti-immigrant measure that will only serve to continue to hold back and reverse the advancements that we as Hispanics have struggled so much and hard for to improve the lives of Hispanics all over Texas and the nation.
Invest in the future of Texas
Rich Templeton and Francisco G. Cigarroa, Special Contributors | Austin American-Statesman
Jan. 5, 2011
Today in Austin, the Academy of Medicine, Engineering Science and Technology of Texas (TAMEST) will celebrate Texas innovations that have created revolutionary markets or improved quality of life on a global scale. If our state is to remain successful, Congress and the Texas Legislature must make significant investments in university research.
In 1958, Jack Kilby created the integrated circuit — perhaps the single most important invention of our lifetime — right here in Texas. It propelled space travel, enhanced national security, revolutionized computing and communications, created safer cars and energy-efficient appliances, and improved health care technology. Semiconductors enable the more than $1 trillion global electronics market, drive productivity in every sector of the economy and have been the No. 1 U.S. export, on average, over the past five years.
None of that would have happened without unprecedented federal investment in basic research in the1960s and '70s that attracted a generation of bright students.
Texas, the second-largest state for technology employment, added jobs in the sector in 2009 when the rest of the country was losing them. Texas ranks third in the nation for academic R&D investment and number of science, engineering and health PhDs in the work force. The University of Texas System was third behind the University of California and MIT for the number of patents filed in 2009.
However, Texas is competing with the rest of the world. Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and China all seek technology leadership and are investing aggressively in research and industry incentives.
The U.S. can easily fall behind its global competitors that are heavily invested in their universities. Over the past 70 years, many of our science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate students originated from other countries, and they chose to remain here to become outstanding professors and public and private research scientists. Of the 493 Nobel Prizes in science and medicine awarded since 1940, 94 were foreign-born researchers living in the U.S. and working for U.S. universities, medical centers and laboratories.
Today, 25 percent of the nearly 5 million university-educated scientists and engineers in the United States are foreign-born. But the pipeline will dry up as international universities excel at STEM education and research. Ten years ago, there were few international students in China. Now there are more than 250,000 — a clear indicator that the U.S. is no longer the only attractive option. Immigration policy must adjust to draw top talent to the U.S. And improved performance in STEM instruction at the public school level is essential to remain competitive.
More than ever, Texas universities must maintain a superb educational and research-friendly environment, including the recruitment of the best and brightest faculty from around the world and facilitating more partnerships and joint venture projects with industry partners.
Federal support for research will be critical to addressing our country's challenges in medicine, energy and national security. As the new Congress convenes in Washington, there will be extreme pressure to cut spending. Research is an investment in the economy that pays off with innovation, leadership and jobs. Proposals to freeze spending at 2008 levels would be disastrous for key research agencies for physical sciences and engineering — a 13.5 percent or $1.7 billion cut from 2010 levels. Most high-tech businesses have learned that those who invest in R&D in downturns win, a lesson we should apply nationally.
Indeed, despite far-reaching proposals to cut spending, the bipartisan President's Deficit Commission identifies R&D and education as essential areas for federal investment.
At the same time, university leaders and industry must work collaboratively to bring more federal grants to Texas. We should not be satisfied with third place in this regard.
And the Texas Legislature must keep funding important sources for innovation by reauthorizing the Emerging Technology Fund and sustaining the Texas Research Incentive Program for the seven emerging research institutions. And lawmakers must continue to support Texas' two current "tier one" public research universities: UT Austin and Texas A&M. Our relatively strong state economy presents a unique opportunity for Texas to attract talent and R&D dollars. We should seize it.
Without more investments, Texas' innovation future will be left in the past.
Templeton is chairman, president and CEO of Texas Instruments. Cigarroa is chancellor of the University of Texas System and 2010 president of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology of Texas.
Jan. 5, 2011
Today in Austin, the Academy of Medicine, Engineering Science and Technology of Texas (TAMEST) will celebrate Texas innovations that have created revolutionary markets or improved quality of life on a global scale. If our state is to remain successful, Congress and the Texas Legislature must make significant investments in university research.
In 1958, Jack Kilby created the integrated circuit — perhaps the single most important invention of our lifetime — right here in Texas. It propelled space travel, enhanced national security, revolutionized computing and communications, created safer cars and energy-efficient appliances, and improved health care technology. Semiconductors enable the more than $1 trillion global electronics market, drive productivity in every sector of the economy and have been the No. 1 U.S. export, on average, over the past five years.
None of that would have happened without unprecedented federal investment in basic research in the1960s and '70s that attracted a generation of bright students.
Texas, the second-largest state for technology employment, added jobs in the sector in 2009 when the rest of the country was losing them. Texas ranks third in the nation for academic R&D investment and number of science, engineering and health PhDs in the work force. The University of Texas System was third behind the University of California and MIT for the number of patents filed in 2009.
However, Texas is competing with the rest of the world. Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and China all seek technology leadership and are investing aggressively in research and industry incentives.
The U.S. can easily fall behind its global competitors that are heavily invested in their universities. Over the past 70 years, many of our science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate students originated from other countries, and they chose to remain here to become outstanding professors and public and private research scientists. Of the 493 Nobel Prizes in science and medicine awarded since 1940, 94 were foreign-born researchers living in the U.S. and working for U.S. universities, medical centers and laboratories.
Today, 25 percent of the nearly 5 million university-educated scientists and engineers in the United States are foreign-born. But the pipeline will dry up as international universities excel at STEM education and research. Ten years ago, there were few international students in China. Now there are more than 250,000 — a clear indicator that the U.S. is no longer the only attractive option. Immigration policy must adjust to draw top talent to the U.S. And improved performance in STEM instruction at the public school level is essential to remain competitive.
More than ever, Texas universities must maintain a superb educational and research-friendly environment, including the recruitment of the best and brightest faculty from around the world and facilitating more partnerships and joint venture projects with industry partners.
Federal support for research will be critical to addressing our country's challenges in medicine, energy and national security. As the new Congress convenes in Washington, there will be extreme pressure to cut spending. Research is an investment in the economy that pays off with innovation, leadership and jobs. Proposals to freeze spending at 2008 levels would be disastrous for key research agencies for physical sciences and engineering — a 13.5 percent or $1.7 billion cut from 2010 levels. Most high-tech businesses have learned that those who invest in R&D in downturns win, a lesson we should apply nationally.
Indeed, despite far-reaching proposals to cut spending, the bipartisan President's Deficit Commission identifies R&D and education as essential areas for federal investment.
At the same time, university leaders and industry must work collaboratively to bring more federal grants to Texas. We should not be satisfied with third place in this regard.
And the Texas Legislature must keep funding important sources for innovation by reauthorizing the Emerging Technology Fund and sustaining the Texas Research Incentive Program for the seven emerging research institutions. And lawmakers must continue to support Texas' two current "tier one" public research universities: UT Austin and Texas A&M. Our relatively strong state economy presents a unique opportunity for Texas to attract talent and R&D dollars. We should seize it.
Without more investments, Texas' innovation future will be left in the past.
Templeton is chairman, president and CEO of Texas Instruments. Cigarroa is chancellor of the University of Texas System and 2010 president of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology of Texas.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Texas Can’t Afford To Follow Arizona On Immigration Legislation
Please come out to join this critical press conference, as we announce our diverse coalition in opposition to anti-immigrant legislation in Texas.
Elected Officials; Law Enforcement; Religious and Business Leaders; Civil Rights and Social Justice Organizations Will Hold Capitol Press Conference January 6
For Immediate Release: Contact: Luis Figueroa, MALDEF, 210-383-9058, lfigueroa@maldef.org
Monday, January 03, 2011 Adriana Cadena, RITA, 915-253-2262, acadena@bnhr.org
Dotty Griffith, ACLU of Texas, 512-478-7300 X106, dgriffith@aclutx.org
AUSTIN – A broad and diverse coalition of business leaders, law enforcement, and elected officials as well as representatives of religious, civil rights and social justice organizations will hold a press conference to address the negative impact of immigration legislation likely to be considered by the 82nd Legislature.
Members of two diverse Texas coalitions, TRUST (Texas Residents United for a Stronger Texas) and RITA (Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance) will offer “real life” examples of why the kind of legislation passed last year in Arizona would be bad for Texas’ businesses and would attack the fundamental values of every Texan.
State legislation aimed at immigrant communities takes aim at public safety and would negatively impact the state’s economic base, coalition members agree.
What: Press Conference
When: January 6, 2011, 10 a.m.
Where: Speaker’s Committee Room, 2W.6 State Capitol Building, Austin, TX 78701
Key Speakers: Sheriff Richard Wiles, El Paso County; Bill Hammond, Executive Director, Texas Association of Business; Terri Burke, Executive Director, ACLU of Texas; Jose Rodriguez, Senator Elect, Texas Senate District 29
TRUST Members: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas; American Immigration Lawyers Association of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico; Anti-Defamation League, Southwest and North Texas Regions; Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP); Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; La Fe Policy Research and Education; Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT); Mothers Against Discriminatory Racism in Education and Society (MADRES); San Antonio Greater Chamber of Commerce; San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Service Employees International Union of Texas (SEIU); Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP); Texas AFL-CIO; Texas Apartment Association (TAA); Texas Association for Bilingual Education (TABE); Texas Association of Businesses (TAB); Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE); Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce (TAMACC); Texas Impact; Texas League of United Latin American Citizens (TX LULAC); University Leadership Initiative, U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association
RITA Executive Committee representing over 100 organizations in Texas: Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition (AIRC); Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR); Catholic Charities of Dallas; Coalition for Immigration Reform of Dallas/Ft. Worth & North Texas; Dallas Peace & Justice Center; El Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project; Equal Voice Network; La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE); Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexican American Unity Council, Inc. (MAUC); Mi Familia Vota; Movimiento del Valle por los Derechos Humanos; National Council of Jewish Women Texas Public Affairs; Texas Organizing Project (TOP); UNITE HERE Local 251; Welcoming Immigrants Network.
Texas Can’t Afford To Follow Arizona On Immigration Legislation
Elected Officials; Law Enforcement; Religious and Business Leaders; Civil Rights and Social Justice Organizations Will Hold Capitol Press Conference January 6
For Immediate Release: Contact: Luis Figueroa, MALDEF, 210-383-9058, lfigueroa@maldef.org
Monday, January 03, 2011 Adriana Cadena, RITA, 915-253-2262, acadena@bnhr.org
Dotty Griffith, ACLU of Texas, 512-478-7300 X106, dgriffith@aclutx.org
AUSTIN – A broad and diverse coalition of business leaders, law enforcement, and elected officials as well as representatives of religious, civil rights and social justice organizations will hold a press conference to address the negative impact of immigration legislation likely to be considered by the 82nd Legislature.
Members of two diverse Texas coalitions, TRUST (Texas Residents United for a Stronger Texas) and RITA (Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance) will offer “real life” examples of why the kind of legislation passed last year in Arizona would be bad for Texas’ businesses and would attack the fundamental values of every Texan.
State legislation aimed at immigrant communities takes aim at public safety and would negatively impact the state’s economic base, coalition members agree.
What: Press Conference
When: January 6, 2011, 10 a.m.
Where: Speaker’s Committee Room, 2W.6 State Capitol Building, Austin, TX 78701
Key Speakers: Sheriff Richard Wiles, El Paso County; Bill Hammond, Executive Director, Texas Association of Business; Terri Burke, Executive Director, ACLU of Texas; Jose Rodriguez, Senator Elect, Texas Senate District 29
TRUST Members: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas; American Immigration Lawyers Association of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico; Anti-Defamation League, Southwest and North Texas Regions; Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP); Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; La Fe Policy Research and Education; Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT); Mothers Against Discriminatory Racism in Education and Society (MADRES); San Antonio Greater Chamber of Commerce; San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Service Employees International Union of Texas (SEIU); Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP); Texas AFL-CIO; Texas Apartment Association (TAA); Texas Association for Bilingual Education (TABE); Texas Association of Businesses (TAB); Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education (TACHE); Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce (TAMACC); Texas Impact; Texas League of United Latin American Citizens (TX LULAC); University Leadership Initiative, U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association
RITA Executive Committee representing over 100 organizations in Texas: Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition (AIRC); Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR); Catholic Charities of Dallas; Coalition for Immigration Reform of Dallas/Ft. Worth & North Texas; Dallas Peace & Justice Center; El Paso del Norte Civil Rights Project; Equal Voice Network; La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE); Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Mexican American Unity Council, Inc. (MAUC); Mi Familia Vota; Movimiento del Valle por los Derechos Humanos; National Council of Jewish Women Texas Public Affairs; Texas Organizing Project (TOP); UNITE HERE Local 251; Welcoming Immigrants Network.
Monday, January 03, 2011
State can balance budget without more money
Check out this editorial by Texas Public Policy Foundation.
-Patricia
To keep Lone Star economy thriving, lawmakers need tight control on cost of government, says Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Second in a series on the state budget gap
Texas lawmakers return to Austin next week for the start of the 2011 legislative session, and their top priority will be reconciling the state's projected multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.
Exactly how lawmakers go about handling this issue is certain to have significant short- and long-term consequences for the economy and our pocketbooks.
In truth, no one knows exactly how large a gap the Legislature must fill, nor will anyone know until the comptroller's biennial revenue estimate is released later this month. But most educated guesses put the shortfall somewhere in the range of $11 billion to $15 billion, or roughly 15 percent of discretionary state spending.
A few other estimates forecast that this figure could go much higher — some even approach $30 billion — but these tend to include new spending for things such as maintaining "current services."
The last time lawmakers faced a similar situation was during the 2003 legislative session, when the Legislature closed a $10 billion shortfall without raising taxes. And much like that session, balancing the 2012-13 budget is going to come down to a simple but profound choice: Raise taxes, or lower spending.
Some might object to this either-or approach, promoting a "balanced" effort of combining spending restraint with new revenue. But this ignores the facts of how Texas became the runaway leader in job and economic growth in the country. Spending restraint has been a critical component of Texas' job creation success, helping the state's economy to add 843,000 jobs over the past 10 years, while the rest of the country lost 1.3 million jobs.
If Texans want to keep their jobs, balancing the budget within available revenue is the only way to go.
Of course, closing the shortfall by scouring the budget is no easy undertaking, but the experience of 2003 shows that it is a reachable goal — with the right approach.
To that end, the Texas Public Policy Foundation offers several short- and long-term recommendations to balance the budget and put the state on a path of fiscal sustainability:
Recommendation No. 1: Start from scratch. To steal a page from the 2003 playbook, one of the first things that lawmakers can do is to methodically work through the state's budget using a zero-based budgeting technique. In other words, build each state agency's budget from the ground up.
Ordinarily, lawmakers craft the state's two-year budget using the amount an agency spent in the previous budget as a starting point. This creates a situation rife with waste.
Instead, lawmakers, working closely with agency heads and directors, should start from scratch, funding each of the state's 200-plus agencies first on the basis of any constitutional mandates, then according to statutory requirements. In this way, lawmakers can get a detailed picture of each agency's spending habits and root out unnecessary items.
Zero-based budgeting was a major reason that state budget writers were able to get out of the jam they were in during 2003. And, if pursued diligently, it may also prove to be lawmakers' saving grace in 2011.
Recommendation No. 2: Eliminate programs and agencies. There is no other way around it: State agencies and programs must be eliminated if the Legislature is going to balance the budget within available revenue. Obviously, lawmakers should consolidate where possible, but a number of redundant and ineffective agencies and programs should be axed.
Now the hard part: What specific agencies and programs should the Legislature consider doing away with?
We need to focus on getting state government out of the business of doing things that individuals or the private sector can take care of themselves — such as promoting tourism, history and the arts, or determining how much consumers should pay for electricity, telephone service or insurance.
Likewise, there are a lot of things we can do without for a biennium (or two) while we try to get our fiscal house back in order. We can postpone the purchase of new parks, delay renovations of historical properties and get by without some recent and expensive environmental and health care spending.
We also need to think big. Health care and education spending dominate the budget, and if we are going to successfully tackle the shortfall, we need to look at ways to get more bang for our buck in these areas.
For example, lawmakers should consider such policy options as expanding the use of Medicaid managed care, creating a health savings account option for state employees, cutting back all optional health programs to federally required levels and curbing administrative bloat in K-12 education.
Finally, we can look at reducing or eliminating economic development spending and subsidies. These programs don't create jobs at anywhere near the efficiency of the tried and true Texas approach — maintaining low levels of spending, taxes and regulation.
In the coming weeks, we will release a report that contains much greater detail about why many agencies and programs should be eliminated and what effect that will have on the budget.
Recommendation No. 3: Make the budget process more transparent. Over the long term, perhaps the most important way the Legislature can promote fiscal responsibility is to transform the appropriations process. To do this, the state should move from a strategic planning and budgeting system to a program-based budgeting system.
Today, the budget is formatted in such a way that even people with advanced degrees have trouble tracking funds in the budget, let alone the average taxpayer — or legislator. To fix this problem, the Legislature should require the budget be written so that each agency's income and expense is listed by program, as is done in the agency's own internal budget.
Now, some people may be wondering why, if these documents are already produced, does the Legislature not just use them to build the budget? The answer is that an agency's budget and the state's budget are often incompatible and do not directly relate by line item.
Making the change over to a program-based budgeting system is an effective way to simplify the budget process for taxpayers and get more eyes on the budget. In turn, this will multiply our chances at spotting waste, fraud and abuse.
Recommendation No. 4: Strengthen the state's spending limit. Once the state's short-term budget issues have been effectively addressed, lawmakers should strongly consider strengthening the state's existing loophole-ridden tax and expenditure limit (TEL).
The TEL is a constitutional and statutory requirement that certain state spending not exceed the growth in state personal income in any given biennium. But lawmakers have many loopholes, and the TEL is not as strong as it could be.
As our research has suggested in the past, the movement to restrict the growth of government could be benefited greatly by making the following changes to the state's TEL: 1) limit the growth of government spending to population and inflation increases or to the growth in personal income, whichever is less; 2) ensure any TELs are self-contained within the constitution to prevent the limit being changed by a simple majority vote in the Legislature; 3) apply the TEL to all categories of state spending, including those covered by federal funds; 4) require a supermajority vote in each chamber to exceed the limit so that changes are not based on political whims; and 5) expand the scope to include all levels of government so all spending is affected.
Recommendation No. 5: Don't chase federal funds. Despite conventional wisdom, federal funds are not "free" and, in fact, contribute a great deal to the unsustainable growth of state government and a resulting decline in economic growth. Last session's unemployment stimulus debate is a great example.
Two years ago, Texas had an opportunity to secure $555 million in additional stimulus funding for its unemployment insurance program. However, the state was only eligible for the funds if it made what would have effectively been permanent expansions of eligibility and benefits. Wisely, the state's leadership turned down the offer for the one-time funds and avoided making the costly changes to the program that taxpayers would have been stuck with ad infinitum.
There is a lot of work to be done this session, and hopefully this will provide lawmakers with some useful ideas as they walk the budget tightrope. They have a formidable challenge in front of them, but we stand ready to help them meet it.
Talmadge Heflin is director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a free-market nonprofit research institute based in Austin. He served 11 terms in the Texas House and was chairman of the Appropriations Committee in 2003, leading the Legislature's successful efforts to close a $10 billion budget deficit without a tax increase. James Quintero is a fiscal policy analyst at the foundation.
-Patricia
To keep Lone Star economy thriving, lawmakers need tight control on cost of government, says Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Second in a series on the state budget gap
Texas lawmakers return to Austin next week for the start of the 2011 legislative session, and their top priority will be reconciling the state's projected multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.
Exactly how lawmakers go about handling this issue is certain to have significant short- and long-term consequences for the economy and our pocketbooks.
In truth, no one knows exactly how large a gap the Legislature must fill, nor will anyone know until the comptroller's biennial revenue estimate is released later this month. But most educated guesses put the shortfall somewhere in the range of $11 billion to $15 billion, or roughly 15 percent of discretionary state spending.
A few other estimates forecast that this figure could go much higher — some even approach $30 billion — but these tend to include new spending for things such as maintaining "current services."
The last time lawmakers faced a similar situation was during the 2003 legislative session, when the Legislature closed a $10 billion shortfall without raising taxes. And much like that session, balancing the 2012-13 budget is going to come down to a simple but profound choice: Raise taxes, or lower spending.
Some might object to this either-or approach, promoting a "balanced" effort of combining spending restraint with new revenue. But this ignores the facts of how Texas became the runaway leader in job and economic growth in the country. Spending restraint has been a critical component of Texas' job creation success, helping the state's economy to add 843,000 jobs over the past 10 years, while the rest of the country lost 1.3 million jobs.
If Texans want to keep their jobs, balancing the budget within available revenue is the only way to go.
Of course, closing the shortfall by scouring the budget is no easy undertaking, but the experience of 2003 shows that it is a reachable goal — with the right approach.
To that end, the Texas Public Policy Foundation offers several short- and long-term recommendations to balance the budget and put the state on a path of fiscal sustainability:
Recommendation No. 1: Start from scratch. To steal a page from the 2003 playbook, one of the first things that lawmakers can do is to methodically work through the state's budget using a zero-based budgeting technique. In other words, build each state agency's budget from the ground up.
Ordinarily, lawmakers craft the state's two-year budget using the amount an agency spent in the previous budget as a starting point. This creates a situation rife with waste.
Instead, lawmakers, working closely with agency heads and directors, should start from scratch, funding each of the state's 200-plus agencies first on the basis of any constitutional mandates, then according to statutory requirements. In this way, lawmakers can get a detailed picture of each agency's spending habits and root out unnecessary items.
Zero-based budgeting was a major reason that state budget writers were able to get out of the jam they were in during 2003. And, if pursued diligently, it may also prove to be lawmakers' saving grace in 2011.
Recommendation No. 2: Eliminate programs and agencies. There is no other way around it: State agencies and programs must be eliminated if the Legislature is going to balance the budget within available revenue. Obviously, lawmakers should consolidate where possible, but a number of redundant and ineffective agencies and programs should be axed.
Now the hard part: What specific agencies and programs should the Legislature consider doing away with?
We need to focus on getting state government out of the business of doing things that individuals or the private sector can take care of themselves — such as promoting tourism, history and the arts, or determining how much consumers should pay for electricity, telephone service or insurance.
Likewise, there are a lot of things we can do without for a biennium (or two) while we try to get our fiscal house back in order. We can postpone the purchase of new parks, delay renovations of historical properties and get by without some recent and expensive environmental and health care spending.
We also need to think big. Health care and education spending dominate the budget, and if we are going to successfully tackle the shortfall, we need to look at ways to get more bang for our buck in these areas.
For example, lawmakers should consider such policy options as expanding the use of Medicaid managed care, creating a health savings account option for state employees, cutting back all optional health programs to federally required levels and curbing administrative bloat in K-12 education.
Finally, we can look at reducing or eliminating economic development spending and subsidies. These programs don't create jobs at anywhere near the efficiency of the tried and true Texas approach — maintaining low levels of spending, taxes and regulation.
In the coming weeks, we will release a report that contains much greater detail about why many agencies and programs should be eliminated and what effect that will have on the budget.
Recommendation No. 3: Make the budget process more transparent. Over the long term, perhaps the most important way the Legislature can promote fiscal responsibility is to transform the appropriations process. To do this, the state should move from a strategic planning and budgeting system to a program-based budgeting system.
Today, the budget is formatted in such a way that even people with advanced degrees have trouble tracking funds in the budget, let alone the average taxpayer — or legislator. To fix this problem, the Legislature should require the budget be written so that each agency's income and expense is listed by program, as is done in the agency's own internal budget.
Now, some people may be wondering why, if these documents are already produced, does the Legislature not just use them to build the budget? The answer is that an agency's budget and the state's budget are often incompatible and do not directly relate by line item.
Making the change over to a program-based budgeting system is an effective way to simplify the budget process for taxpayers and get more eyes on the budget. In turn, this will multiply our chances at spotting waste, fraud and abuse.
Recommendation No. 4: Strengthen the state's spending limit. Once the state's short-term budget issues have been effectively addressed, lawmakers should strongly consider strengthening the state's existing loophole-ridden tax and expenditure limit (TEL).
The TEL is a constitutional and statutory requirement that certain state spending not exceed the growth in state personal income in any given biennium. But lawmakers have many loopholes, and the TEL is not as strong as it could be.
As our research has suggested in the past, the movement to restrict the growth of government could be benefited greatly by making the following changes to the state's TEL: 1) limit the growth of government spending to population and inflation increases or to the growth in personal income, whichever is less; 2) ensure any TELs are self-contained within the constitution to prevent the limit being changed by a simple majority vote in the Legislature; 3) apply the TEL to all categories of state spending, including those covered by federal funds; 4) require a supermajority vote in each chamber to exceed the limit so that changes are not based on political whims; and 5) expand the scope to include all levels of government so all spending is affected.
Recommendation No. 5: Don't chase federal funds. Despite conventional wisdom, federal funds are not "free" and, in fact, contribute a great deal to the unsustainable growth of state government and a resulting decline in economic growth. Last session's unemployment stimulus debate is a great example.
Two years ago, Texas had an opportunity to secure $555 million in additional stimulus funding for its unemployment insurance program. However, the state was only eligible for the funds if it made what would have effectively been permanent expansions of eligibility and benefits. Wisely, the state's leadership turned down the offer for the one-time funds and avoided making the costly changes to the program that taxpayers would have been stuck with ad infinitum.
There is a lot of work to be done this session, and hopefully this will provide lawmakers with some useful ideas as they walk the budget tightrope. They have a formidable challenge in front of them, but we stand ready to help them meet it.
Talmadge Heflin is director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a free-market nonprofit research institute based in Austin. He served 11 terms in the Texas House and was chairman of the Appropriations Committee in 2003, leading the Legislature's successful efforts to close a $10 billion budget deficit without a tax increase. James Quintero is a fiscal policy analyst at the foundation.
Political Battle on Illegal Immigration Shifts to States
By JULIA PRESTON | NY Times
Published: December 31, 2010
Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.
The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.
Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states. Still, the chances of passing many of these measures appear better than at any time since 2006, when many states, frustrated with inaction in Washington, began proposing initiatives to curb illegal immigration.
Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures nationwide in the November midterms, winning their strongest representation at the state level in more than 80 years.
Few people expect movement on immigration issues when Congress reconvenes next week in a divided Washington. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives, do not support an overhaul of immigration laws that President Obama has promised to continue to push. State lawmakers say it has fallen to them to act.
“The federal government’s failure to enforce our border has functionally turned every state into a border state,” said Randy Terrill, a Republican representative in Oklahoma who has led the drive for anti-illegal immigration laws there. “This is federalism in action,” he said. “The states are stepping in and filling the void left by the federal government.”
But the proposals have already drawn opposition from some business groups. And they are forcing strategic soul-searching within the Republican Party nationwide, with a rising populist base on one side demanding tough immigration measures, and, on the other side, traditional Republican supporters in business and a fast-growing Latino electorate strongly opposing those measures.
In Utah, a state dominated by Republicans, leaders from business, law enforcement, several churches and the Latino community sought to bridge the divide by joining together in November in a compact urging moderation on immigration issues.
Some of the more contentious measures may not go into effect immediately, including Arizona-style bills and those intended to eliminate birthright citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants. Latino and immigrant advocate legal organizations are gearing up for a host of court challenges.
Among the states expected to introduce bills similar to Arizona’s are Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
The Arizona law authorized the state and local police to ask about the immigration status of anyone they detained for other reasons, if they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was an illegal immigrant.
Acting on a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration, a federal judge stayed central provisions of the law. In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on an appeal of that stay by Arizona.
“States will push ahead regardless of the Ninth Circuit,” said Kris Kobach, a law professor and politician from Kansas who helped many states devise immigration laws — including Arizona’s. “A lot of people recognize that the district judge’s decision is very much open to dispute.”
In Oklahoma, where Republicans won big majorities in both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office, Mr. Terrill said he would introduce a bill he called “Arizona plus.” In addition to the terms of Arizona’s law, it would allow for the seizure of vehicles and property used to transport or harbor illegal immigrants.
In Georgia, an all-Republican commission of legislators plans to propose measures to enhance enforcement of tough laws already on the books. Georgia will also consider a bill to bar illegal immigrant students from all public universities.
The newly elected governor, Nathan Deal, a Republican, is expected to sign those bills. But the Georgia Farm Bureau, which represents the state’s powerful growers, voted to oppose any measures that would affect immigrant farm workers, most of whom do not have legal status.
In Kansas, Republicans won big majorities in both legislative houses and Sam Brownback, who just retired as a United States senator, was elected governor. Mr. Kobach, the law professor, was elected secretary of state after a campaign in which he vowed to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship for voters.
But the Kansas Chamber of Commerce has voiced its opposition, and Mr. Brownback has said he will focus on reducing unemployment.
The newest initiative is a joint effort among lawmakers from states including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania to pass laws based on a single model that would deny American citizenship to children born in those states to illegal immigrants. The legislators were to announce the campaign in Washington on Wednesday.
A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.”
The campaign is certain to run into legal obstacles. Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Even among those who seek its repeal, debate has hinged on whether that would require a constitutional amendment, an act of Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court.
Some Republicans argue that the party is risking losing its appeal to Latino voters, the fastest-growing minority voter bloc.
“The Republican Party is divided between those who see that Hispanics are an essential constituency going forward, and those who don’t see that,” said Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who is the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a business coalition that supports legalization for illegal immigrants.
Latino and immigrant advocate groups are resigned to being on the defensive for the next two years. “These laws are creating resentment within the Latino community that is going to last for decades,” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah in Salt Lake City, an immigrant advocacy group.
Published: December 31, 2010
Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.
The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.
Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.
Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states. Still, the chances of passing many of these measures appear better than at any time since 2006, when many states, frustrated with inaction in Washington, began proposing initiatives to curb illegal immigration.
Republicans gained more than 690 seats in state legislatures nationwide in the November midterms, winning their strongest representation at the state level in more than 80 years.
Few people expect movement on immigration issues when Congress reconvenes next week in a divided Washington. Republicans, who will control the House of Representatives, do not support an overhaul of immigration laws that President Obama has promised to continue to push. State lawmakers say it has fallen to them to act.
“The federal government’s failure to enforce our border has functionally turned every state into a border state,” said Randy Terrill, a Republican representative in Oklahoma who has led the drive for anti-illegal immigration laws there. “This is federalism in action,” he said. “The states are stepping in and filling the void left by the federal government.”
But the proposals have already drawn opposition from some business groups. And they are forcing strategic soul-searching within the Republican Party nationwide, with a rising populist base on one side demanding tough immigration measures, and, on the other side, traditional Republican supporters in business and a fast-growing Latino electorate strongly opposing those measures.
In Utah, a state dominated by Republicans, leaders from business, law enforcement, several churches and the Latino community sought to bridge the divide by joining together in November in a compact urging moderation on immigration issues.
Some of the more contentious measures may not go into effect immediately, including Arizona-style bills and those intended to eliminate birthright citizenship for American-born children of illegal immigrants. Latino and immigrant advocate legal organizations are gearing up for a host of court challenges.
Among the states expected to introduce bills similar to Arizona’s are Georgia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
The Arizona law authorized the state and local police to ask about the immigration status of anyone they detained for other reasons, if they had a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was an illegal immigrant.
Acting on a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration, a federal judge stayed central provisions of the law. In November, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on an appeal of that stay by Arizona.
“States will push ahead regardless of the Ninth Circuit,” said Kris Kobach, a law professor and politician from Kansas who helped many states devise immigration laws — including Arizona’s. “A lot of people recognize that the district judge’s decision is very much open to dispute.”
In Oklahoma, where Republicans won big majorities in both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office, Mr. Terrill said he would introduce a bill he called “Arizona plus.” In addition to the terms of Arizona’s law, it would allow for the seizure of vehicles and property used to transport or harbor illegal immigrants.
In Georgia, an all-Republican commission of legislators plans to propose measures to enhance enforcement of tough laws already on the books. Georgia will also consider a bill to bar illegal immigrant students from all public universities.
The newly elected governor, Nathan Deal, a Republican, is expected to sign those bills. But the Georgia Farm Bureau, which represents the state’s powerful growers, voted to oppose any measures that would affect immigrant farm workers, most of whom do not have legal status.
In Kansas, Republicans won big majorities in both legislative houses and Sam Brownback, who just retired as a United States senator, was elected governor. Mr. Kobach, the law professor, was elected secretary of state after a campaign in which he vowed to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship for voters.
But the Kansas Chamber of Commerce has voiced its opposition, and Mr. Brownback has said he will focus on reducing unemployment.
The newest initiative is a joint effort among lawmakers from states including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania to pass laws based on a single model that would deny American citizenship to children born in those states to illegal immigrants. The legislators were to announce the campaign in Washington on Wednesday.
A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.”
The campaign is certain to run into legal obstacles. Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Even among those who seek its repeal, debate has hinged on whether that would require a constitutional amendment, an act of Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court.
Some Republicans argue that the party is risking losing its appeal to Latino voters, the fastest-growing minority voter bloc.
“The Republican Party is divided between those who see that Hispanics are an essential constituency going forward, and those who don’t see that,” said Tamar Jacoby, a Republican who is the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a business coalition that supports legalization for illegal immigrants.
Latino and immigrant advocate groups are resigned to being on the defensive for the next two years. “These laws are creating resentment within the Latino community that is going to last for decades,” said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah in Salt Lake City, an immigrant advocacy group.
Texas, Other Colleges Confront Demographic Changes
by Reeve Hamilton and Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report | Texas Tribune
January 2, 2011
In August, 60 years after the University of Texas admitted its first black student, the school welcomed the first incoming freshman class in its history in which white students were in the minority.
White students, who accounted for 51 percent of UT’s freshman class in 2009, made up 48 percent in 2010. Black and Hispanic students represented about 5 percent and 23 percent, respectively, with Asians and other races making up the rest.
The state’s flagship university passed the demographic milestone earlier than some had anticipated, reflecting a similar shift that is rapidly taking place at other top-level educational institutions around the country.
While the changing demographics of college campuses may be grabbing the headlines, the more compelling issue is how the growing number of minority students presents serious social and academic challenges for financially strapped universities, even as the schools are under pressure to boost graduation rates.
Nationally, 52 percent of Hispanic students and 58 percent of black students are unable to earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, compared to 40 percent of white students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“What is increasingly evident now that wasn’t evident 10 or 20 years ago is the extent to which this is a national phenomenon,” said Steve Murdock, a sociology professor at Rice University and previously the state demographer of Texas and head of the U.S. Census Bureau. “This is not a Texas issue. It’s not a California issue. It’s a national issue.”
For the U.S. to maintain — let alone grow — a college-educated workforce, Murdock said, those numbers will have to change.
Stan Jones, former Indiana commissioner of higher education and the current president of Complete College America, a national nonprofit dedicated to boosting the number of college graduates, said the numbers have been telling the story for years. “But it hasn’t necessarily gotten through to policy-makers that this was going on, and clearly not to the general public,” Jones said. “All of us are seeing it happening faster than we had expected.”
For example, although their birth rate is growing at a significant clip, Jones said, Hispanics do not graduate from high school, go on to college or graduate in the same numbers as white students. “If you look at the freshman class everywhere in this country, it is more representative than it’s ever been,” he said. “But in four years, if you look at the graduating class, it is not going to be representative of the country, because many of those students from the underrepresented groups won’t make it to graduation.”
Educators give several reasons for the disparity, including economic differences; the comparative quality of college preparation at urban, rural and suburban schools; and a sense of isolation among those who are the first in their families to go to college.
“These are terrific students,” said William Powers Jr., president of UT. “Often, they may have gone to a high school where they didn’t have a calculus class or Advanced Placement classes. The challenges are also financial and what I call cultural. They might be away from home, and they don’t have parents and aunts and uncles who have already been here.”
In 2007, recognizing the demographic shift — and its accompanying challenges — Texas set up a Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. With an annual budget of $30.4 million, it encourages minority high school students to apply to college and then supports them with a complex framework of programs that include tutoring, personal advising.
“The question is, can we get them the support to help them over the gaps?” said Gregory Vincent, vice president of diversity and community engagement.
The results, so far, have been promising. Generally, students in the division’s programs have grade point averages and retention rates as good as or better than the average in their respective classes. “The good news is that our students come highly motivated, so our challenges aren’t as great as you’d expect, despite assumptions some people might make about their backgrounds,” said Aileen Bumphus, executive director of the Gateway Program, an initiative under the Diversity and Community Engagement umbrella that works with about 300 first-generation students in each class.
Such programs have been crucial for students like Oscar Ayala, a UT senior from Houston who majors in biomedical engineering. Both of his parents are from Mexico, and neither attended college. “When it came time in high school to get ready for college, I didn’t know what that meant,” Ayala said.
But that success may prove difficult to maintain, depending in large part on decisions the Texas Legislature will make this year to confront a budget shortfall that could reach $20 billion or more. About $5 million of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement budget comes from state funds. Educators are particularly worried about cuts to the state’s largest financial aid program, which primarily serves minority students.
Robert S. Nelsen, president of the University of Texas-Pan American, an institution that is 89 percent Hispanic, said cuts to the aid program would be “devastating” to the area.
UT’s main campus is also not immune from the tension caused by economic constraints. In November, a faculty panel proposed deep cuts to the ethnic studies programs, including the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Students, the Center for Asian American Studies and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Once the panel’s recommendations were made public, about 150 students and faculty members protested, many accusing the administration of racism. University administrators have since said the proposed cuts will be scaled back.
But the incident highlighted the fact that increased diversity does not necessarily mean increased harmony or interaction on a campus where you can see a statue of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, not far from new memorials to Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez and Barbara Jordan, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South.
Kacie Sebek, a senior from Houston, who is white, said she has seen classmates from predominantly white hometowns appear uncomfortable. “You have someone closed off in their own neighborhood, and suddenly they’re in a world where people are different,” she said.
Ayala, who was surprised by the dearth of Hispanics in his engineering programs, said students gravitate toward those with similar backgrounds. “As I started realizing who hangs out with who, I see that it’s not as diversified as it could be,” he said. “But I know it can keep moving forward.”
Still, most UT students hardly noticed the demographic milestone reached by the current freshman class. “If you want to take sort of a benchmark of how we’ve progressed over 20 years, it would be that this went more unrecognized than you might have expected it to,” said Powers, the university’s president. “That, in itself, is a milestone.”
This story was produced in a partnership between The Texas Tribune and The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
January 2, 2011
In August, 60 years after the University of Texas admitted its first black student, the school welcomed the first incoming freshman class in its history in which white students were in the minority.
White students, who accounted for 51 percent of UT’s freshman class in 2009, made up 48 percent in 2010. Black and Hispanic students represented about 5 percent and 23 percent, respectively, with Asians and other races making up the rest.
The state’s flagship university passed the demographic milestone earlier than some had anticipated, reflecting a similar shift that is rapidly taking place at other top-level educational institutions around the country.
While the changing demographics of college campuses may be grabbing the headlines, the more compelling issue is how the growing number of minority students presents serious social and academic challenges for financially strapped universities, even as the schools are under pressure to boost graduation rates.
Nationally, 52 percent of Hispanic students and 58 percent of black students are unable to earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, compared to 40 percent of white students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“What is increasingly evident now that wasn’t evident 10 or 20 years ago is the extent to which this is a national phenomenon,” said Steve Murdock, a sociology professor at Rice University and previously the state demographer of Texas and head of the U.S. Census Bureau. “This is not a Texas issue. It’s not a California issue. It’s a national issue.”
For the U.S. to maintain — let alone grow — a college-educated workforce, Murdock said, those numbers will have to change.
Stan Jones, former Indiana commissioner of higher education and the current president of Complete College America, a national nonprofit dedicated to boosting the number of college graduates, said the numbers have been telling the story for years. “But it hasn’t necessarily gotten through to policy-makers that this was going on, and clearly not to the general public,” Jones said. “All of us are seeing it happening faster than we had expected.”
For example, although their birth rate is growing at a significant clip, Jones said, Hispanics do not graduate from high school, go on to college or graduate in the same numbers as white students. “If you look at the freshman class everywhere in this country, it is more representative than it’s ever been,” he said. “But in four years, if you look at the graduating class, it is not going to be representative of the country, because many of those students from the underrepresented groups won’t make it to graduation.”
Educators give several reasons for the disparity, including economic differences; the comparative quality of college preparation at urban, rural and suburban schools; and a sense of isolation among those who are the first in their families to go to college.
“These are terrific students,” said William Powers Jr., president of UT. “Often, they may have gone to a high school where they didn’t have a calculus class or Advanced Placement classes. The challenges are also financial and what I call cultural. They might be away from home, and they don’t have parents and aunts and uncles who have already been here.”
In 2007, recognizing the demographic shift — and its accompanying challenges — Texas set up a Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. With an annual budget of $30.4 million, it encourages minority high school students to apply to college and then supports them with a complex framework of programs that include tutoring, personal advising.
“The question is, can we get them the support to help them over the gaps?” said Gregory Vincent, vice president of diversity and community engagement.
The results, so far, have been promising. Generally, students in the division’s programs have grade point averages and retention rates as good as or better than the average in their respective classes. “The good news is that our students come highly motivated, so our challenges aren’t as great as you’d expect, despite assumptions some people might make about their backgrounds,” said Aileen Bumphus, executive director of the Gateway Program, an initiative under the Diversity and Community Engagement umbrella that works with about 300 first-generation students in each class.
Such programs have been crucial for students like Oscar Ayala, a UT senior from Houston who majors in biomedical engineering. Both of his parents are from Mexico, and neither attended college. “When it came time in high school to get ready for college, I didn’t know what that meant,” Ayala said.
But that success may prove difficult to maintain, depending in large part on decisions the Texas Legislature will make this year to confront a budget shortfall that could reach $20 billion or more. About $5 million of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement budget comes from state funds. Educators are particularly worried about cuts to the state’s largest financial aid program, which primarily serves minority students.
Robert S. Nelsen, president of the University of Texas-Pan American, an institution that is 89 percent Hispanic, said cuts to the aid program would be “devastating” to the area.
UT’s main campus is also not immune from the tension caused by economic constraints. In November, a faculty panel proposed deep cuts to the ethnic studies programs, including the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Students, the Center for Asian American Studies and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Once the panel’s recommendations were made public, about 150 students and faculty members protested, many accusing the administration of racism. University administrators have since said the proposed cuts will be scaled back.
But the incident highlighted the fact that increased diversity does not necessarily mean increased harmony or interaction on a campus where you can see a statue of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, not far from new memorials to Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez and Barbara Jordan, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South.
Kacie Sebek, a senior from Houston, who is white, said she has seen classmates from predominantly white hometowns appear uncomfortable. “You have someone closed off in their own neighborhood, and suddenly they’re in a world where people are different,” she said.
Ayala, who was surprised by the dearth of Hispanics in his engineering programs, said students gravitate toward those with similar backgrounds. “As I started realizing who hangs out with who, I see that it’s not as diversified as it could be,” he said. “But I know it can keep moving forward.”
Still, most UT students hardly noticed the demographic milestone reached by the current freshman class. “If you want to take sort of a benchmark of how we’ve progressed over 20 years, it would be that this went more unrecognized than you might have expected it to,” said Powers, the university’s president. “That, in itself, is a milestone.”
This story was produced in a partnership between The Texas Tribune and The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, based at Teachers College, Columbia University.
42 DISD campuses make TEA list of state's worst schools
Friday, December 17, 2010
AUSTIN – One of the most dreaded lists to come out of the Texas Education Agency annually – identifying the worst schools in the state – includes the names of 42 campuses in the Dallas school district and nearly 369 schools statewide this year.
Released Thursday by the agency, the list is made up of schools where student test scores were too low or recent school ratings were "unacceptable," giving students the right to transfer to another campus under the state's Public Education Grant program.
Dallas had the largest number of subpar schools – more than 11 percent of the state's total. Houston came in second with 25 schools on the list. Fort Worth had 23.
The number of Dallas schools was down slightly from last year when 48 were labeled PEG schools.
DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander said the list should be viewed in perspective.
"Every indicator, from school performance to graduation rates to financial stability, indicates that Dallas ISD is moving in the right direction," he said. "For example, the number of exemplary schools has quadrupled since 2007, going from 14 in 2007 to 66 in 2010. Our work, however, is not yet complete, and we are committed to continuing to improve school and student performance."
Other area districts with schools on the list were Arlington and De Soto, with three each; Grand Prairie and Lancaster, with two each; and McKinney and Plano, with one each.
Only a few of the estimated 250,000 students eligible to transfer from schools on the list – representing about one in 20 campuses – are expected to do so because there's no state funding for transportation. Officials have said lack of transportation is one of the biggest obstacles for students and parents interested in switching to another school under the program.
Typically, fewer than 500 students transfer each year, although supporters of the option say they are looking for ways to give more students and parents the ability to switch if they desire.
Several lawmakers have said the state should consider transportation assistance for PEG students to encourage participation, but funding remains unlikely while the state deals with budget problems next year.
Schools on the list had to have 50 percent or more of their students fail the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in any two of the last three years or an "academically unacceptable" rating in any one of the last three years.
State officials said many of the students at those schools had particular trouble with the math and science sections of the TAKS. Poor performance ratings were frequently linked to students having difficulty with those subjects.
Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the TEA, noted that the number of campuses listed dropped from 499 last year to 369 this year in large part because of higher TAKS scores at most grade levels and improved graduation rates in high schools – which helped ratings. "The figures have been dropping as the school accountability system matures and more schools tend to earn a higher rating," she said.
Similarly, when the state switches to the tougher State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) in the 2011-12 school year, the number of PEG schools is expected to sharply increase.
The schools are being identified now because most districts consider transfer requests several months before the start of each school year. Parents must be notified of the option by Feb. 1, with students allowed to enroll at a new school next fall.
Students can transfer to another public school in their own district or a neighboring district – if that district agrees to accept them. Those that do enroll students under the program receive a financial incentive from the state – an extra 10 percent in funding per pupil.
"Districts don't have to accept transfers [from other districts] and often they don't have enough space to accommodate those students," Ratcliffe noted.
To get an acceptable rating from the state earlier this year – and avoid the PEG list – a school had to have a passing rate of at least 60 percent in math and 55 percent in science on the TAKS, with higher percentages required in English, social studies and writing.
The list would be longer if independent charter schools were included, but students attend those campuses voluntarily and may transfer back to their home school district at any time.
AUSTIN – One of the most dreaded lists to come out of the Texas Education Agency annually – identifying the worst schools in the state – includes the names of 42 campuses in the Dallas school district and nearly 369 schools statewide this year.
Released Thursday by the agency, the list is made up of schools where student test scores were too low or recent school ratings were "unacceptable," giving students the right to transfer to another campus under the state's Public Education Grant program.
Dallas had the largest number of subpar schools – more than 11 percent of the state's total. Houston came in second with 25 schools on the list. Fort Worth had 23.
The number of Dallas schools was down slightly from last year when 48 were labeled PEG schools.
DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander said the list should be viewed in perspective.
"Every indicator, from school performance to graduation rates to financial stability, indicates that Dallas ISD is moving in the right direction," he said. "For example, the number of exemplary schools has quadrupled since 2007, going from 14 in 2007 to 66 in 2010. Our work, however, is not yet complete, and we are committed to continuing to improve school and student performance."
Other area districts with schools on the list were Arlington and De Soto, with three each; Grand Prairie and Lancaster, with two each; and McKinney and Plano, with one each.
Transportation obstacle
Only a few of the estimated 250,000 students eligible to transfer from schools on the list – representing about one in 20 campuses – are expected to do so because there's no state funding for transportation. Officials have said lack of transportation is one of the biggest obstacles for students and parents interested in switching to another school under the program.
Typically, fewer than 500 students transfer each year, although supporters of the option say they are looking for ways to give more students and parents the ability to switch if they desire.
Several lawmakers have said the state should consider transportation assistance for PEG students to encourage participation, but funding remains unlikely while the state deals with budget problems next year.
Schools on the list had to have 50 percent or more of their students fail the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in any two of the last three years or an "academically unacceptable" rating in any one of the last three years.
State officials said many of the students at those schools had particular trouble with the math and science sections of the TAKS. Poor performance ratings were frequently linked to students having difficulty with those subjects.
Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the TEA, noted that the number of campuses listed dropped from 499 last year to 369 this year in large part because of higher TAKS scores at most grade levels and improved graduation rates in high schools – which helped ratings. "The figures have been dropping as the school accountability system matures and more schools tend to earn a higher rating," she said.
New-test effect
When the state switched from the old Texas Assessment of Academic Skills to the TAKS several years ago, there was a jump in the number of PEG campuses. But the figure has gradually declined.Similarly, when the state switches to the tougher State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) in the 2011-12 school year, the number of PEG schools is expected to sharply increase.
The schools are being identified now because most districts consider transfer requests several months before the start of each school year. Parents must be notified of the option by Feb. 1, with students allowed to enroll at a new school next fall.
Students can transfer to another public school in their own district or a neighboring district – if that district agrees to accept them. Those that do enroll students under the program receive a financial incentive from the state – an extra 10 percent in funding per pupil.
Districts' refusal
A major obstacle to district-to-district transfers is the right of any district to refuse to accept PEG students from neighboring districts. The extra funding is provided to encourage acceptance of those students, but many districts are still reluctant to participate."Districts don't have to accept transfers [from other districts] and often they don't have enough space to accommodate those students," Ratcliffe noted.
To get an acceptable rating from the state earlier this year – and avoid the PEG list – a school had to have a passing rate of at least 60 percent in math and 55 percent in science on the TAKS, with higher percentages required in English, social studies and writing.
The list would be longer if independent charter schools were included, but students attend those campuses voluntarily and may transfer back to their home school district at any time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)