Texas on the Brink 2011
Texas on the Brink
How Texas Ranks Among the 50 States
February 2011 ~ Fifth Edition
Originally Created by State Senator Eliot Shapleigh
Download Texas on the Brink
Since 1836, Texas has stood as an icon of the American dream.
Blessed with land, rivers, oil, and other abundant natural resources, early Texas welcomed everyone from cattle ranchers to braceros, from cotton farmers to Chinese railroad workers. These pioneers built a great state, and together we fulfilled a destiny.
From humble beginnings, we built a state with the firm belief that every Texan might rise as high and as far as their spirit, hard work, and talent might carry them. With education and determination every Texan might achieve great success – home ownership, reliable healthcare, safe neighborhoods, and financial prosperity.
In Texas today, the American dream is distant. Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation. Texas is dead last in the percentage of residents with their high school diploma and near last in SAT scores. Texas has America’s dirtiest air. If we do not change course, for the first time in our history, the Texas generation of tomorrow will be less prosperous than the generation of today.
Without the courage to invest in the minds of our children and steadfast support for great schools, we face a daunting prospect. Those who value tax cuts over children and budget cuts over college have put Texas at risk in her ability to compete and succeed.
Let us not forget that the business of Texas is Texans. To ‘Close the Gap’ in Texas, we must graduate more of our best and brightest with the skills to succeed in a world based on knowledge. If we invest in our greatest resource – our children – Texas will be the state of the future. If we do not, Texas will only fall further behind.
Texas is on the brink, but Texas can do better. The choice is ours.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Conservative Think Tank Slams TX Standards
This is big news, indeed. -Angela
Conservative Think Tank Slams TX Standards
By Texas Freedom Network
TFN PRESIDENT: FORDHAM ANALYSIS CONFIRMS THAT NEW SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS ARE A DISASTER FOR TEXAS SCHOOLS
Conservative Think Tank’s Report Savages State Board of Education for Politicizing New Curriculum Standards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 16, 2011
A conservative think tank’s analysis confirms what the Texas Freedom Network has been saying for months: new social studies standards adopted by the State Board of Education last year are a disaster for Texas schools and students, TFN President Kathy Miller said today.
“This analysis adds to a growing chorus of criticism aimed at state board members who deliberately and arrogantly substituted their own political biases for facts and scholarship throughout the standards,” Miller said. “It’s hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the way the board has politicized and manipulated the education of Texas kids over the past several years. Political agendas – from the left or the right – simply have no place in our kids’ classrooms.”
The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute released its analysis today. “The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011” analyzes U.S. history curriculum standards from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The report gives Texas a grade of “D” for its standards.
Among Fordham’s criticisms is that Texas State Board of Education members engaged in “ideological manipulation” by basing many of the new standards on their own personal and political biases. The analysis goes so far as to compare the heavily politicized approach in part of the standards to Soviet indoctrination in schools of the old USSR.
The report also criticizes the state board for its “overt hostility and contempt for historians and scholars” during the curriculum development process. A Texas Freedom Network Education Fund poll last year, conducted by the national firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, showed that 72 percent of likely Texas voters want teachers and scholars, not politicians on the state board, to be responsible for writing curriculum standards for public schools.
The state board adopted the new social studies standards last May. Those standards guide what students learn in all of the state’s public schools. Textbooks, other instructional materials and tests will be based on the new standards for the next decade.
Prominent critics of the new standards have included a wide array of teachers, education and civil rights groups, former Bush education secretary Rod Paige and now the conservative Fordham Institute. That criticism should sound a loud call to Texas lawmakers in the current legislative session, Miller said.
“Since the state board refuses to stop playing politics and focus on educating Texas kids, then it’s time for legislators to step in,” Miller said. “Do they stand with families who are tired of seeing their kids’ classrooms turned into political battlegrounds? Or will they make more excuses for politicians on the state board who care more about promoting the ‘culture wars’ than ensuring our kids get the education they need to succeed in college and the jobs of the 21st century?”
###
Examples of ‘Ideological Manipulation’ in the Texas U.S. History Curriculum Standards Highlighted by the Fordham Institute Analysis
The Fordham report is available here.
“A popular Lone Star State slogan proclaims ‘Texas: It’s like a whole other country’—but Texas’s standards are a disservice both to its own teachers and students and to the larger national history of which it remains a part.” (page 143)
Contempt for Expertise
“The conservative majority on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has openly sought to use the state curriculum to promote its political priorities, molding the telling of the past to justify its current views and aims. Indeed, the SBOE majority displayed overt hostility and contempt for historians and scholars, whom they derided as insidious activists for a liberal academic establishment.” (Executive Summary, page 15)
Economic History
The approach in the standards regarding instruction about “the free enterprise system and its benefits” resembles, “in an inverted historical echo, Soviet schools harping on the glories of state socialism.” (Executive Summary, page 15)
“ ‘Minimal government intrusion’ is hailed as key to the early nineteenth-century commercial boom—ignoring the critical role of the state and federal governments in internal improvements and economic expansion.” (page 142)
Religious Liberty
“Members of the SBOE … showed themselves determined to inject their personal religious beliefs into history education. ‘Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law)’ and ‘Moses’ are, incredibly, listed as the principal political influences on America’s founders. The separation of church and state, a much-debated and critical concept of the state constitutions (1777-1781) and the federal Constitution (1787), is simply dismissed.” (Executive Summary, page 15)
“Complex historical issues are obscured with blatant politicizing throughout the document. Biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented. The complicated but undeniable history of separation of church and state is flatly dismissed.” (page 142)
Slavery/Civil Rights/Civil War
“Native people are missing [from the standards] until brief references to nineteenth-century events. Slavery, too, is largely missing. Sectionalism and states’ rights are listed before slavery as causes of the Civil War, while the issue of slavery in the territories—the actual trigger for the sectional crisis—is never mentioned at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping. The term ‘Jim Crow’ never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is mentioned only in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces.” (page 142)
“Opposition to the civil rights movement is falsely identified only with ‘the congressional bloc of Southern Democrats’—whose later metamorphosis into Southern Republicans is never mentioned.” (page 142)
McCarthyism
“It is disingenuously suggested that the House Un-American Activities Committee—and, by extension, McCarthyism—have been vindicated by the Venona decrypts of Soviet espionage activities (which had, in reality, no link to McCarthy’s targets).” (page 142)
Conservative Think Tank Slams TX Standards
By Texas Freedom Network
TFN PRESIDENT: FORDHAM ANALYSIS CONFIRMS THAT NEW SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS ARE A DISASTER FOR TEXAS SCHOOLS
Conservative Think Tank’s Report Savages State Board of Education for Politicizing New Curriculum Standards
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 16, 2011
A conservative think tank’s analysis confirms what the Texas Freedom Network has been saying for months: new social studies standards adopted by the State Board of Education last year are a disaster for Texas schools and students, TFN President Kathy Miller said today.
“This analysis adds to a growing chorus of criticism aimed at state board members who deliberately and arrogantly substituted their own political biases for facts and scholarship throughout the standards,” Miller said. “It’s hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the way the board has politicized and manipulated the education of Texas kids over the past several years. Political agendas – from the left or the right – simply have no place in our kids’ classrooms.”
The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute released its analysis today. “The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011” analyzes U.S. history curriculum standards from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The report gives Texas a grade of “D” for its standards.
Among Fordham’s criticisms is that Texas State Board of Education members engaged in “ideological manipulation” by basing many of the new standards on their own personal and political biases. The analysis goes so far as to compare the heavily politicized approach in part of the standards to Soviet indoctrination in schools of the old USSR.
The report also criticizes the state board for its “overt hostility and contempt for historians and scholars” during the curriculum development process. A Texas Freedom Network Education Fund poll last year, conducted by the national firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, showed that 72 percent of likely Texas voters want teachers and scholars, not politicians on the state board, to be responsible for writing curriculum standards for public schools.
The state board adopted the new social studies standards last May. Those standards guide what students learn in all of the state’s public schools. Textbooks, other instructional materials and tests will be based on the new standards for the next decade.
Prominent critics of the new standards have included a wide array of teachers, education and civil rights groups, former Bush education secretary Rod Paige and now the conservative Fordham Institute. That criticism should sound a loud call to Texas lawmakers in the current legislative session, Miller said.
“Since the state board refuses to stop playing politics and focus on educating Texas kids, then it’s time for legislators to step in,” Miller said. “Do they stand with families who are tired of seeing their kids’ classrooms turned into political battlegrounds? Or will they make more excuses for politicians on the state board who care more about promoting the ‘culture wars’ than ensuring our kids get the education they need to succeed in college and the jobs of the 21st century?”
###
Examples of ‘Ideological Manipulation’ in the Texas U.S. History Curriculum Standards Highlighted by the Fordham Institute Analysis
The Fordham report is available here.
“A popular Lone Star State slogan proclaims ‘Texas: It’s like a whole other country’—but Texas’s standards are a disservice both to its own teachers and students and to the larger national history of which it remains a part.” (page 143)
Contempt for Expertise
“The conservative majority on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has openly sought to use the state curriculum to promote its political priorities, molding the telling of the past to justify its current views and aims. Indeed, the SBOE majority displayed overt hostility and contempt for historians and scholars, whom they derided as insidious activists for a liberal academic establishment.” (Executive Summary, page 15)
Economic History
The approach in the standards regarding instruction about “the free enterprise system and its benefits” resembles, “in an inverted historical echo, Soviet schools harping on the glories of state socialism.” (Executive Summary, page 15)
“ ‘Minimal government intrusion’ is hailed as key to the early nineteenth-century commercial boom—ignoring the critical role of the state and federal governments in internal improvements and economic expansion.” (page 142)
Religious Liberty
“Members of the SBOE … showed themselves determined to inject their personal religious beliefs into history education. ‘Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law)’ and ‘Moses’ are, incredibly, listed as the principal political influences on America’s founders. The separation of church and state, a much-debated and critical concept of the state constitutions (1777-1781) and the federal Constitution (1787), is simply dismissed.” (Executive Summary, page 15)
“Complex historical issues are obscured with blatant politicizing throughout the document. Biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented. The complicated but undeniable history of separation of church and state is flatly dismissed.” (page 142)
Slavery/Civil Rights/Civil War
“Native people are missing [from the standards] until brief references to nineteenth-century events. Slavery, too, is largely missing. Sectionalism and states’ rights are listed before slavery as causes of the Civil War, while the issue of slavery in the territories—the actual trigger for the sectional crisis—is never mentioned at all. During and after Reconstruction, there is no mention of the Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, or sharecropping. The term ‘Jim Crow’ never appears. Incredibly, racial segregation is mentioned only in a passing reference to the 1948 integration of the armed forces.” (page 142)
“Opposition to the civil rights movement is falsely identified only with ‘the congressional bloc of Southern Democrats’—whose later metamorphosis into Southern Republicans is never mentioned.” (page 142)
McCarthyism
“It is disingenuously suggested that the House Un-American Activities Committee—and, by extension, McCarthyism—have been vindicated by the Venona decrypts of Soviet espionage activities (which had, in reality, no link to McCarthy’s targets).” (page 142)
Budget cuts likely to mean fewer black, Hispanic students in Texas colleges | Texas Regional News - News for Dallas, Texas - The Dallas Morning News
Assemblyman Luis Alejo gets in on the Dream Act
By TOVIN LAPAN -- Santa Cruz Sentinel
02/15/2011
State Assemblymen Gil Cedillo and Luis Alejo are trying to find the elusive answer to a question posed by poet Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred?"
Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, has introduced the California Dream Act, which would give undocumented students access to financial aid, three times in the state Legislature. It has passed three times, and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it all three times.
In January, Cedillo, along with principal co-author Alejo, D-Watsonville, announced he would bring a new incarnation of the bill to the Assembly floor this session. Alejo, a freshman assemblyman, has thrown his support behind the bill after meeting numerous undocumented immigrants over the years who were excellent students but did not have the means to attend college, he said.
While some state law makers hope the Dream Act, in the words of Hughes, dries up "like a raisin in the sun," proponents are encouraged by Gov. Jerry Brown's comments supporting the bill during his 2010 campaign.
"There are only so many dollars going into education," said state Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, who is on the Senate Committee for Education. "To fund those here illegally at the cost of those here legally is not good policy."
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that every year 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools, and 40 percent, 26,000, of those are in California. While California's Latino population is at the forefront of the debate, students from Asia and the Pacific Islands make up 40 percent of the U.S. undocumented student population, according to the Asian Pacific Coalition at UCLA.
"There is money. Thousands of dollars in Cal Grants are not being utilized by students every year," Alejo said. "We have a whole initiative going on right now to promote Cal Grants so more students will apply."
Huff is not swayed by Cedillo's strategy of splitting the bill into two portions - one providing access to privately administered aid and the other to state-funded Cal Grants - saying there is a finite amount of money to go around, especially with large cuts to higher education looming.
Facing a $25.4 billion state budget deficit, Brown has suggested cutting $500 million each from UC and CSU, and $400 million from community colleges.
"We would have to create thousands of new jobs to support the expenditures from this bill, so even if you agree with the principal it doesn't make budgetary sense," Huff said.
To qualify for the Dream Act students must file for AB 540 status, the 2001 bill that offered in-state tuition to undocumented students, children of military personnel and others who attended California high schools for at least three years. Under the law, undocumented immigrants must agree to apply for legal status as soon as they are eligible.
"These are smart, hard working kids on a path to naturalization," said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, who is on the education committee. "It's a simple question for me. Do I want them in the classroom, or do I want them hanging out on a street corner?"
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal says undocumented students, many of whom were brought to the country at a young age by family, are "an innocent group of people who work very hard," and would like the prohibitions lifted.
"The universities need the right to raise money for these students. That's the easiest thing to have happen. The regents could approve that," he said. "Second is to allow some of our return to aid money - we hold back a third of paid tuition to use for students who can't afford tuition - to be used for these students. And the third thing is to make those students eligible for Cal Grants. The California Dream Act would accomplish that."
If approved, California would be the third state to offer financial aid to undocumented students after Texas and New Mexico.
All of the legislators interviewed agreed the federal government must work on comprehensive immigration reform, so states do not continue with piecemeal initiatives.
AT A GLANCE
CALIFORNIA DREAM ACT
The state legislation has been previously proposed by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, three times. The current incarnation is split into two bills, AB 130 and AB 131. The first bill would allow students who meet the in-state tuition requirements to apply for and receive specified financial aid administered by California's public colleges and universities. The types of aid these students would be eligible for include: Board of Governors Fee Waiver and Institutional Student Aid, a student aid program administered by the attending college or university. The second bill would allow students who meet the in-state tuition requirements to apply for and receive Cal Grants.
SOURCE: California State Legislature, www.legislature.ca.gov/port-bilinfo.html
02/15/2011
State Assemblymen Gil Cedillo and Luis Alejo are trying to find the elusive answer to a question posed by poet Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred?"
Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, has introduced the California Dream Act, which would give undocumented students access to financial aid, three times in the state Legislature. It has passed three times, and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it all three times.
In January, Cedillo, along with principal co-author Alejo, D-Watsonville, announced he would bring a new incarnation of the bill to the Assembly floor this session. Alejo, a freshman assemblyman, has thrown his support behind the bill after meeting numerous undocumented immigrants over the years who were excellent students but did not have the means to attend college, he said.
While some state law makers hope the Dream Act, in the words of Hughes, dries up "like a raisin in the sun," proponents are encouraged by Gov. Jerry Brown's comments supporting the bill during his 2010 campaign.
"There are only so many dollars going into education," said state Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, who is on the Senate Committee for Education. "To fund those here illegally at the cost of those here legally is not good policy."
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that every year 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools, and 40 percent, 26,000, of those are in California. While California's Latino population is at the forefront of the debate, students from Asia and the Pacific Islands make up 40 percent of the U.S. undocumented student population, according to the Asian Pacific Coalition at UCLA.
"There is money. Thousands of dollars in Cal Grants are not being utilized by students every year," Alejo said. "We have a whole initiative going on right now to promote Cal Grants so more students will apply."
Huff is not swayed by Cedillo's strategy of splitting the bill into two portions - one providing access to privately administered aid and the other to state-funded Cal Grants - saying there is a finite amount of money to go around, especially with large cuts to higher education looming.
Facing a $25.4 billion state budget deficit, Brown has suggested cutting $500 million each from UC and CSU, and $400 million from community colleges.
"We would have to create thousands of new jobs to support the expenditures from this bill, so even if you agree with the principal it doesn't make budgetary sense," Huff said.
To qualify for the Dream Act students must file for AB 540 status, the 2001 bill that offered in-state tuition to undocumented students, children of military personnel and others who attended California high schools for at least three years. Under the law, undocumented immigrants must agree to apply for legal status as soon as they are eligible.
"These are smart, hard working kids on a path to naturalization," said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, who is on the education committee. "It's a simple question for me. Do I want them in the classroom, or do I want them hanging out on a street corner?"
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal says undocumented students, many of whom were brought to the country at a young age by family, are "an innocent group of people who work very hard," and would like the prohibitions lifted.
"The universities need the right to raise money for these students. That's the easiest thing to have happen. The regents could approve that," he said. "Second is to allow some of our return to aid money - we hold back a third of paid tuition to use for students who can't afford tuition - to be used for these students. And the third thing is to make those students eligible for Cal Grants. The California Dream Act would accomplish that."
If approved, California would be the third state to offer financial aid to undocumented students after Texas and New Mexico.
All of the legislators interviewed agreed the federal government must work on comprehensive immigration reform, so states do not continue with piecemeal initiatives.
AT A GLANCE
CALIFORNIA DREAM ACT
The state legislation has been previously proposed by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, three times. The current incarnation is split into two bills, AB 130 and AB 131. The first bill would allow students who meet the in-state tuition requirements to apply for and receive specified financial aid administered by California's public colleges and universities. The types of aid these students would be eligible for include: Board of Governors Fee Waiver and Institutional Student Aid, a student aid program administered by the attending college or university. The second bill would allow students who meet the in-state tuition requirements to apply for and receive Cal Grants.
SOURCE: California State Legislature, www.legislature.ca.gov/port-bilinfo.html
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Senators Grill Texas Education Agency Over Cuts
by Morgan Smith | Texas Tribune
2/7/2011
As the Texas Education Agency appeared before members of the upper chamber for the first time since the release of an initial budget that reduced school funding by $9.3 billion, senators offered clues as to where they thought cuts would be most appropriate.
State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, called for a "full picture" of Texas' spending on public education while the state considers funding reductions. Shapiro, the Senate Education Committee chairwoman, noted that over the past decade, state funding has increased 63 percent per pupil. Since 2005, she said, spending on the Foundation School Program, which finances the state's basic educational curriculum, has increased $14 billion — "more than twice the rate of inflation."
Both Shapiro and state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, asked for a more detailed breakdown from the agency on the number of teachers districts employ versus the amount of other staff members employed in administrative and clerical positions. Patrick, the committee's vice chairman, observed that excluding military bases, Texas school districts are the fifth-largest employers in the world. Without fully committing to the idea that districts should be called on to use those reserves, Patrick also asked the agency to find out how much districts collectively hold in fund balance — money that they tuck away for emergencies. "There are a lot of rainy day funds out there," he said.
During his testimony, Education Commissioner Robert Scott said that determining what money he would ask to be restituted in the final budget was akin to asking "a guy on the operating table whether wants his heart or his lungs back." Scott said his No. 1 priority was to restore funding to the Foundation School Program, which provides money for the state's core education programs. After that, he requested "bare bones" financing for instructional materials and money in the final budget for awards for teacher excellence — something he said would be important as teachers face possible reductions in pay and furloughs.
The committee also took up the possibility of delaying the roll-out of STAAR, the state's new achievement exams, a proposition popular with school officials. "If we need to put a pause on this testing because we don't have the resources, you need to tell us," said state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who said he didn't want to see "a bunch of ethnic minority kids being left behind" because the state couldn't pay for the instructional materials to teach them what's on the new tests.
Scott said the agency is on track to implement STAAR, but added that if the new instructional materials weren't funded in the final budget, it would affect students' performance on the exams.
Shapiro came out firmly in favor of keeping STAAR on track: "I want to make sure we don't use the budget as an excuse to delay something that we've been working on for five years. ... Let's look at it as we are bringing rigor and more efficiency and effectiveness into the classroom, bringing meaningful and rich instruction for the first time."
2/7/2011
As the Texas Education Agency appeared before members of the upper chamber for the first time since the release of an initial budget that reduced school funding by $9.3 billion, senators offered clues as to where they thought cuts would be most appropriate.
State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, called for a "full picture" of Texas' spending on public education while the state considers funding reductions. Shapiro, the Senate Education Committee chairwoman, noted that over the past decade, state funding has increased 63 percent per pupil. Since 2005, she said, spending on the Foundation School Program, which finances the state's basic educational curriculum, has increased $14 billion — "more than twice the rate of inflation."
Both Shapiro and state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, asked for a more detailed breakdown from the agency on the number of teachers districts employ versus the amount of other staff members employed in administrative and clerical positions. Patrick, the committee's vice chairman, observed that excluding military bases, Texas school districts are the fifth-largest employers in the world. Without fully committing to the idea that districts should be called on to use those reserves, Patrick also asked the agency to find out how much districts collectively hold in fund balance — money that they tuck away for emergencies. "There are a lot of rainy day funds out there," he said.
During his testimony, Education Commissioner Robert Scott said that determining what money he would ask to be restituted in the final budget was akin to asking "a guy on the operating table whether wants his heart or his lungs back." Scott said his No. 1 priority was to restore funding to the Foundation School Program, which provides money for the state's core education programs. After that, he requested "bare bones" financing for instructional materials and money in the final budget for awards for teacher excellence — something he said would be important as teachers face possible reductions in pay and furloughs.
The committee also took up the possibility of delaying the roll-out of STAAR, the state's new achievement exams, a proposition popular with school officials. "If we need to put a pause on this testing because we don't have the resources, you need to tell us," said state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, who said he didn't want to see "a bunch of ethnic minority kids being left behind" because the state couldn't pay for the instructional materials to teach them what's on the new tests.
Scott said the agency is on track to implement STAAR, but added that if the new instructional materials weren't funded in the final budget, it would affect students' performance on the exams.
Shapiro came out firmly in favor of keeping STAAR on track: "I want to make sure we don't use the budget as an excuse to delay something that we've been working on for five years. ... Let's look at it as we are bringing rigor and more efficiency and effectiveness into the classroom, bringing meaningful and rich instruction for the first time."
Higher Education in Egypt: What’s Next?
Higher Education in Egypt: What’s Next?
February 15, 2011, 10:22 am
By Francisco Marmolejo
There are winds of change in Egypt and, for that matter, throughout the Arab world. After days and nights of tension, anxiety, and determination, the regime of Hosni Mubarak has collapsed and an opportunity for a democratic transition has emerged. Certainly, the recent developments in Egypt provide an opportunity for a serious national discussion about the challenges faced in Egyptian society and the role that higher education has to play in this new environment.
Two years ago I was part of an international team of observers from Egypt and different parts of the world, convened by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, which, at the invitation of the Egyptian government, conducted an extensive independent review of its higher-education system. Participating in this reflection gave our group the opportunity to visit higher-education institutions in many parts of the country, and to interact with students, faculty members and administrators, as well as representatives from government, business, and community-based organizations. Our final product was a report with reflections and recommendation for the higher-education system of Egypt that was published by OECD less than a year ago...
Read the entire article at http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/higher-education-in-egypt-whats-next/27877
Francisco Marmolejo
Executive Director
Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration
CONAHEC - University of Arizona
PO Box 210300
220 W. Sixth Street
Tucson, AZ 85721-0300 USA
Tel. +1 (520) 621-9080 / 621-7761
Fax +1 (520) 626-2675
Email: fmarmole@email.arizona.edu
http://conahec.org
February 15, 2011, 10:22 am
By Francisco Marmolejo
There are winds of change in Egypt and, for that matter, throughout the Arab world. After days and nights of tension, anxiety, and determination, the regime of Hosni Mubarak has collapsed and an opportunity for a democratic transition has emerged. Certainly, the recent developments in Egypt provide an opportunity for a serious national discussion about the challenges faced in Egyptian society and the role that higher education has to play in this new environment.
Two years ago I was part of an international team of observers from Egypt and different parts of the world, convened by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, which, at the invitation of the Egyptian government, conducted an extensive independent review of its higher-education system. Participating in this reflection gave our group the opportunity to visit higher-education institutions in many parts of the country, and to interact with students, faculty members and administrators, as well as representatives from government, business, and community-based organizations. Our final product was a report with reflections and recommendation for the higher-education system of Egypt that was published by OECD less than a year ago...
Read the entire article at http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/higher-education-in-egypt-whats-next/27877
Francisco Marmolejo
Executive Director
Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration
CONAHEC - University of Arizona
PO Box 210300
220 W. Sixth Street
Tucson, AZ 85721-0300 USA
Tel. +1 (520) 621-9080 / 621-7761
Fax +1 (520) 626-2675
Email: fmarmole@email.arizona.edu
http://conahec.org
Aid Cuts Have Texas Schools Scrambling
Yesterday's House Appropriations Hearing on Article III revealed Commissioner Scott's restoration requests (what we can expect him to expend political capital to fight for) though even he admits it's not enough.
Add to this scarce projections on how district and school budgets will be impacted with the transition to the STAAR system and the HB 3 mandates.
-Patricia
By JAMES C. McKINLEY
February 14, 2011
HUTTO, Tex. — The school superintendent in this rural town outside the state capital has taken steps to trademark the district’s oddly un-Texan school mascot — the Hutto Hippo — in a frantic effort to raise cash. He is also planning to put advertisements on school buses and to let retailers have space on the school Web site.
“I’m doing some weird stuff in the district because we are low on money,” said the superintendent, Douglas Killian, sitting in an office full of Hippo figurines.
He added, “We hope to make our hippo as recognizable as Mickey Mouse.” (The mascot was adopted shortly after a hippopotamus escaped from a circus train in 1915 and took up temporary residence in a local creek.)
But the money expected from the sale of “Hustling Hippos” merchandise would be peanuts compared with the hole expected to open up in the district’s budget, as the Legislature moves to slash about $4.8 billion in state aid to schools over two years to close a budget gap.
So Mr. Killian and the beleaguered school board have agreed to shut down a recently built grade school and to cut a 10th of the staff, among them a principal, 2 assistant principals, 4 librarians and 38 teachers. That round of staff cuts is a just first step, he says, and layoffs will follow if the budget bills proposed in the Legislature are enacted without changes.
All across Texas, school superintendents are bracing for the largest cuts to public education since World War II, and the state is not alone. Schools across the country are in trouble as billions in emergency stimulus grants from the federal government have run out, and state and federal lawmakers have interpreted the victory of fiscal hawks in November’s midterm elections to mean that tax increases are out of the question.
Nowhere has that political trend been more potent than in Texas, where Republicans who ran on a promise to never raise taxes not only retained every statewide office, but also added to their majorities in both houses of the Legislature.
Gov. Rick Perry, easily re-elected in November, made it clear in his annual speech to lawmakers last week that he regarded raising revenue for schools as out of the question, saying Texas families “sent a pretty clear message with their November votes.” He has also refused to consider using $9.4 billion in a reserve fund to bail out the schools.
“They want government to be even leaner and more efficient,” Mr. Perry said, “and they want us to balance the budget without raising taxes on families and employers.”
To balance the budget with cuts alone, the governor and Republican leaders in the Legislature have put forth bills that would reduce the state’s public school budget by at least 13 percent — nearly $3.5 billion a year — and would provide no new money to schools for about 85,000 new students that arrive in Texas every year. School administrators predict that as many as 100,000 school employees would have to be laid off to absorb the cuts.
Not only are the proposed cuts to school aid draconian, but in addition the Legislature in 2006 put strict limits on how much districts can raise local property taxes. That means local school boards find themselves trapped amid rising enrollment, double-digit drops in state aid and frozen local taxes.
Many school administrators attribute the current budget crisis to an overhaul of the school finance system five years ago, which Mr. Perry and Republican leaders pushed through in response to popular anger over high property taxes. The Legislature put a cap on property taxes for schools and promised to make up the difference with a new business tax. But that tax has never produced enough revenue to make the districts’ budgets whole.
The chronic shortfall in money for schools was papered over in the last two-year budget passed in 2009. Mr. Perry and Republican leaders in the Legislature used about $3.3 billion in federal aid under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to plug the hole. That aid has disappeared this year.
“We had a problem before the shortfall ever occurred,” said John M. Folks, the superintendent of Northside Independent School District in San Antonio. “Now we have put this shortfall on top of an already horrible funding situation.”
Mr. Folks said the proposed budget bills would require him to cut about a sixth of his budget, and he sees see no way to avoid laying off teachers and letting classes become larger.
That view was echoed by administrators in districts large and small, from tiny rural districts with one high school and a six-man football team to the giant urban districts in Houston and Dallas.
In Austin, school administrators on Friday recommended in a letter to the school board that 1,000 jobs — roughly 8 percent of the work force — be cut to balance the budget, while in Dallas officials on Thursday proposed cutting about 4,000 positions.
Terry Grier, the superintendent in Houston, said the city stood to lose 15 percent to 20 percent of its total budget. The district could still raise the local property tax rate a few cents and stay under the state-imposed cap, but it would produce nowhere near enough to cover the loss of state money, Mr. Grier said. One way to cushion the blow, he said, would be to lift state rules on class size and to let administrators single out unproductive teachers for layoffs, regardless of their seniority. “Let us get out from under some of these state mandates,” he said.
Even relatively wealthy suburban districts are in trouble. Officials in the Clear Creek Independent School District south of Houston, which serves the communities around NASA, estimate they would have to cut about 975 jobs — about a fifth of the work force. Like most other administrators, Superintendent Greg Smith is urging the Legislature to tap into the Rainy Day Fund instead of making the cuts. “It’s not raining,” he said. “It’s pouring.”
On Thursday night in Hutto, two school board members wept as they read the motion to close Veterans’ Hill Elementary School, a sleek building that opened in 2008 amid wheat fields and horse paddocks.
“In the 10 years I’ve been on this board, this is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” said Sheila Knapp, the board’s vice president. “I’m very angry with the Legislature for putting us in this position and affecting our kids this way.”
Michele Bischoffberger, the principal at Veterans’ Hill, said the school was built just before the economic downturn, when Hutto was growing rapidly as developers built suburbs for workers at high-tech companies around Austin.
“All this land out here was supposed to be houses, but when the crash came, that didn’t happen,” Ms. Bischoffberger said, gesturing at nearby fields.
She recounted wistfully how she helped design the school, insisting on elements like a large gymnasium and a computer lab. “It’s your baby,” she said. “Being a new principal, this is where you get to make your dreams come true. It’s going to be hard to walk away.”
The 475 children at the school will be divided among the district’s other four elementary schools, and the entire fifth grade will be moved to the two middle schools to make room. The shuttered school — with its library, computer lab and state-of-the-art classrooms — will be mothballed or rented out to a community college, Ms. Bischoffberger said.
Plans to start a garden to be used as an outdoor classroom this spring have been scotched, killing a long-held dream for Vanessa Henson, a kindergarten teacher who had raised money from local businesses for the project.
“I don’t know about the politics,” Ms. Henson said, breaking into tears. “I just know something went awry.”
Some young teachers and support staff members said they were uneasy, since it was unclear if they would have jobs in September. Sharon Case, the school librarian, is among those whose job is on the line. She has two children in college and works nights as a cashier at Wal-Mart.
“I’m just doing a lot of praying and depending on God to know where I’m supposed to be,” Ms. Case said.
Add to this scarce projections on how district and school budgets will be impacted with the transition to the STAAR system and the HB 3 mandates.
-Patricia
By JAMES C. McKINLEY
February 14, 2011
HUTTO, Tex. — The school superintendent in this rural town outside the state capital has taken steps to trademark the district’s oddly un-Texan school mascot — the Hutto Hippo — in a frantic effort to raise cash. He is also planning to put advertisements on school buses and to let retailers have space on the school Web site.
“I’m doing some weird stuff in the district because we are low on money,” said the superintendent, Douglas Killian, sitting in an office full of Hippo figurines.
He added, “We hope to make our hippo as recognizable as Mickey Mouse.” (The mascot was adopted shortly after a hippopotamus escaped from a circus train in 1915 and took up temporary residence in a local creek.)
But the money expected from the sale of “Hustling Hippos” merchandise would be peanuts compared with the hole expected to open up in the district’s budget, as the Legislature moves to slash about $4.8 billion in state aid to schools over two years to close a budget gap.
So Mr. Killian and the beleaguered school board have agreed to shut down a recently built grade school and to cut a 10th of the staff, among them a principal, 2 assistant principals, 4 librarians and 38 teachers. That round of staff cuts is a just first step, he says, and layoffs will follow if the budget bills proposed in the Legislature are enacted without changes.
All across Texas, school superintendents are bracing for the largest cuts to public education since World War II, and the state is not alone. Schools across the country are in trouble as billions in emergency stimulus grants from the federal government have run out, and state and federal lawmakers have interpreted the victory of fiscal hawks in November’s midterm elections to mean that tax increases are out of the question.
Nowhere has that political trend been more potent than in Texas, where Republicans who ran on a promise to never raise taxes not only retained every statewide office, but also added to their majorities in both houses of the Legislature.
Gov. Rick Perry, easily re-elected in November, made it clear in his annual speech to lawmakers last week that he regarded raising revenue for schools as out of the question, saying Texas families “sent a pretty clear message with their November votes.” He has also refused to consider using $9.4 billion in a reserve fund to bail out the schools.
“They want government to be even leaner and more efficient,” Mr. Perry said, “and they want us to balance the budget without raising taxes on families and employers.”
To balance the budget with cuts alone, the governor and Republican leaders in the Legislature have put forth bills that would reduce the state’s public school budget by at least 13 percent — nearly $3.5 billion a year — and would provide no new money to schools for about 85,000 new students that arrive in Texas every year. School administrators predict that as many as 100,000 school employees would have to be laid off to absorb the cuts.
Not only are the proposed cuts to school aid draconian, but in addition the Legislature in 2006 put strict limits on how much districts can raise local property taxes. That means local school boards find themselves trapped amid rising enrollment, double-digit drops in state aid and frozen local taxes.
Many school administrators attribute the current budget crisis to an overhaul of the school finance system five years ago, which Mr. Perry and Republican leaders pushed through in response to popular anger over high property taxes. The Legislature put a cap on property taxes for schools and promised to make up the difference with a new business tax. But that tax has never produced enough revenue to make the districts’ budgets whole.
The chronic shortfall in money for schools was papered over in the last two-year budget passed in 2009. Mr. Perry and Republican leaders in the Legislature used about $3.3 billion in federal aid under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to plug the hole. That aid has disappeared this year.
“We had a problem before the shortfall ever occurred,” said John M. Folks, the superintendent of Northside Independent School District in San Antonio. “Now we have put this shortfall on top of an already horrible funding situation.”
Mr. Folks said the proposed budget bills would require him to cut about a sixth of his budget, and he sees see no way to avoid laying off teachers and letting classes become larger.
That view was echoed by administrators in districts large and small, from tiny rural districts with one high school and a six-man football team to the giant urban districts in Houston and Dallas.
In Austin, school administrators on Friday recommended in a letter to the school board that 1,000 jobs — roughly 8 percent of the work force — be cut to balance the budget, while in Dallas officials on Thursday proposed cutting about 4,000 positions.
Terry Grier, the superintendent in Houston, said the city stood to lose 15 percent to 20 percent of its total budget. The district could still raise the local property tax rate a few cents and stay under the state-imposed cap, but it would produce nowhere near enough to cover the loss of state money, Mr. Grier said. One way to cushion the blow, he said, would be to lift state rules on class size and to let administrators single out unproductive teachers for layoffs, regardless of their seniority. “Let us get out from under some of these state mandates,” he said.
Even relatively wealthy suburban districts are in trouble. Officials in the Clear Creek Independent School District south of Houston, which serves the communities around NASA, estimate they would have to cut about 975 jobs — about a fifth of the work force. Like most other administrators, Superintendent Greg Smith is urging the Legislature to tap into the Rainy Day Fund instead of making the cuts. “It’s not raining,” he said. “It’s pouring.”
On Thursday night in Hutto, two school board members wept as they read the motion to close Veterans’ Hill Elementary School, a sleek building that opened in 2008 amid wheat fields and horse paddocks.
“In the 10 years I’ve been on this board, this is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” said Sheila Knapp, the board’s vice president. “I’m very angry with the Legislature for putting us in this position and affecting our kids this way.”
Michele Bischoffberger, the principal at Veterans’ Hill, said the school was built just before the economic downturn, when Hutto was growing rapidly as developers built suburbs for workers at high-tech companies around Austin.
“All this land out here was supposed to be houses, but when the crash came, that didn’t happen,” Ms. Bischoffberger said, gesturing at nearby fields.
She recounted wistfully how she helped design the school, insisting on elements like a large gymnasium and a computer lab. “It’s your baby,” she said. “Being a new principal, this is where you get to make your dreams come true. It’s going to be hard to walk away.”
The 475 children at the school will be divided among the district’s other four elementary schools, and the entire fifth grade will be moved to the two middle schools to make room. The shuttered school — with its library, computer lab and state-of-the-art classrooms — will be mothballed or rented out to a community college, Ms. Bischoffberger said.
Plans to start a garden to be used as an outdoor classroom this spring have been scotched, killing a long-held dream for Vanessa Henson, a kindergarten teacher who had raised money from local businesses for the project.
“I don’t know about the politics,” Ms. Henson said, breaking into tears. “I just know something went awry.”
Some young teachers and support staff members said they were uneasy, since it was unclear if they would have jobs in September. Sharon Case, the school librarian, is among those whose job is on the line. She has two children in college and works nights as a cashier at Wal-Mart.
“I’m just doing a lot of praying and depending on God to know where I’m supposed to be,” Ms. Case said.
Robin Hood system revisited as budgets shrink
02/09/2011 05:24 PM
Robin Hood system revisited as budgets shrink
By: Heidi Zhou-Castro
The Robin Hood provision, a financing mechanism that seeks to bring equity between the state's rich and poor school districts, has come under fire recently as Texas parents stare down impending budget cuts.
Al Kauffman, a speaker at the Texas Center for Education Policy's annual conference, was the lawyer credited with convincing the courts that Robin Hood was needed.
"That does benefit the kids who need it the most," Kauffman said. "The poor students and the minority students who were not given an equal opportunity in the past are given a more equal opportunity now."
According to Kauffman, the need is just as great today as it was in 1990, when he won his case.
"There's still tremendous differences, and there's still a lack of funding for all of the districts in the state," he said.
Those differences are severe, according to David Hinojosa, a senior litigator with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. He said a $1,000-per-child funding gap still exists between wealthy districts and poorer ones.
"You multiply that times a classroom of 20 and then you multiply that times a school of 500, you're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars," he said.
Nevertheless, Robin Hood has been a popular target among richer districts that say the system is unfair. Under the current state budget proposals, they may be forced to close schools and fire teachers.
Take AISD, which paid $128 million to Robin Hood in the last fiscal year. That money would have easily covered the $113 million shortfall the district projects next year.
Current lawmakers are quick to point out Robin Hood was not their idea.
"The courts made us do that," Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said. "There's no way we'd be able to remove that from the equation, because we'd be back in court."
Court may well be where the debate ends up, as shrinking funds make the concept of the rich giving to the poor less appealing over time.
Robin Hood system revisited as budgets shrink
By: Heidi Zhou-Castro
The Robin Hood provision, a financing mechanism that seeks to bring equity between the state's rich and poor school districts, has come under fire recently as Texas parents stare down impending budget cuts.
Al Kauffman, a speaker at the Texas Center for Education Policy's annual conference, was the lawyer credited with convincing the courts that Robin Hood was needed.
"That does benefit the kids who need it the most," Kauffman said. "The poor students and the minority students who were not given an equal opportunity in the past are given a more equal opportunity now."
According to Kauffman, the need is just as great today as it was in 1990, when he won his case.
"There's still tremendous differences, and there's still a lack of funding for all of the districts in the state," he said.
Those differences are severe, according to David Hinojosa, a senior litigator with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. He said a $1,000-per-child funding gap still exists between wealthy districts and poorer ones.
"You multiply that times a classroom of 20 and then you multiply that times a school of 500, you're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars," he said.
Nevertheless, Robin Hood has been a popular target among richer districts that say the system is unfair. Under the current state budget proposals, they may be forced to close schools and fire teachers.
Take AISD, which paid $128 million to Robin Hood in the last fiscal year. That money would have easily covered the $113 million shortfall the district projects next year.
Current lawmakers are quick to point out Robin Hood was not their idea.
"The courts made us do that," Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said. "There's no way we'd be able to remove that from the equation, because we'd be back in court."
Court may well be where the debate ends up, as shrinking funds make the concept of the rich giving to the poor less appealing over time.
Budget cuts vex schools
Hi folks. I'm posting a couple of news items that came out of our conference last week. By all accounts, it was hugely successful. For those of you who came, a heartfelt thanks for being there on one of the nastiest days of the year (at least in the morning when the roads were icy!).
Angela
Photo taken by Shereen Ayub / Daily Texas Staff
By Molly Moore, Daily Texan Staff
Published: Thursday, February 10, 2011
DT Image
Shereen Ayub | Daily Texan Staff
Supporters of educational reform gather Wednesday at the Texas Center for Education Policy’s annual Leading The Nation Conference. Teachers, administrators and legislators discussed the challenges Texas public schools will face in upcoming years.
K-12 schools face $11 billion in cuts as the state attempts to balance a $27-billion budget shortfall. Rather than looking to improve education, educators and policymakers are now wondering whether they will be able to adequately run schools at all.
At the Texas Center for Education Policy’s annual Leading the Nation conference, 200 teachers, administrators and legislators met Wednesday to discuss the challenges that the state’s public education system faces over the next two years.
“Our priorities are out of order,” said Paul Sadler, the former chairman of the Committee on Public Education in the Texas House of Representatives, in his keynote address. “The day that we as policymakers forget the importance of education, we stop helping our children and begin hurting them.”
Former teacher Tori Garcia cited the negative cycle that occurs from not properly funding schools.
“Legislators, including our governor, are putting education on the back burner. [Austin] cannot function economically as a city of Texas, much less of the United States, without proper education for all of our children,” she said.
Because more funding is not presently an option, educators are looking elsewhere for possible sources of revenue.
“We need to look at the consolidation of costs and resources,” said Laura Alcorta, the director of federal programs for Round Rock ISD. “Look at our school districts — we have over 1,000 [in Texas]. If a single metropolis gets to have 10 school districts, they also get 10 superintendents and 10 administrative offices. All of those extra people could be consolidated and the extra money would go straight into the schools themselves.”
Administrative staffers make almost $27,000 more than teachers on average, according to Texas Education Agency data. Austin ISD cut 113 administrative jobs during the past year and aims to cut another 50 to 100 over the coming year. Still, the number of jobs to cut remains at 485 for AISD, with 421 of those being teaching positions, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
“We need to start having the conversation, but the interest is not there, and it is sad to see that,” Alcorta said.
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, disputed the state Legislature’s dedication to education.
“You, the teachers and administrators, need to act as advocates for education and make sure we provide adequate funding,” he said. “The best investment we can make is ensuring we have the resources needed for successful schools.”
He excused himself shortly after to attend a finance meeting set to focus on the state budget with special emphasis on the allocation of funding for public schools.
Angela
By Molly Moore, Daily Texan Staff
Published: Thursday, February 10, 2011
DT Image
Shereen Ayub | Daily Texan Staff
Supporters of educational reform gather Wednesday at the Texas Center for Education Policy’s annual Leading The Nation Conference. Teachers, administrators and legislators discussed the challenges Texas public schools will face in upcoming years.
K-12 schools face $11 billion in cuts as the state attempts to balance a $27-billion budget shortfall. Rather than looking to improve education, educators and policymakers are now wondering whether they will be able to adequately run schools at all.
At the Texas Center for Education Policy’s annual Leading the Nation conference, 200 teachers, administrators and legislators met Wednesday to discuss the challenges that the state’s public education system faces over the next two years.
“Our priorities are out of order,” said Paul Sadler, the former chairman of the Committee on Public Education in the Texas House of Representatives, in his keynote address. “The day that we as policymakers forget the importance of education, we stop helping our children and begin hurting them.”
Former teacher Tori Garcia cited the negative cycle that occurs from not properly funding schools.
“Legislators, including our governor, are putting education on the back burner. [Austin] cannot function economically as a city of Texas, much less of the United States, without proper education for all of our children,” she said.
Because more funding is not presently an option, educators are looking elsewhere for possible sources of revenue.
“We need to look at the consolidation of costs and resources,” said Laura Alcorta, the director of federal programs for Round Rock ISD. “Look at our school districts — we have over 1,000 [in Texas]. If a single metropolis gets to have 10 school districts, they also get 10 superintendents and 10 administrative offices. All of those extra people could be consolidated and the extra money would go straight into the schools themselves.”
Administrative staffers make almost $27,000 more than teachers on average, according to Texas Education Agency data. Austin ISD cut 113 administrative jobs during the past year and aims to cut another 50 to 100 over the coming year. Still, the number of jobs to cut remains at 485 for AISD, with 421 of those being teaching positions, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
“We need to start having the conversation, but the interest is not there, and it is sad to see that,” Alcorta said.
State Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, disputed the state Legislature’s dedication to education.
“You, the teachers and administrators, need to act as advocates for education and make sure we provide adequate funding,” he said. “The best investment we can make is ensuring we have the resources needed for successful schools.”
He excused himself shortly after to attend a finance meeting set to focus on the state budget with special emphasis on the allocation of funding for public schools.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Schools Matter: Number 1 in the World, Mr. Duncan? Really? You H...
Schools Matter: Number 1 in the World, Mr. Duncan? Really? You H...: "Arne Duncan proclaimed a couple of days ago that he wants the U. S. to be #1 in educational achievement but that we have 'a long way to go.'..."
This is an interesting blog that colleague Stephen Krashen posts to sometimes.
Angela
This is an interesting blog that colleague Stephen Krashen posts to sometimes.
Angela
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Proposal ties teacher ratings to student scores
Under the HISD plan, those with poor evaluations can be fired
By ERICKA MELLON | HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 11, 2011
Teachers in the Houston school district would be held much more accountable for their students' learning under a highly anticipated proposal to change the way they are evaluated.
Under the draft plan, released for public comment this month, roughly half a teacher's rating would be based on student test scores and other evidence of academic progress. The current system relies almost solely on principals' observations of teachers at work.
The proposed changes, if approved by the school board, would put the Houston Independent School District among a small but growing number of districts nationwide emphasizing test scores when grading educators.
The issue draws strong reactions from teachers because those with poor evaluations can be fired.
"This is an enormous change," said Chuck Robinson, who represents HISD teachers as the executive director of the Congress of Houston Teachers. "It's much too heavy on the student achievement end. Fifty percent — that is just huge."
Under the plan, the other half of a teacher's rating would come from criteria such as their ability to engage students, planning skills, collaboration with parents, attendance and participation in professional development.
Administrators would have to visit teachers' classrooms more often - at least six times a year instead of once - and give them regular written feedback.
"Teachers do a lot of things, but their most important job is to make sure their kids learn," said Ellen Hur of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit hired by HISD to help develop a new appraisal process. "Student achievement has to be a significant part of their evaluation."
Leaders of HISD's two largest teacher groups said their biggest problem with the proposal is the use of a specific model of analyzing test scores, the same one the district uses to determine which teachers get performance bonuses.
The so-called value-added model relies on complex statistics to determine whether students fared better or worse than expected on standardized tests.
Only teachers of core subjects - such as math and science - in grades three through eight have value-added scores. That represents about one-third of the district's 12,200 teachers.
Others could be rated on their students' progress on district exams or end-of-course tests. For some subjects, such as art, student projects could count. Every teacher would be rated on two different measures of student performance.
Gayle Fallon, who runs the Houston Federation of Teachers, called the use of value-added data a "deal breaker." But she said Texas law doesn't allow her to challenge the content of the appraisal.
Districts are allowed to deviate from the state's model, called the Professional Development and Appraisal System, if their system is developed by committees made up of educators and parents.
Fallon questioned whether HISD officials have embraced the committees' input.
"It didn't go as smoothly as they say it went, but we'll see," she said. "There's still a lot of room for discussion."
More than 1,000 teachers and other committee members have had a voice in the process since September, said Julie Baker, HISD's chief officer of major projects. More people will have a chance during the comment period this month.
The use of test scores in rating teachers has been a key part of President Barack Obama's education reform agenda. Today, 10 states require student learning to count for a majority of the appraisal, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
In HISD, each teacher would get an overall rating - highly effective, effective, needs improvement or ineffective - under the proposal. The rating would be based on their scores in instructional practice, professional expectations and student performance.
Principals or other administrators would have to observe every teacher at least twice a year for 30 minutes and conduct four 10-minute walk-throughs of their class. Teachers would have conferences with their appraiser at least three times to set goals and strategies.
The current system requires one 45-minute observation and allows principals to exempt well-performing, experienced teachers.
Fallon said the repeated observations would be a poor use of principals' time.
Angel Wilson, a teacher at Codwell Elementary on the appraisal committee, said she was leery about changes at first but now particularly likes the multiple conferences with the appraiser.
By ERICKA MELLON | HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Feb. 11, 2011
Teachers in the Houston school district would be held much more accountable for their students' learning under a highly anticipated proposal to change the way they are evaluated.
Under the draft plan, released for public comment this month, roughly half a teacher's rating would be based on student test scores and other evidence of academic progress. The current system relies almost solely on principals' observations of teachers at work.
The proposed changes, if approved by the school board, would put the Houston Independent School District among a small but growing number of districts nationwide emphasizing test scores when grading educators.
The issue draws strong reactions from teachers because those with poor evaluations can be fired.
"This is an enormous change," said Chuck Robinson, who represents HISD teachers as the executive director of the Congress of Houston Teachers. "It's much too heavy on the student achievement end. Fifty percent — that is just huge."
Under the plan, the other half of a teacher's rating would come from criteria such as their ability to engage students, planning skills, collaboration with parents, attendance and participation in professional development.
Administrators would have to visit teachers' classrooms more often - at least six times a year instead of once - and give them regular written feedback.
"Teachers do a lot of things, but their most important job is to make sure their kids learn," said Ellen Hur of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit hired by HISD to help develop a new appraisal process. "Student achievement has to be a significant part of their evaluation."
Leaders of HISD's two largest teacher groups said their biggest problem with the proposal is the use of a specific model of analyzing test scores, the same one the district uses to determine which teachers get performance bonuses.
The so-called value-added model relies on complex statistics to determine whether students fared better or worse than expected on standardized tests.
Only teachers of core subjects - such as math and science - in grades three through eight have value-added scores. That represents about one-third of the district's 12,200 teachers.
Others could be rated on their students' progress on district exams or end-of-course tests. For some subjects, such as art, student projects could count. Every teacher would be rated on two different measures of student performance.
Gayle Fallon, who runs the Houston Federation of Teachers, called the use of value-added data a "deal breaker." But she said Texas law doesn't allow her to challenge the content of the appraisal.
Districts are allowed to deviate from the state's model, called the Professional Development and Appraisal System, if their system is developed by committees made up of educators and parents.
Fallon questioned whether HISD officials have embraced the committees' input.
"It didn't go as smoothly as they say it went, but we'll see," she said. "There's still a lot of room for discussion."
More than 1,000 teachers and other committee members have had a voice in the process since September, said Julie Baker, HISD's chief officer of major projects. More people will have a chance during the comment period this month.
The use of test scores in rating teachers has been a key part of President Barack Obama's education reform agenda. Today, 10 states require student learning to count for a majority of the appraisal, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality.
In HISD, each teacher would get an overall rating - highly effective, effective, needs improvement or ineffective - under the proposal. The rating would be based on their scores in instructional practice, professional expectations and student performance.
Principals or other administrators would have to observe every teacher at least twice a year for 30 minutes and conduct four 10-minute walk-throughs of their class. Teachers would have conferences with their appraiser at least three times to set goals and strategies.
The current system requires one 45-minute observation and allows principals to exempt well-performing, experienced teachers.
Fallon said the repeated observations would be a poor use of principals' time.
Angel Wilson, a teacher at Codwell Elementary on the appraisal committee, said she was leery about changes at first but now particularly likes the multiple conferences with the appraiser.
Rhee's firing of 75 D.C. teachers in 2008 was improper, arbitrator says
By Bill Turque | Washington Post Staff Writer
February 8, 2011; 8:15 PM
An independent arbitrator says that the District must reinstate 75 new teachers fired by then-D.C. schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee during their probationary period in 2008, ruling that the dismissals were improper because they were not told the reasons why.
The ruling, issued Monday by Charles Feigenbaum, was narrowly cast. It said the school system had the right to fire teachers during their two-year probationary period if they had received negative recommendations from school principals. Feigenbaum said the "glaring and fatal flaw" in Rhee's action was that the teachers were not given reasons for their terminations.
"They had no opportunity to provide their side of the story," Feigenbaum wrote.
D.C. schools spokesman Frederick Lewis said that the District was "reviewing its options to appeal or challenge the arbitrator's decision and has not come to any decision about further litigation."
Rhee could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The 75 teachers were part of the approximately 1,000 educators fired during Rhee's 3 1/2-year tenure, which ended with her resignation in October. Of the total, 266 were laid off in October 2009 for budgetary reasons, about 200 were dismissed because of poor performance, and the rest were on probation or did not have licensing required by the No Child Left Behind law.
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Feigenbaum ordered the District to make a 60-day good-faith effort to find the fired teachers and offer them reinstatement in an appropriate job. He also ordered that they be made financially whole. Union officials estimate the back-pay award could amount to $7.5 million - a considerable sum for the cash-strapped District.
Lewis said the cash awards would be offset by any earnings since the day of termination.
Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, said the arbitrator's decision is affirmation that Rhee's aggressive approach to firing teachers was counterproductive and illegal.
"This argument that Michelle Rhee-style terminations en masse improve the quality of education is unfounded and expensive for the government when it acts in this fashion," Saunders said.
Probationary employees generally are considered to have fewer workplace protections than those with permanent status. But the collective bargaining agreement that was in place at the time of the firings made no distinction between the dismissal of probationary and permanent teachers.
Feigenbaum said that the city and the union had "a long unbroken practice" of following the same procedures for dismissing permanent and probationary educators, which required a negative recommendation from a school principal.
Before Rhee's arrival, it was rare for teachers from either group to be fired for performance issues.
Under the labor contract ratified in June, all teachers are subject to the IMPACT evaluation system, which stipulates that teachers receiving a "minimally effective" rating for two consecutive years face dismissal.
February 8, 2011; 8:15 PM
An independent arbitrator says that the District must reinstate 75 new teachers fired by then-D.C. schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee during their probationary period in 2008, ruling that the dismissals were improper because they were not told the reasons why.
The ruling, issued Monday by Charles Feigenbaum, was narrowly cast. It said the school system had the right to fire teachers during their two-year probationary period if they had received negative recommendations from school principals. Feigenbaum said the "glaring and fatal flaw" in Rhee's action was that the teachers were not given reasons for their terminations.
"They had no opportunity to provide their side of the story," Feigenbaum wrote.
D.C. schools spokesman Frederick Lewis said that the District was "reviewing its options to appeal or challenge the arbitrator's decision and has not come to any decision about further litigation."
Rhee could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The 75 teachers were part of the approximately 1,000 educators fired during Rhee's 3 1/2-year tenure, which ended with her resignation in October. Of the total, 266 were laid off in October 2009 for budgetary reasons, about 200 were dismissed because of poor performance, and the rest were on probation or did not have licensing required by the No Child Left Behind law.
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Feigenbaum ordered the District to make a 60-day good-faith effort to find the fired teachers and offer them reinstatement in an appropriate job. He also ordered that they be made financially whole. Union officials estimate the back-pay award could amount to $7.5 million - a considerable sum for the cash-strapped District.
Lewis said the cash awards would be offset by any earnings since the day of termination.
Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, said the arbitrator's decision is affirmation that Rhee's aggressive approach to firing teachers was counterproductive and illegal.
"This argument that Michelle Rhee-style terminations en masse improve the quality of education is unfounded and expensive for the government when it acts in this fashion," Saunders said.
Probationary employees generally are considered to have fewer workplace protections than those with permanent status. But the collective bargaining agreement that was in place at the time of the firings made no distinction between the dismissal of probationary and permanent teachers.
Feigenbaum said that the city and the union had "a long unbroken practice" of following the same procedures for dismissing permanent and probationary educators, which required a negative recommendation from a school principal.
Before Rhee's arrival, it was rare for teachers from either group to be fired for performance issues.
Under the labor contract ratified in June, all teachers are subject to the IMPACT evaluation system, which stipulates that teachers receiving a "minimally effective" rating for two consecutive years face dismissal.
House GOP Looks to Slash Education Spending
By Alyson Klein | Ed Week
February 12, 2011
House Republican leaders put out a bill last night that would slice and dice education funding far below current levels and far below what President Barack Obama wanted in his never-enacted fiscal year 2011 budget request. (List of cuts is here.)
The measure, which would continue federal funding for rest of the fiscal year, takes aim at some programs that were previously considered untouchable, including special education spending and Pell Grants to help low-and-moderate income students pay for college. Overall it would cut $4.9 billion from the U.S. Department of Education's fiscal year 2010 budget of $63.7 billion.
"This absolutely would be the largest cuts ever in history for education programs," said Joel Packer, a principal with the Raben Group in Washington, who works with the Committee for Education Funding, a coalition that advocates for increasing education spending.
The bill would cover fiscal year 2011, which technically started back on Oct. 1. Most of the federal government, including the Education Department, has been funded at fiscal year 2010 levels through a series of stop-gap measures, the latest of which expires on March 4.
It's tough to imagine the administration swallowing these cuts. And it's unlikely they'll get through the Senate, which is still controlled by Democrats.
Read on...
February 12, 2011
House Republican leaders put out a bill last night that would slice and dice education funding far below current levels and far below what President Barack Obama wanted in his never-enacted fiscal year 2011 budget request. (List of cuts is here.)
The measure, which would continue federal funding for rest of the fiscal year, takes aim at some programs that were previously considered untouchable, including special education spending and Pell Grants to help low-and-moderate income students pay for college. Overall it would cut $4.9 billion from the U.S. Department of Education's fiscal year 2010 budget of $63.7 billion.
"This absolutely would be the largest cuts ever in history for education programs," said Joel Packer, a principal with the Raben Group in Washington, who works with the Committee for Education Funding, a coalition that advocates for increasing education spending.
The bill would cover fiscal year 2011, which technically started back on Oct. 1. Most of the federal government, including the Education Department, has been funded at fiscal year 2010 levels through a series of stop-gap measures, the latest of which expires on March 4.
It's tough to imagine the administration swallowing these cuts. And it's unlikely they'll get through the Senate, which is still controlled by Democrats.
Read on...
Rick Perry calls federal government a ‘monster’ harming states
By TODD J. GILLMAN / Washington Bureau
February 2011 11:47 AM
Gov. Rick Perry called the Obama approach to health care a "train wreck" in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
WASHINGTON — Texas Gov. Rick Perry told a major conservative gathering Friday that the federal government has grown into an intrusive, overbearing “monster.”
“They call us reactionary or lacking compassion,” Perry said. “Do you agree with them that the only answer to our challenges is more taxation, more borrowing, more spending, more central control?”
The crowd of several thousand at a Washington hotel shouted no.
“Me neither,” he said.
Perry joined a parade of big-name Republicans and would-be presidents, from Mitt Romney to Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump , all appearing at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
He insisted ahead of his speech that he’s not interested in higher office, and he made no hints to the contrary. But he embraced the high-profile chance to push a vision of a vastly shrunken federal government and boast about Texas’ relative prosperity.
“It’s not some problem-free nirvana,” he joked, though it’s “close.”
He offered a vision of a federal government that is vastly more humble and honors the 10th Amendment — the one restricting its role. He thundered at the Environmental Protection Agency, calling it “hellbent” on replacing a highly effective Texas air pollution permit system with regulations that would kill jobs and industry.
“We ought to be getting praise from our federal government,” he said. “But we’re being threatened by a fine and a lawsuit.”
Earlier Friday, in a breakfast speech to the Texas State Society, Perry unloaded on Texas Democrats for impeding the state’s access to $830 million in federal education funds.
Last summer, Texas Democrats in the House inserted an amendment in an education law that requires Perry to promise a certain level of state education outlays in order to qualify; they accused him of hypocritically tapping $3.2 billion in emergency school funds to balance the Texas budget, and said they needed to ensure he couldn’t do that again.
Perry insists that he’s not lawfully able to make such a promise — a point he reiterated in a terse letter to Texas congressional Democrats on Friday night.
Singling out Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, in his breakfast appearance, Perry said that “everything that he’s done on this issue is what the November elections were about — Washington, D.C., trying to micromanage the states. … That’s hurting the kids of the state of Texas.”
The political action conference Perry addressed, a major annual gathering in GOP circles, attracted about 11,000 people this year.
In both speeches, Perry described the Obama approach to health care as a costly “train wreck.” And he complained that instead of meddling in such areas, Washington should pay closer attention to true federal responsibilities it has neglected, such as security along the state’s 1,200-mile border with Mexico.
“We’re stuck in this frustrating paradox where Washington actually neglects the things they’re clearly supposed to be doing, while interfering in other areas in which they are neither welcome nor authorized,” he told the conservative gathering.
The good news, he said, is that in November, voters rejected politicians in both parties who pursued that path.
“Ladies and gentlemen who championed that big government idea of bailouts, those so-called stimulus programs, supported government giveaways — they got a pink slip,” he said. “It was awesome.”
Paul, a Texas congressman, spoke just before Perry. He offered no clues as to whether he’ll run for president again, though legions of Paulistas in the crowd would have been thrilled to hear that.
He did bask in his role as herald of the 2010 tea party surge, and father of freshman Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
“I’m glad to see the revolution is continuing!” Paul proclaimed, playing on his slogan from the 2008 presidential race.
After warming up the crowd with a Libertarian-tinted case to eliminate the Federal Reserve, and curtail U.S. military activity and foreign aid, he offered a caustic judgment on the ideal of bipartisanship. Too often, he said, lawmakers cross party lines to allow government to expand beyond its true mandate.
February 2011 11:47 AM
Gov. Rick Perry called the Obama approach to health care a "train wreck" in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
WASHINGTON — Texas Gov. Rick Perry told a major conservative gathering Friday that the federal government has grown into an intrusive, overbearing “monster.”
“They call us reactionary or lacking compassion,” Perry said. “Do you agree with them that the only answer to our challenges is more taxation, more borrowing, more spending, more central control?”
The crowd of several thousand at a Washington hotel shouted no.
“Me neither,” he said.
Perry joined a parade of big-name Republicans and would-be presidents, from Mitt Romney to Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump , all appearing at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
He insisted ahead of his speech that he’s not interested in higher office, and he made no hints to the contrary. But he embraced the high-profile chance to push a vision of a vastly shrunken federal government and boast about Texas’ relative prosperity.
“It’s not some problem-free nirvana,” he joked, though it’s “close.”
He offered a vision of a federal government that is vastly more humble and honors the 10th Amendment — the one restricting its role. He thundered at the Environmental Protection Agency, calling it “hellbent” on replacing a highly effective Texas air pollution permit system with regulations that would kill jobs and industry.
“We ought to be getting praise from our federal government,” he said. “But we’re being threatened by a fine and a lawsuit.”
Earlier Friday, in a breakfast speech to the Texas State Society, Perry unloaded on Texas Democrats for impeding the state’s access to $830 million in federal education funds.
Last summer, Texas Democrats in the House inserted an amendment in an education law that requires Perry to promise a certain level of state education outlays in order to qualify; they accused him of hypocritically tapping $3.2 billion in emergency school funds to balance the Texas budget, and said they needed to ensure he couldn’t do that again.
Perry insists that he’s not lawfully able to make such a promise — a point he reiterated in a terse letter to Texas congressional Democrats on Friday night.
Singling out Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, in his breakfast appearance, Perry said that “everything that he’s done on this issue is what the November elections were about — Washington, D.C., trying to micromanage the states. … That’s hurting the kids of the state of Texas.”
The political action conference Perry addressed, a major annual gathering in GOP circles, attracted about 11,000 people this year.
In both speeches, Perry described the Obama approach to health care as a costly “train wreck.” And he complained that instead of meddling in such areas, Washington should pay closer attention to true federal responsibilities it has neglected, such as security along the state’s 1,200-mile border with Mexico.
“We’re stuck in this frustrating paradox where Washington actually neglects the things they’re clearly supposed to be doing, while interfering in other areas in which they are neither welcome nor authorized,” he told the conservative gathering.
The good news, he said, is that in November, voters rejected politicians in both parties who pursued that path.
“Ladies and gentlemen who championed that big government idea of bailouts, those so-called stimulus programs, supported government giveaways — they got a pink slip,” he said. “It was awesome.”
Paul, a Texas congressman, spoke just before Perry. He offered no clues as to whether he’ll run for president again, though legions of Paulistas in the crowd would have been thrilled to hear that.
He did bask in his role as herald of the 2010 tea party surge, and father of freshman Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
“I’m glad to see the revolution is continuing!” Paul proclaimed, playing on his slogan from the 2008 presidential race.
After warming up the crowd with a Libertarian-tinted case to eliminate the Federal Reserve, and curtail U.S. military activity and foreign aid, he offered a caustic judgment on the ideal of bipartisanship. Too often, he said, lawmakers cross party lines to allow government to expand beyond its true mandate.
Gov calls out Democrats
More on the Perry/Doggett clash.
-Patricia
By Gary Martin
Saturday, February 12, 2011
WASHINGTON — Gov. Rick Perry asked Republican leaders in Congress on Friday to repeal a provision by Texas Democrats that dictates how the state can use federal education funds and criticized the Obama administration over border security.
“From this administration there is a very clear, almost hands-off approach to the Texas-Mexico border,” Perry said. A Homeland Security Department spokesman dismissed the accusation.
And Perry, a Republican, charged that Democrats in Congress, led by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, have harmed state public education with a provision dictating state use of federal funds that has tied up $830 million for Texas schools.
“Once Texans really figure out what Lloyd Doggett did — for a rank political stunt — he will be rejected by the voters of Texas,” Perry said.
Doggett accused Perry of making personal attacks to avoid taking responsibility for diverting federal funds to shore up state deficits instead of using the money on Texas schoolchildren.
“This is not about differences between two political figures, but about the future for thousands of Texas schoolchildren,” Doggett said. “It seems to me that he is a little desperate.”
The governor made his comments about education and border security to Texas reporters after a breakfast speech to the Texas State Society at the Capitol Hill Club.
After the breakfast speech, Perry met with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, and Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville.
Burgess has filed a bill co-sponsored by Texas' 22 Republican congressmen that would repeal the Doggett amendment and ease requirements on how Texas spends its federal education funds.
A similar bill was filed in the Senate by the senators from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Republicans.
Texas congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say a repeal of the amendment would indicate a desire by Perry and Republicans to “simply replace state educational dollars as was done in 2009.”
Doggett claims the state used $3.25 billion in emergency federal education funds in 2009 to replace state funding, denying state support for “improvements in the quality of education.”
“I consider it one of the greatest abuses of stimulus funds across the country,” Doggett said of the state's use of federal education money to plug state budget gaps.
Perry claimed the amendment was merely “Washington trying to micromanage the state. That is what this issue is about.”
The governor also said the federal government has failed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and has ignored his pleas for 1,000 National Guardsmen in Texas until 3,000 Border Patrol agents can be hired and trained.
A Homeland Security spokesman said the “Obama administration continues to deploy unprecedented resources to the Southwest border, including Texas.”
Last year, in Laredo, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Perry could follow the lead of Arizona and New Mexico governors and pay for National Guardsmen to provide immediate security.
The governor said he wants the federal government to pay for the deployment.
Perry was in Washington to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference. He has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate because of his conservative credentials. He denied again Friday that he is interested in the job.
-Patricia
By Gary Martin
Saturday, February 12, 2011
WASHINGTON — Gov. Rick Perry asked Republican leaders in Congress on Friday to repeal a provision by Texas Democrats that dictates how the state can use federal education funds and criticized the Obama administration over border security.
“From this administration there is a very clear, almost hands-off approach to the Texas-Mexico border,” Perry said. A Homeland Security Department spokesman dismissed the accusation.
And Perry, a Republican, charged that Democrats in Congress, led by Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, have harmed state public education with a provision dictating state use of federal funds that has tied up $830 million for Texas schools.
“Once Texans really figure out what Lloyd Doggett did — for a rank political stunt — he will be rejected by the voters of Texas,” Perry said.
Doggett accused Perry of making personal attacks to avoid taking responsibility for diverting federal funds to shore up state deficits instead of using the money on Texas schoolchildren.
“This is not about differences between two political figures, but about the future for thousands of Texas schoolchildren,” Doggett said. “It seems to me that he is a little desperate.”
The governor made his comments about education and border security to Texas reporters after a breakfast speech to the Texas State Society at the Capitol Hill Club.
After the breakfast speech, Perry met with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, and Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville.
Burgess has filed a bill co-sponsored by Texas' 22 Republican congressmen that would repeal the Doggett amendment and ease requirements on how Texas spends its federal education funds.
A similar bill was filed in the Senate by the senators from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Republicans.
Texas congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say a repeal of the amendment would indicate a desire by Perry and Republicans to “simply replace state educational dollars as was done in 2009.”
Doggett claims the state used $3.25 billion in emergency federal education funds in 2009 to replace state funding, denying state support for “improvements in the quality of education.”
“I consider it one of the greatest abuses of stimulus funds across the country,” Doggett said of the state's use of federal education money to plug state budget gaps.
Perry claimed the amendment was merely “Washington trying to micromanage the state. That is what this issue is about.”
The governor also said the federal government has failed to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and has ignored his pleas for 1,000 National Guardsmen in Texas until 3,000 Border Patrol agents can be hired and trained.
A Homeland Security spokesman said the “Obama administration continues to deploy unprecedented resources to the Southwest border, including Texas.”
Last year, in Laredo, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Perry could follow the lead of Arizona and New Mexico governors and pay for National Guardsmen to provide immediate security.
The governor said he wants the federal government to pay for the deployment.
Perry was in Washington to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference. He has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate because of his conservative credentials. He denied again Friday that he is interested in the job.
Perry's call for $10,000 bachelor's degrees stumps educators
Larger message is the need to be creative and shave costs, higher education commissioner says
When Gov. Rick Perry challenged the state's public institutions of higher learning this week to develop bachelor's degree programs costing no more than $10,000, including textbooks, Mike McKinney was stumped.
"My answer is I have no idea how," McKinney, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, told the Senate Finance Committee. "I'm not going to say that it can't be done."
Tuition, fees and books for four years average $31,696 at public universities in Texas, according to the Higher Education Coordinating Board. Sul Ross State University Rio Grande College is the cheapest, at $17,532.
The governor's call for low-cost degrees comes as legislative budget writers and the governor himself have proposed deep cuts in higher education funding — cuts that would put pressure on governing boards to raise tuition, not lower it.
But officials of some university systems — whose governing boards are fully populated by Perry appointees — nevertheless struck an upbeat tone, or at least a neutral one. As McKinney, a former Perry chief of staff, put it: "If it can be figured out, we've got the faculty that can figure it out."
A spokesman for the University of Texas System said, "We look forward to reviewing details of the governor's proposal."
Perry was inspired by comments that Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, made at a conference in California, said Catherine Frazier , a spokeswoman. A video posted on YouTube captured some of Gates' remarks.
"College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based," he said. Web-based instruction and other technology could drive the price down to $2,000 a year, he said.
Perry wrote to university regents last week , urging them to develop $10,000 degree programs and to scale up those programs so at least 10 percent of the sheepskins awarded by their schools are based on this approach. He said programs could include online classes, classes at no-frills campuses, credit for prior learning, credit for Advanced Placement classes in high school and other elements.
"I don't know whether the $10,000 figure is practical reality or not," said Raymund Paredes, the state's higher education commissioner. "I interpret the governor's remarks as a call to be creative and find solutions to the spiraling costs of higher education."
Three community colleges — Midland College, Brazosport College in Lake Jackson and South Texas College in McAllen — offer a bachelor's in applied technology and come closest to Perry's goal, with tuition and fees for four years ranging from $9,168 to $10,440 and books adding anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000, school officials say. Those three schools would see their state funding for bachelor's degrees end under the House version of the proposed 2012-13 state budget, although South Texas College President Shirley Reed said she's "very optimistic" that won't happen.
Could the cost be reduced to meet the governor's goal? "You can do it, but there's no free lunch," Reed said. "One option is to reduce the number of hours in degree programs. But will the students actually have the competencies that the employer is looking for?"
Shifting instruction online wouldn't save money, she said. The school offers 13 associate degree programs online but has found costs to be pretty much the same as the classroom version because faculty members — whose salaries are the largest expense — must still be actively involved, developing courses, responding to students' e-mails, engaging in online discussions and evaluating student work.
Tuition, fees and books aren't the only costs of an education, of course. Room and board, transportation and personal expenses add considerable sums. At UT-Austin, the total cost of a bachelor's degree averages $96,664, assuming a student finishes in four years, according to coordinating board data. That's more than double the $41,168 price tag for tuition, fees and books.
"We're certainly interested in efficiency, but it's extremely unlikely that at a tier one university it's going to be possible to do something like (the governor's proposal) without the equivalent of a large subsidy," said Dean Neikirk , chairman of UT's Faculty Council and a professor of electrical and computer engineering. "You can make the charge to the student as low as you want if you can find dollars elsewhere to substitute."
Peter Hugill , a professor of geography at Texas A&M, said the governor's message struck him as a campaign line of someone running for president — which Perry says he has no interest in doing.
"I don't think it's a very practical idea," said Hugill, who is also president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. "Do you really want a stripped-down, bare-bones degree?"
The Higher Education Coordinating Board is examining Web-based instruction and other innovations for cost savings. Paredes, the higher education commissioner, said there is nothing inherently wrong with, say, a student in Texas taking an online course including a package of lectures by a top scholar of American literature at Yale and a reading list with such titles as "Moby Dick" and "The Scarlet Letter" that are out of copyright and sell for very little. Graduate students at various universities could be hired to grade students' work, he said.
The coordinating board is conducting an inventory of online offerings and could cobble together a comprehensive program, Paredes said. The agency has also been talking to Western Governors University about expanding its presence in Texas.
Western Governors is a private, nonprofit online university founded by the governors of 19 states, including Texas. It charges $5,780 a year for tuition; books are extra. It has 22,500 students in all 50 states.
"Technology is clearly the core of what we are doing," said Robert Mendenhall , president of Western Governors. But cost-cutting can be carried only so far, he said. Web-based programs still need faculty members who interact with students and grade their work, especially writing, a core skill in higher education.
"I don't want to be put in the position of disagreeing with the governor or Bill Gates," Mendenhall said. "They've both done some amazing things. We totally agree and embrace the concept that we simply have to find new ways to provide higher education at lower cost."
Critics of online education worry about quality and intangibles that could be lost without a face-to-face setting.
"A lot of the discussion about online classes takes the view that education is a package of facts," said John Curtis , director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors in Washington. "Education is a process of interaction, of thinking through concepts, debating ideas and having others react to your thoughts."
When Gov. Rick Perry challenged the state's public institutions of higher learning this week to develop bachelor's degree programs costing no more than $10,000, including textbooks, Mike McKinney was stumped.
"My answer is I have no idea how," McKinney, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, told the Senate Finance Committee. "I'm not going to say that it can't be done."
Tuition, fees and books for four years average $31,696 at public universities in Texas, according to the Higher Education Coordinating Board. Sul Ross State University Rio Grande College is the cheapest, at $17,532.
The governor's call for low-cost degrees comes as legislative budget writers and the governor himself have proposed deep cuts in higher education funding — cuts that would put pressure on governing boards to raise tuition, not lower it.
But officials of some university systems — whose governing boards are fully populated by Perry appointees — nevertheless struck an upbeat tone, or at least a neutral one. As McKinney, a former Perry chief of staff, put it: "If it can be figured out, we've got the faculty that can figure it out."
A spokesman for the University of Texas System said, "We look forward to reviewing details of the governor's proposal."
Perry was inspired by comments that Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, made at a conference in California, said Catherine Frazier , a spokeswoman. A video posted on YouTube captured some of Gates' remarks.
"College, except for the parties, needs to be less place-based," he said. Web-based instruction and other technology could drive the price down to $2,000 a year, he said.
Perry wrote to university regents last week , urging them to develop $10,000 degree programs and to scale up those programs so at least 10 percent of the sheepskins awarded by their schools are based on this approach. He said programs could include online classes, classes at no-frills campuses, credit for prior learning, credit for Advanced Placement classes in high school and other elements.
"I don't know whether the $10,000 figure is practical reality or not," said Raymund Paredes, the state's higher education commissioner. "I interpret the governor's remarks as a call to be creative and find solutions to the spiraling costs of higher education."
Three community colleges — Midland College, Brazosport College in Lake Jackson and South Texas College in McAllen — offer a bachelor's in applied technology and come closest to Perry's goal, with tuition and fees for four years ranging from $9,168 to $10,440 and books adding anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000, school officials say. Those three schools would see their state funding for bachelor's degrees end under the House version of the proposed 2012-13 state budget, although South Texas College President Shirley Reed said she's "very optimistic" that won't happen.
Could the cost be reduced to meet the governor's goal? "You can do it, but there's no free lunch," Reed said. "One option is to reduce the number of hours in degree programs. But will the students actually have the competencies that the employer is looking for?"
Shifting instruction online wouldn't save money, she said. The school offers 13 associate degree programs online but has found costs to be pretty much the same as the classroom version because faculty members — whose salaries are the largest expense — must still be actively involved, developing courses, responding to students' e-mails, engaging in online discussions and evaluating student work.
Tuition, fees and books aren't the only costs of an education, of course. Room and board, transportation and personal expenses add considerable sums. At UT-Austin, the total cost of a bachelor's degree averages $96,664, assuming a student finishes in four years, according to coordinating board data. That's more than double the $41,168 price tag for tuition, fees and books.
"We're certainly interested in efficiency, but it's extremely unlikely that at a tier one university it's going to be possible to do something like (the governor's proposal) without the equivalent of a large subsidy," said Dean Neikirk , chairman of UT's Faculty Council and a professor of electrical and computer engineering. "You can make the charge to the student as low as you want if you can find dollars elsewhere to substitute."
Peter Hugill , a professor of geography at Texas A&M, said the governor's message struck him as a campaign line of someone running for president — which Perry says he has no interest in doing.
"I don't think it's a very practical idea," said Hugill, who is also president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. "Do you really want a stripped-down, bare-bones degree?"
The Higher Education Coordinating Board is examining Web-based instruction and other innovations for cost savings. Paredes, the higher education commissioner, said there is nothing inherently wrong with, say, a student in Texas taking an online course including a package of lectures by a top scholar of American literature at Yale and a reading list with such titles as "Moby Dick" and "The Scarlet Letter" that are out of copyright and sell for very little. Graduate students at various universities could be hired to grade students' work, he said.
The coordinating board is conducting an inventory of online offerings and could cobble together a comprehensive program, Paredes said. The agency has also been talking to Western Governors University about expanding its presence in Texas.
Western Governors is a private, nonprofit online university founded by the governors of 19 states, including Texas. It charges $5,780 a year for tuition; books are extra. It has 22,500 students in all 50 states.
"Technology is clearly the core of what we are doing," said Robert Mendenhall , president of Western Governors. But cost-cutting can be carried only so far, he said. Web-based programs still need faculty members who interact with students and grade their work, especially writing, a core skill in higher education.
"I don't want to be put in the position of disagreeing with the governor or Bill Gates," Mendenhall said. "They've both done some amazing things. We totally agree and embrace the concept that we simply have to find new ways to provide higher education at lower cost."
Critics of online education worry about quality and intangibles that could be lost without a face-to-face setting.
"A lot of the discussion about online classes takes the view that education is a package of facts," said John Curtis , director of research and public policy at the American Association of University Professors in Washington. "Education is a process of interaction, of thinking through concepts, debating ideas and having others react to your thoughts."
Longtime LBJ aide Mildred Stegall finally tells her story
These are always interesting narratives to read. Check out Mildred Stegall's handwritten memoir. Powerful stuff.
Patricia
By Denise Gamino | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011
The oldest living White House aide for President Lyndon B. Johnson is finally telling her frontline tales.
Mildred Stegall is 102 and living in a nursing home in Fort Worth. She was a right-hand woman to LBJ and the one who saved his presidency, warts and all, by securing his secret White House telephone recordings in a West Wing vault only she could open. Johnson begged her for years to join his staff. When she finally took the job, his merciless demands and insensitivity made her so angry in the first week that she admits, "I had murder in my heart."
She stifled the urge for bodily harm and buckled in for a roller-coaster ride of 35 years working for Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. Now she is telling her story for the first time through her family, which provided the American-Statesman with a short memoir Stegall wrote by hand when her memory was still sharp. Stegall is occasionally alert, and her family shared the document in hopes that she would not be overlooked by history.
"He was a man of many moods," she writes. "It was as though he was several people rolled into one. At times he could be as hard as nails. Yet, at other times he was as gentle as a lamb."
Stegall's 31-page memoir is a delightful romp, a well-told collection of stories that confirm in new detail the legendary LBJ persona.
She wrote the memoir in 1996 for her family and called it "LBJ as I Knew Him." She writes with authority and wit about the 36th president of the United States, a man she met on Capitol Hill when both were legislative aides to U.S. congressmen from Texas during the Great Depression. She and her husband, Glynn , worked just two doors down from Johnson.
She calls him one of the greatest men she has ever known but balances her insider accounts of his generosity with tales of outlandish assignments that put her in many awkward situations.
"I do not want to leave the impression that LBJ was somewhat of a saint — far from it. There was only one person who ever lived who was perfect and it wasn't you, nor me, nor Lyndon Johnson. He had his hang-ups just like everybody else. He was only human and would get upset when things did not go his way.
"Sometimes he would just yell to show his displeasure. Other times he would take his anger out on one of the most loyal employees when he knew full well that his anger had nothing to do with anything they had done. I cannot recall LBJ ever saying 'I am sorry. I know it was not your fault.' Instead, he would try to make amends in other ways."
For example, she writes, after Johnson berated a secretary for something that wasn't her fault, he sent her and two others to New York on an all-expenses-paid shopping trip.
Mildred and Glynn Stegall's lives were drawn into Johnson's official inner circle in 1942, when Glynn Stegall became a legislative aide for LBJ, who by then had been elected a congressman. Johnson wanted to hire Mildred Stegall, too, but she repeatedly turned him down because she found a higher-paying job at the Reconstruction Finance Corp.
When the reconstruction agency closed in the mid-1950s, she finally went to work for LBJ, who was then in the Senate. He demanded that she start right away and lose two months of leave accumulated in the previous job. Stegall had worked about a week, but Johnson apparently hadn't noticed. So he started asking when she was going to start the new job.
"Needless to say I had murder in my heart," she writes.
It was not the first time Johnson had played mind games with her career. When she was still working at the finance corporation, Johnson called and begged her to help out temporarily in his Senate office because they were swamped with work. She arrived the next morning only to be laughed at by Walter Jenkins, Johnson's top aide. "That is just his way of trying to make us work harder," Jenkins told her. "Go on back to your own job."
Such pressure was typical of Johnson. "People often asked me if LBJ wasn't hard to work for. I would always answer, 'Not if you were willing to work.' It seemed as though he never ran out of steam — work, work, work."
Johnson rewarded his most loyal workers when they least expected it. The night before he left for Hawaii to attend a governors' conference in 1960, he invited Stegall and her husband to come along as guests, not employees. The Stegalls got the call at midnight and went straight to their desks in Johnson's Senate office to clear their workload. They arrived home at 3 a.m. but made the plane's 10 a.m. departure. Once aboard, Johnson showered them with watches, scarves and other gifts.
Stegall cherishes the trip as "one of the highlights of our lives."
Johnson also provided Stegall with "the most embarrassing moment of my entire life."
Johnson suffered a severe heart attack in July 1955. He was hospitalized for more than a month and then, on doctor's orders, prepared to recuperate at his ranch in the Texas Hill Country near Stonewall. On the day LBJ was to fly to Texas, the Stegalls' phone rang before 7 a.m. They were given orders to round up some supplies and deliver them to the airplane within the hour, Stegall recalls.
The "supplies" included a couple of bottles of Cutty Sark, according to Texas author Jan Jarboe Russell's "Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson." LBJ whispered to Stegall, "Make sure Lady Bird doesn't know about the booze," Jarboe reports.
"We felt we had been given an impossible task but we hurriedly got dressed," Stegall writes. "I grabbed a dress that I would never have worn to the office, had no time to put on any makeup and I'm not even sure I took time to comb my hair as every moment was precious."
The Stegalls loaded the plane and then found a place at the edge of the crowd gathered to see Johnson off. LBJ stood on the top step of the plane.
"The last thing I wanted was to see anyone I knew," she writes. "My luck ran out as he spotted me from his vantage point and motioned for me to come to him. Reluctantly, I made my way through the crowd and climbed the steps to where he was standing. He gave me a big hug and kiss."
"I understand LBJ looked at that tape a number of times. I saw it once and that was one time too many. I looked even worse than I thought I did."
At 58, Glynn Stegall died of a heart attack in August 1963 while Johnson was vice president. A few weeks after Glynn Stegall's death, LBJ sent word to Mildred to pack her bags so she could accompany the Johnsons on an official trip to Scandinavia.
"Whenever I could slip away I would go on field trips with Mrs. Johnson out in the countryside. When I would return he would invariably ask me where I had been. When I told him he would ask, 'Are you working for me or for Lady Bird?' At heart I am sure he was glad to see me get away for awhile."
When Johnson became president in late 1963 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he gave Stegall the job of assistant to the president. He put her in a large office down the hall from the Oval Office and had a buzzer installed on her desk so he could summon her quickly.
"And I might add he used it frequently," she writes.
Her office, one of the largest in the White House, had been used by Sherman Adams, the strong-willed chief of staff for President Dwight Eisenhower. "Mildred, I want you to know that is your office as long as I am president or until one of us dies," Johnson told her. But in short order, presidential special assistant Bill Moyers showed up and told Stegall that LBJ wanted him to take over the office and that Stegall was to share a smaller adjoining office with Moyers' secretary. Moyers moved in the next day, but Stegall didn't move out. She remembered the president's promise and buzzed LBJ to let him know what was going on.
"I made it clear that I was willing to do anything he wanted me to do," she writes. But, "Next morning Bill was back in his own office."
She stayed in the office "until we returned to Texas on Air Force One on January 20, 1969."
Stegall says Johnson, though ceaselessly demanding, rarely raised his voice at her. But on one occasion her lack of knowledge about bulls prompted him to let loose.
"One day the President buzzed me and said he and a man in Arkansas had bought a fine registered Bull for $15,000 and he wanted me to figure the depreciation on that bull. I told him 'Mr. President, I do not know how to figure depreciation on a bull.' In fact, I didn't even know you could take depreciation on a bull. That is the only time I ever remember his yelling at me in a loud voice. He said, 'Well find out.'\u2009"
Stegall immediately contacted a friend with the Internal Revenue Service, gave the president his answer and "then everything was calm again."
"The bad part was that in a few months that darn bull lay down and died."
Stegall served as White House liaison to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One day, Johnson buzzed her and requested a meeting with her and Abe Fortas, a close Johnson friend, an adviser and a future Supreme Court justice.
"When we arrived the President was holding one of the unfavorable FBI reports in his hand. The President said the man had gotten wind of what was in the report. LBJ said: 'Only the three of us knew what that report contained. Now which of you talked?'"
Stegall and Fortas looked at each other and denied leaking any information. "We both felt we knew who was guilty"
Stegall's most historically important role in the White House was custodian of the secret telephone recordings that Johnson made. Over the course of Johnson's five-year-plus presidency, more than 640 hours of conversations were recorded in the White House complex and at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, according to the LBJ Library.
Stegall was also expected to transcribe all the secret telephone tapes made in the Cabinet meetings. But, she writes, "I doubt if recording the meetings was very secret as the (White House technical) men would bring the tapes down the hall to my office and made no attempt to conceal them."
"As the war in Vietnam escalated more meetings were held and more tapes so it was absolutely impossible for me to get them transcribed as quickly as the President wanted the transcripts back."
Documents at the LBJ Library show Johnson told Stegall he wanted the telephone recordings to be sealed for at least 50 years after his death. The recordings, on Dictabelts and reel-to-reel tapes, were being stored at the LBJ Library in eight sealed cardboard boxes when LBJ died on Jan. 22, 1973. A week later, Stegall deeded the recordings to the library, but they remained under her guardianship while she worked on an inventory, documents show.
In 1992, Congress required the library to release all recordings made in the wake of JFK's assassination. With the 50-year restriction broken, the library, with Mrs. Johnson's blessing, decided to release all the recordings once they were processed.
The public recordings are a treasure trove of history, revealing Johnson's anguish over the Vietnam War, his unvarnished powers of persuasion and his high-stakes political discussions.
"Mildred never let my father and his legacy down," said Luci Baines Johnson of Austin, the president's younger daughter.
Stegall herself can be heard talking with him on three of the recordings that have been opened. She is the model of professionalism even when LBJ snaps at her. "Where the hell is he?" he asks in one call. When Stegall tries to explain a top aide's whereabouts, the impatient president interrupts: "I didn't ask how long he's been gone or who's with him. I said, 'Where is he?'\u2009" Stegall remains unflustered as she fills him in.
Stegall lived in Austin until about 14 months ago, when she moved to the Fort Worth nursing home to be near three great-nephews who are physicians. Over the years, she told her family many stories about the Johnsons but added, "It seems like a dream now."
Patricia
By Denise Gamino | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011
The oldest living White House aide for President Lyndon B. Johnson is finally telling her frontline tales.
Mildred Stegall is 102 and living in a nursing home in Fort Worth. She was a right-hand woman to LBJ and the one who saved his presidency, warts and all, by securing his secret White House telephone recordings in a West Wing vault only she could open. Johnson begged her for years to join his staff. When she finally took the job, his merciless demands and insensitivity made her so angry in the first week that she admits, "I had murder in my heart."
She stifled the urge for bodily harm and buckled in for a roller-coaster ride of 35 years working for Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. Now she is telling her story for the first time through her family, which provided the American-Statesman with a short memoir Stegall wrote by hand when her memory was still sharp. Stegall is occasionally alert, and her family shared the document in hopes that she would not be overlooked by history.
"He was a man of many moods," she writes. "It was as though he was several people rolled into one. At times he could be as hard as nails. Yet, at other times he was as gentle as a lamb."
Stegall's 31-page memoir is a delightful romp, a well-told collection of stories that confirm in new detail the legendary LBJ persona.
She wrote the memoir in 1996 for her family and called it "LBJ as I Knew Him." She writes with authority and wit about the 36th president of the United States, a man she met on Capitol Hill when both were legislative aides to U.S. congressmen from Texas during the Great Depression. She and her husband, Glynn , worked just two doors down from Johnson.
She calls him one of the greatest men she has ever known but balances her insider accounts of his generosity with tales of outlandish assignments that put her in many awkward situations.
"I do not want to leave the impression that LBJ was somewhat of a saint — far from it. There was only one person who ever lived who was perfect and it wasn't you, nor me, nor Lyndon Johnson. He had his hang-ups just like everybody else. He was only human and would get upset when things did not go his way.
"Sometimes he would just yell to show his displeasure. Other times he would take his anger out on one of the most loyal employees when he knew full well that his anger had nothing to do with anything they had done. I cannot recall LBJ ever saying 'I am sorry. I know it was not your fault.' Instead, he would try to make amends in other ways."
For example, she writes, after Johnson berated a secretary for something that wasn't her fault, he sent her and two others to New York on an all-expenses-paid shopping trip.
Mildred and Glynn Stegall's lives were drawn into Johnson's official inner circle in 1942, when Glynn Stegall became a legislative aide for LBJ, who by then had been elected a congressman. Johnson wanted to hire Mildred Stegall, too, but she repeatedly turned him down because she found a higher-paying job at the Reconstruction Finance Corp.
When the reconstruction agency closed in the mid-1950s, she finally went to work for LBJ, who was then in the Senate. He demanded that she start right away and lose two months of leave accumulated in the previous job. Stegall had worked about a week, but Johnson apparently hadn't noticed. So he started asking when she was going to start the new job.
"Needless to say I had murder in my heart," she writes.
It was not the first time Johnson had played mind games with her career. When she was still working at the finance corporation, Johnson called and begged her to help out temporarily in his Senate office because they were swamped with work. She arrived the next morning only to be laughed at by Walter Jenkins, Johnson's top aide. "That is just his way of trying to make us work harder," Jenkins told her. "Go on back to your own job."
Such pressure was typical of Johnson. "People often asked me if LBJ wasn't hard to work for. I would always answer, 'Not if you were willing to work.' It seemed as though he never ran out of steam — work, work, work."
Johnson rewarded his most loyal workers when they least expected it. The night before he left for Hawaii to attend a governors' conference in 1960, he invited Stegall and her husband to come along as guests, not employees. The Stegalls got the call at midnight and went straight to their desks in Johnson's Senate office to clear their workload. They arrived home at 3 a.m. but made the plane's 10 a.m. departure. Once aboard, Johnson showered them with watches, scarves and other gifts.
Stegall cherishes the trip as "one of the highlights of our lives."
Johnson also provided Stegall with "the most embarrassing moment of my entire life."
Johnson suffered a severe heart attack in July 1955. He was hospitalized for more than a month and then, on doctor's orders, prepared to recuperate at his ranch in the Texas Hill Country near Stonewall. On the day LBJ was to fly to Texas, the Stegalls' phone rang before 7 a.m. They were given orders to round up some supplies and deliver them to the airplane within the hour, Stegall recalls.
The "supplies" included a couple of bottles of Cutty Sark, according to Texas author Jan Jarboe Russell's "Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson." LBJ whispered to Stegall, "Make sure Lady Bird doesn't know about the booze," Jarboe reports.
"We felt we had been given an impossible task but we hurriedly got dressed," Stegall writes. "I grabbed a dress that I would never have worn to the office, had no time to put on any makeup and I'm not even sure I took time to comb my hair as every moment was precious."
The Stegalls loaded the plane and then found a place at the edge of the crowd gathered to see Johnson off. LBJ stood on the top step of the plane.
"The last thing I wanted was to see anyone I knew," she writes. "My luck ran out as he spotted me from his vantage point and motioned for me to come to him. Reluctantly, I made my way through the crowd and climbed the steps to where he was standing. He gave me a big hug and kiss."
"I understand LBJ looked at that tape a number of times. I saw it once and that was one time too many. I looked even worse than I thought I did."
At 58, Glynn Stegall died of a heart attack in August 1963 while Johnson was vice president. A few weeks after Glynn Stegall's death, LBJ sent word to Mildred to pack her bags so she could accompany the Johnsons on an official trip to Scandinavia.
"Whenever I could slip away I would go on field trips with Mrs. Johnson out in the countryside. When I would return he would invariably ask me where I had been. When I told him he would ask, 'Are you working for me or for Lady Bird?' At heart I am sure he was glad to see me get away for awhile."
When Johnson became president in late 1963 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he gave Stegall the job of assistant to the president. He put her in a large office down the hall from the Oval Office and had a buzzer installed on her desk so he could summon her quickly.
"And I might add he used it frequently," she writes.
Her office, one of the largest in the White House, had been used by Sherman Adams, the strong-willed chief of staff for President Dwight Eisenhower. "Mildred, I want you to know that is your office as long as I am president or until one of us dies," Johnson told her. But in short order, presidential special assistant Bill Moyers showed up and told Stegall that LBJ wanted him to take over the office and that Stegall was to share a smaller adjoining office with Moyers' secretary. Moyers moved in the next day, but Stegall didn't move out. She remembered the president's promise and buzzed LBJ to let him know what was going on.
"I made it clear that I was willing to do anything he wanted me to do," she writes. But, "Next morning Bill was back in his own office."
She stayed in the office "until we returned to Texas on Air Force One on January 20, 1969."
Stegall says Johnson, though ceaselessly demanding, rarely raised his voice at her. But on one occasion her lack of knowledge about bulls prompted him to let loose.
"One day the President buzzed me and said he and a man in Arkansas had bought a fine registered Bull for $15,000 and he wanted me to figure the depreciation on that bull. I told him 'Mr. President, I do not know how to figure depreciation on a bull.' In fact, I didn't even know you could take depreciation on a bull. That is the only time I ever remember his yelling at me in a loud voice. He said, 'Well find out.'\u2009"
Stegall immediately contacted a friend with the Internal Revenue Service, gave the president his answer and "then everything was calm again."
"The bad part was that in a few months that darn bull lay down and died."
Stegall served as White House liaison to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One day, Johnson buzzed her and requested a meeting with her and Abe Fortas, a close Johnson friend, an adviser and a future Supreme Court justice.
"When we arrived the President was holding one of the unfavorable FBI reports in his hand. The President said the man had gotten wind of what was in the report. LBJ said: 'Only the three of us knew what that report contained. Now which of you talked?'"
Stegall and Fortas looked at each other and denied leaking any information. "We both felt we knew who was guilty"
Stegall's most historically important role in the White House was custodian of the secret telephone recordings that Johnson made. Over the course of Johnson's five-year-plus presidency, more than 640 hours of conversations were recorded in the White House complex and at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, according to the LBJ Library.
Stegall was also expected to transcribe all the secret telephone tapes made in the Cabinet meetings. But, she writes, "I doubt if recording the meetings was very secret as the (White House technical) men would bring the tapes down the hall to my office and made no attempt to conceal them."
"As the war in Vietnam escalated more meetings were held and more tapes so it was absolutely impossible for me to get them transcribed as quickly as the President wanted the transcripts back."
Documents at the LBJ Library show Johnson told Stegall he wanted the telephone recordings to be sealed for at least 50 years after his death. The recordings, on Dictabelts and reel-to-reel tapes, were being stored at the LBJ Library in eight sealed cardboard boxes when LBJ died on Jan. 22, 1973. A week later, Stegall deeded the recordings to the library, but they remained under her guardianship while she worked on an inventory, documents show.
In 1992, Congress required the library to release all recordings made in the wake of JFK's assassination. With the 50-year restriction broken, the library, with Mrs. Johnson's blessing, decided to release all the recordings once they were processed.
The public recordings are a treasure trove of history, revealing Johnson's anguish over the Vietnam War, his unvarnished powers of persuasion and his high-stakes political discussions.
"Mildred never let my father and his legacy down," said Luci Baines Johnson of Austin, the president's younger daughter.
Stegall herself can be heard talking with him on three of the recordings that have been opened. She is the model of professionalism even when LBJ snaps at her. "Where the hell is he?" he asks in one call. When Stegall tries to explain a top aide's whereabouts, the impatient president interrupts: "I didn't ask how long he's been gone or who's with him. I said, 'Where is he?'\u2009" Stegall remains unflustered as she fills him in.
Stegall lived in Austin until about 14 months ago, when she moved to the Fort Worth nursing home to be near three great-nephews who are physicians. Over the years, she told her family many stories about the Johnsons but added, "It seems like a dream now."
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Back-and-forth goes on over stuck Texas education funds
Dems urge Perry's cooperation; he tells them to repeal Doggett amendment.
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Friday, Feb. 11, 2011
Gov. Rick Perry is asking Congress to repeal a federal provision that has stirred up a political hornet's nest and tied up about $830 million intended to help struggling Texas schools.
In a letter to Texas Democrats on Friday, Perry reiterated his position that state law forbids him from making the assurances about spending that the federal law requires.
Perry, who was in Washington to speak to several groups Friday, urged the delegation to repeal the amendment, which he said "unfairly targets Texas schoolchildren, teachers and taxpayers."
State Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, added the amendment to last year's $10 billion education jobs bill that required Texas to certify that the state's public education spending would hold steady as a proportion of the state budget for three years. Other states had to make that assurance for one year.
The U.S. Department of Education kicked back Texas' application for the money and asked Perry to resubmit it.
He refused, saying that it would violate the state constitution because a governor cannot appropriate money nor obligate a future Legislature to a certain level of spending.
Texas officials then sued the federal government seeking to overturn the federal decision.
Perry cited Doggett and the amendment in his State of the State speech this week, saying the current tight budget was "made worse by a certain Texas congressman who singled out our state for punishment in pursuit of his own agenda."
Doggett and the other eight Democratic members of the Texas congressional delegation have since responded twice; in a letter to Perry on Thursday, they urged Perry to cooperate in getting the money released, saying, "there does not appear to be any policy reason for your failing to complete a proper application for federal funding."
The letter concluded: "Please take the opportunity of your visit to Washington to file the application or to work with us to constructively help our schools to avoid closures and layoffs."
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Friday, Feb. 11, 2011
Gov. Rick Perry is asking Congress to repeal a federal provision that has stirred up a political hornet's nest and tied up about $830 million intended to help struggling Texas schools.
In a letter to Texas Democrats on Friday, Perry reiterated his position that state law forbids him from making the assurances about spending that the federal law requires.
Perry, who was in Washington to speak to several groups Friday, urged the delegation to repeal the amendment, which he said "unfairly targets Texas schoolchildren, teachers and taxpayers."
State Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, added the amendment to last year's $10 billion education jobs bill that required Texas to certify that the state's public education spending would hold steady as a proportion of the state budget for three years. Other states had to make that assurance for one year.
The U.S. Department of Education kicked back Texas' application for the money and asked Perry to resubmit it.
He refused, saying that it would violate the state constitution because a governor cannot appropriate money nor obligate a future Legislature to a certain level of spending.
Texas officials then sued the federal government seeking to overturn the federal decision.
Perry cited Doggett and the amendment in his State of the State speech this week, saying the current tight budget was "made worse by a certain Texas congressman who singled out our state for punishment in pursuit of his own agenda."
Doggett and the other eight Democratic members of the Texas congressional delegation have since responded twice; in a letter to Perry on Thursday, they urged Perry to cooperate in getting the money released, saying, "there does not appear to be any policy reason for your failing to complete a proper application for federal funding."
The letter concluded: "Please take the opportunity of your visit to Washington to file the application or to work with us to constructively help our schools to avoid closures and layoffs."
Bill Would Prevent Immigration Inquiry by Officer
by Julian Aguilar | Texas Tribune
February 11, 2011
Freshman state Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, filed SB 600 on Friday, which would prevent law enforcement from asking the immigration status or nationality of a witness to or victim of a crime “except as necessary to investigate the offense.”
Rodríguez is one one of several outspoken Democrats who believe Gov. Rick Perry’s call to abolish “sanctuary city” policies in Texas would discourage potential witnesses from cooperating with law enforcement.
“Cooperation by witnesses and victims with law enforcement is essential for El Paso and communities across the state to remain safe,” a Rodríguez aide said in a statement. “If they fear they may be jailed, however, witnesses and victims will be less likely to work with law enforcement.”
During a news conference in the district last month, Rodríguez said police officers would focus more on a person's immigration status than fighting crime if they were required to enforce federal immigration laws. It’s especially not needed in his district, he added, citing the border city’s recent ranking as one of the safest of its size.
In response to the senator’s claim that Perry’s request would hinder law enforcement, aides to the governor said his intent has been misunderstood. The governor opposes policies that prevent law enforcement from asking the immigration status of a person detained by an officer, aides say. But Perry would also oppose legislation that requires peace officers to do it, as the proposed legislation in Arizona, SB 1070, would do. The issue is about giving law enforcement discretion, the governor’s aides have said. Despite the governor's clarification, several Republican lawmakers have filed bills that would, in fact, require a Texas peace officer to inquire about a person's immigration status if detained. Ending "sanctuary cities" is one of Perry's emergency items.
February 11, 2011
Freshman state Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, filed SB 600 on Friday, which would prevent law enforcement from asking the immigration status or nationality of a witness to or victim of a crime “except as necessary to investigate the offense.”
Rodríguez is one one of several outspoken Democrats who believe Gov. Rick Perry’s call to abolish “sanctuary city” policies in Texas would discourage potential witnesses from cooperating with law enforcement.
“Cooperation by witnesses and victims with law enforcement is essential for El Paso and communities across the state to remain safe,” a Rodríguez aide said in a statement. “If they fear they may be jailed, however, witnesses and victims will be less likely to work with law enforcement.”
During a news conference in the district last month, Rodríguez said police officers would focus more on a person's immigration status than fighting crime if they were required to enforce federal immigration laws. It’s especially not needed in his district, he added, citing the border city’s recent ranking as one of the safest of its size.
In response to the senator’s claim that Perry’s request would hinder law enforcement, aides to the governor said his intent has been misunderstood. The governor opposes policies that prevent law enforcement from asking the immigration status of a person detained by an officer, aides say. But Perry would also oppose legislation that requires peace officers to do it, as the proposed legislation in Arizona, SB 1070, would do. The issue is about giving law enforcement discretion, the governor’s aides have said. Despite the governor's clarification, several Republican lawmakers have filed bills that would, in fact, require a Texas peace officer to inquire about a person's immigration status if detained. Ending "sanctuary cities" is one of Perry's emergency items.
Texas Redistricting Lawsuit: Count Citizens Only
by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
February 11, 2011
Redistricting doesn't start until next week, but the first lawsuit has already been filed.
Attorney Michael Hull of Austin, representing three North Texas voters, sued the state and a bunch of others, alleging that counting undocumented immigrants in political districts has an unfair and illegal effect on voters in districts with smaller numbers of non-citizens.
The logic goes this way: If two districts have the same populations and one has more non-citizens than the other, it takes fewer voters in that district to swing an election. Fewer citizens means fewer voters means a smaller number makes a majority. Each vote is, compared to the district with more citizens, worth more.
That's interesting, but it's probably not the main point of the lawsuit. This appears to be (insert an asterisk for uncertainty here) the first lawsuit filed on redistricting, and if the courts don't burp it back up, it means the redistricting cases in Texas could go through a bunch of judges in and around Sherman. Hull asked for a three-judge panel — that's normal in redistricting. This is also pro forma: The suit pulls in redistricting for Congress, the Legislature and the State Board of Education. A copy of the lawsuit is attached.
Lawmakers haven't seriously started drawing lines. The Census Bureau won't drop the required population numbers on which those lines will be based until next week. But if that suit sticks, it'll could be the platform for the legal fights sure to follow the Legislature's map-making efforts.
February 11, 2011
Redistricting doesn't start until next week, but the first lawsuit has already been filed.
Attorney Michael Hull of Austin, representing three North Texas voters, sued the state and a bunch of others, alleging that counting undocumented immigrants in political districts has an unfair and illegal effect on voters in districts with smaller numbers of non-citizens.
The logic goes this way: If two districts have the same populations and one has more non-citizens than the other, it takes fewer voters in that district to swing an election. Fewer citizens means fewer voters means a smaller number makes a majority. Each vote is, compared to the district with more citizens, worth more.
That's interesting, but it's probably not the main point of the lawsuit. This appears to be (insert an asterisk for uncertainty here) the first lawsuit filed on redistricting, and if the courts don't burp it back up, it means the redistricting cases in Texas could go through a bunch of judges in and around Sherman. Hull asked for a three-judge panel — that's normal in redistricting. This is also pro forma: The suit pulls in redistricting for Congress, the Legislature and the State Board of Education. A copy of the lawsuit is attached.
Lawmakers haven't seriously started drawing lines. The Census Bureau won't drop the required population numbers on which those lines will be based until next week. But if that suit sticks, it'll could be the platform for the legal fights sure to follow the Legislature's map-making efforts.
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