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Why do we think more charters would help?

Feb 28th, 2013
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

Patricia Kilday Hart discusses the political battle over charter schools, but in doing so reminds me that there’s a fundamental question that seems to be going largely unasked.

Now, a sweeping bill filed by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, could lead to an explosion in Texas charter operations. Patrick, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, would require school districts to lease their under-used facilities to charter schools.

The first draft of his bill would have required the lease for $1 a year; he amended it to require schools be leased or sold at fair market value.

The proposal creates a new state agency with ability to approve an unlimited number of new charter schools, now capped by state law at 215. It also would allow traditional school districts to convert to charter operations. For the first time, charter schools – public schools freed from state regulations regarding such issues as teacher contracts and the school calendar – would be eligible for state funding for leasing or purchasing their own campuses.

Requiring school districts to lease or sell properties to charters, however, would be financially ruinous to many, local school officials say. For instance, when the Houston Independent School District asked voters to approve a record $1.9 billion bond package in November, its long-term school construction scheme hinged on the sale of some $100 million in real estate – under-populated campuses the cash value of which would help pay for modernized schools in high-demand neighborhoods.

To supporters of traditional public schools, Patrick’s bill rubs salt in the wound left by the $5.4 billion in cuts made by the Legislature last session. They also are livid that lawmakers would consider funneling precious education dollars to charter operations just as a state judge found that Texas has failed to meet its constitutional requirement to adequately fund its public schools.

[…]

Patrick’s ground-shaking proposal comes as the charter movement in Texas may have reached a tipping point. In the last two years, says David Dunn, executive director of the Texas Charter School Association, the waiting list for students seeking admission to charter schools has skyrocketed from 50,000 to some 100,000 children.

Meanwhile, politically knowledgeable groups are joining hands with philanthropic foundations committed to education reform. Houston’s Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Greater Houston Community Foundation are backing a new pro-charter group: Texans Deserve Great Schools.

They have been joined by key leaders in the state’s premier political juggernaut, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, who formed Texans for Education Reform to work on behalf of the same goals. The group is led by former Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Dallas, Patrick’s predecessor as education chair until her retirement last year. Influential lobbyist Mike Toomey, a former top assistant to Gov. Rick Perry who fought for tort reform, has signed on as a lobbyist.

[…]

At a committee hearing Thursday, Patrick set an emotional tone for the debate. Critics of his proposal, he said, would be testifying, not just against his bill, but “against the 100,000 students who are on the wait list” for charter schools.

Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, quickly countered: “A lot of schools were mothballed because of the cuts we made to public education.” Lawmakers should restore that funding before creating a new call on taxpayer money, he argued.

I’ve already noted Patrick’s concern of convenience for Teh Childrenz, and needless to say anytime an army of lobbyists and other rent-seekers like those noted above get involved in the process one is well advised to keep both hands on one’s wallet. Be that as it may, I’m still wondering why there isn’t more discussion of the question I’ve raised in the title of this post. Why do we think that having more charter schools would necessarily lead to better educational outcomes in Texas? To be sure, having more charters would mean more choices, and that would likely be beneficial for the students who have the wherewithal to take advantage of those choices. But that assumes that charters are overall at least as good as the traditional public schools. Is that a fair assumption? Let’s take a look at the 2011 accountability rankings and see for ourselves:

Campus Ratings by Rating Category
(excluding Charter Campuses)

ACCOUNTABILITY RATING

2011

Count

Percent

Exemplary

1,176

14.6%

Recognized

2,739

34.1%

Academically Acceptable

3,052

37.9%

    Standard Procedures

2,797

34.8%

    AEA Procedures

255

3.2%

Academically Unacceptable

476

5.9%

    Standard Procedures

458

5.7%

    AEA Procedures

18

0.2%

Not Rated: Other

601

7.5%

Total

8,044

100%

Charter Campus Ratings by Rating Category

ACCOUNTABILITY RATING

2011

Count

Percent

Exemplary

56

11.6%

Recognized

94

19.5%

Academically Acceptable

235

48.8%

    Standard Procedures

97

20.1%

    AEA Procedures

138

28.6%

Academically Unacceptable

54

11.2%

    Standard Procedures

38

7.9%

    AEA Procedures

16

3.3%

Not Rated: Other

43

8.9%

Total

482

100%

In other words, 48.7% of all public school campuses were Exemplary or Recognized in 2011, compared to 31.1% of all charter campuses. On the other side, 5.9% of all pubic school campuses were Academically Unacceptable, compared to 11.2% of all charter campuses. If you knew nothing of the politics of this situation, would you conclude after looking at these tables that more charters would lead to better outcomes? I wouldn’t. Why isn’t this a bigger part of the discussion? Hell, why isn’t it a part of the discussion at all?

I’ve said repeatedly that I’m not opposed to giving charter schools some more latitude. We’d certainly like to encourage the KIPPs and YESes and Harmonys to grow and do good, and we’d like to not needlessly block the creation of the next KIPP or YES or Harmony if someone has a plan to bring it about. But I do not accept the simple premise that “more charters” is better, because the numbers say otherwise. What is the mechanism by which we expect more charters to make things better? What’s our plan to enforce quality control? What are we doing to ensure that any public funds being diverted to “more charters” will actually wind up being used on education and not for the enrichment of the people currently lobbying for those dollars? Those of you who complain about the number of administrators in the public schools need to take a long look at that list above and ask yourself how much these actors are motivated by the greater good, and how much they’re motivated by their own bottom lines. Finally, what’s our contingency plan in case this doesn’t work out as well as we might hope? We’re jumping straight to a solution without having a serious conversation about the process. In the real world, that’s a recipe for failure. We need to be a lot more concerned about that here. The Statesman has more.

Cuts are not increases, no matter how you spin it

Oct 27th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

This is the Chron overview of HD134, which is once again the highest profile legislative race in the county, in part because it’s a referendum on the 2010 election and the cuts to public education funding that resulted from that election.

Ann Johnson

In an area that takes great pride in its schools, [Rep. Sarah Davis] went along with her fellow Republicans and voted for major cuts in education funding.

As a result, District 134 is one of the few House seats believed to be in play. Although Davis has the incumbent’s edge in a Republican-leaning district, the race has become one of the most competitive – and expensive – in the state. Both candidates are spending freely, blanketing the district regularly with mailers.

“We knew there were funding cuts coming down the line for Texas schools,” said Sue Deigaard, a stay-at-home mom, “so, as a community, on a grass-roots level, we organized, we engaged other parents to give Sarah Davis the support as a legislator to say, ‘Hey, as you’re casting your vote on the budget, you have hundreds of parents, 400 petitions, hundreds of letters, phone calls, emails in a district you won by 750 votes.’ ”

Their message, Deigaard said, was “to, basically, give her the support, so that she could vote in a different direction from her party. And, as her record shows, she didn’t do that. So now we have this very motivated base of parents, bipartisan – Republicans and Democrats – who are supporting Ann Johnson.”

Davis, a fiscal conservative who is moderate on social issues, insists that Deigaard and other parents should not have been surprised.

“When I was campaigning, we all, particularly me, were campaigning on a message that we had a $27 billion budget deficit, and we’re going to have to balance the budget,” she said one evening recently. “I am opposed to increasing taxes or finding revenue, and I won, as did a hundred other Republicans, probably campaigning on the exact same message.”

So Davis, who as I have said before is a reliable, down-the-line Republican representative, claims that she campaigned and won on a promise to cut spending in 2010. Which is fine, as far as it goes, except for one small thing: She is now running away from those cuts that she made as fast as she can. Patti Hart calls Davis out for a blatantly dishonest campaign mailer that tries to claim she didn’t do what she actually did.

I called [Scott] McCown to get his reaction after seeing Republican Houston Rep. Sarah Davis’ latest campaign mailer, which claims that her Democratic challenger, attorney Ann Johnson, is spreading fiction in her assertion that Texas Republicans cut $5.4 billion from public education last year. On the cover, Davis invokes the dictionary, sharing this definition of fiction: “A belief or statement that is false, but that is often held to be true because it is expedient to do so.”

To back up her allegation that school budget cuts are a figment of Johnson’s imagination, Davis then asserts that Texas lawmakers actually added $1 billion to our schools. Johnson’s math, she tells us, includes “President Obama’s one-time stimulus money, that simply wasn’t available the following year.”

The mailer goes on to assert, with great umbrage: “So Johnson is blaming Republicans in Austin for what a Democratic President did in Washington. This happens all the time: liberals in Washington throw a bunch of money at programs, and then in later years leave the state to find the money to keep them going.”

In a campaign season full of tall tales, this may be the whopper that tops them all. State lawmakers in 2009 used $3.6 billion in federal stimulus money instead of state dollars to fund public education – essentially supplanting federal support for state support. In 2011, the Legislature added back only $1.6 billion in state money to replace the federal dollars.

To claim that the Legislature “increased” funding to public ed is, as I wrote when Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst made this claim, to have giant amnesia about the stimulus.

Now, Davis is using the state’s 2009 contribution to education as a baseline for comparison to state funding in 2011, and blaming Obama that the dollars fall short. It’s as if Davis is saying, two meals a day is more than what those kids were getting before Uncle Sam stepped in!

This outrageous claim – that Republicans didn’t cut public education funding – has been rated “Pants on Fire” by the newspaper fact-checking service, Politifact, on several occasions this year.

And Politifact’s researchers didn’t rely on the opinions of Democrats, noting that during the legislative session, Senate Education Chairman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said: “Nobody wants cuts. But we have to have them.” And House Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, predicted the cuts would amount to 4 percent to 5 percent, which he characterized as “not that big a cut.”

The writers’ conclusion: “So, lawmakers ultimately cut public school aid, with key leaders even acknowledging so as those decisions were sealed. To tell constituents otherwise is not only inaccurate, it’s misleading and ridiculous. Pants on Fire!”

Even Hart is understating how egregious this is, because Davis and her fellow Republicans all voted for the House budget that cut $10 billion from public education. It was the Senate’s refusal to accept that budget, and to restore half of the cuts made by the House, that left us with the $5.4 billion in cuts that we got. Try to square that with a claim that Davis “increased” funding to public education.

Maybe none of this will matter. It’s still a Republican-leaning district. Johnson may well not be able to convince enough people what happened and what they need to do about it now. Maybe that day of reckoning isn’t here yet, though if it hasn’t come by the 2014 elections I don’t know when it ever will. Be that as it may, I’m happy to have any campaign be waged on these terms. The more that candidates an officeholders run away from the idea of cutting education funding, the better.

Shapiro backs STAAR delay

Feb 17th, 2012
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

This was unexpected.

Sen. Florence Shapiro

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said Monday in a letter to [TEA Commissioner Robert] Scott that ninth-graders taking the exams this year should be given a reprieve from the 15 percent requirement during the phase-in of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.

“We strongly support the transition to end-of-course assessments as crucial to enhancing the college readiness of our students. We support the waiver of the course grade requirement solely as a transition to the new testing and accountability system,” wrote Shapiro, one of the architects of the new accountability system. The letter was signed by three other senators involved in the legislation.

The end-of-course exams will still apply toward ninth-graders’ graduation requirements. Most students must take a total of 12 end-of-course exams in four core subjects: English, math, science and social studies.

Parents and school administrators have been clamoring for relief from the 15 percent requirement. They worry that the new exams could harm a student’s grade-point average and class rank, which could affect whether the student automatically qualifies for admission to state universities.

[…]

Last year, the Texas House overwhelmingly passed a measure that addressed some of the anxieties that have been springing up across the state this year as parents and students have begun to grasp the implications of the test. The bill died because Shapiro never brought it up for consideration in her Senate committee.

The whole point of that ill-fated legislation, House Bill 500, was to “give the kids the same transition that school districts had without easing the rigor or accountability,” said House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands.

See here, here, and here for background on the legislative process. Shapiro had been critical of Scott after he gave a speech that said that the state testing system has become a “perversion of its original intent” and that he was looking forward to “reeling it back in.” In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t amount to that much – the test will go on, despite other concerns regarding funding and the possibly deleterious effect of even more high stakes tests on high school graduation rates – but it would be a relief to this year’s batch on ninth graders and their parents if Scott goes along with it. With Rep. Eissler voicing his support as well, it looks likely to happen.

UPDATE: Commissioner Scott has authorized the delay.

A little perspective about redistricting

Nov 29th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
12 comments

So now we wait for the full Supreme Court’s ruling on AG Abbott’s requests to stay the 2012 elections, which by the way would only apply to the elections affected by the disputed redistricting maps. Other primary elections for things like the SBOE, statewide and county offices, would proceed as usual in March while the Lege, the State Senate, and Congress would be pushed back till May if Abbott gets his wish. Yes, we’d have two separate primaries next year under this scenario. How big an unfunded mandate to the counties do you think that would be? Talk about “irreparable harm”.

Anyway. For all of the piteous wailing and gnashing of teeth that Republicans are doing about those big bad activist judges, let’s keep something in perspective: The court-drawn State House map, under a set of reasonably optimistic assumptions, produces a 2013 Lege with 90 Rs and 60 Ds. That’s a 60% Republican chamber, with two more Rs than what they had in 2003 under what was at the time the map of their dreams. Can anyone seriously say that this is unfair to the Republicans? Go back through all of the elections this past decade, and outside of the 2010 anomaly, only three Rs won statewide with 60% of the vote or more: Carole Keeton Rylander in 2002 against the hapless Marty Akin; George W. Bush in 2004; and Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2006, back when she was still popular among her fellow Republicans. And remember, 60 is far from guaranteed for the Dems. It requires them to recruit well, to defend the increasingly vulnerable Craig Eiland while retaining Pete Gallego’s open seat, and to defeat several R incumbents in favorable but not overwhelming turf. It assumes conditions are at least comparable to 2008, which initial polling says is likely to be true but which can change at any time. It assumes that there’s no great effect from the voter ID law, if it ever gets precleared, and that the usual suppressive efforts like what we see from the Harris County Tax Assessor’s office and the like are no more successful than usual. That’s a lot of assumptions, and if one or more of them turns out to be untrue we could be looking at 95-55, or a 63% Republican House. This isn’t enough for them?

Now let’s consider what I would consider a wildly optimistic outcome for the Dems, in which they capture 65 seats total. That’s still a 57% Republican advantage. No Republican got as much as 57% in 2008 – John McCain’s 55.45% was the best showing – and under these conditions, clearly none would get that much in 2012. Indeed, for the Dems to win 65 seats next year I’d expect some statwide Republicans to fail to get 50% of the vote. My point is that this map still tilts pretty heavily in the Republicans’ favor. Whereas the map drawn by the Republicans in 2001 came close to having a Democratic majority with Republicans still winning everything statewide, I can imagine Democrats sweeping all statewide offices but not getting a legislative majority under this oh-so-unfair judge-drawn map.

And that’s just the House we’re talking about. The best case scenario for the State Senate is for the Dems to maintain the 12 seats they have now, which requires Wendy Davis to hang on in a majority R district. That means Dems maintain 39% of that body, which is to say a lower percentage than in the House. If Davis loses, the Rs control 65% of the Senate. The wildly optimistic view has the Dems eventually winning SD09, giving them 13 out of 31, or 42% of the Senate. Tell me again how unfair this is to the Republicans?

And finally we have Congress, where the if-all-goes-about-as-well-as-we-hope scenario is 13 Dems out of 36, or 64% Republican. The low end for Dems is 12, or 67% Republican, while the high end for now is probably 16 – the 13 we’re all pointing to, plus CDs 06, 10, and 14. That’s still 56% Republican. Say it with me now – How is this unfair to the Republicans?

Now I’m not so naive as to think there’s anything “fair” about redistricting. Even under a system that everyone could agree was “fair”, for some value of that word, the end result of any given election is likely to favor one side or the other for any number of reasons. Fairness is not a legal requirement, either. The Republicans probably could have drawn a slightly less egregious map that pegged the Democratic ceiling in the House at 55-57 for this election and maybe 65 for the foreseeable future that would have had a chance at preclearance. They got greedy, they got caught, and now they’re screaming like stuck pigs even though the maps that were imposed on them will likely leave them in the majority for the rest of the decade without having to increase their appeal to Latino voters and even as their statewide hegemony crumbles. We should all have problems like that.

Be all that as it may, candidate filings began yesterday, under the assumption that the elections calendar will proceed as originally planned. Various entities are keeping track of who has filed for what so far. Houston Politics has Harris County information, of which the most interesting tidbit is that former State Rep. Robert Talton has filed for County Attorney against Vince Ryan; PoliTex has Tarrant County filings – Fort Worth City Council Member Kathleen Hicks was first out of the gate for the new CD33; Greg’s Texas Political Almanac has a running tally; and the TDP is tweeting filings from its Austin headquarters – follow @TxDemParty or search the hashtag #TXD2012 for more. Finally, one candidate I want to highlight even though I doubt he has a chance to win is Jack Ternan, running for the open SD08 that had been Sen. Florence Shapiro’s seat. My reason for noting and approving of his candidacy comes from his bio:

After completing school, I joined the law firm of Bickel & Brewer where I practice complex commercial litigation. The firm has provided me an opportunity to seek justice for those affected by the City of Farmers Branch’s anti-immigrant ordinances, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and an anti-competitive deal between Southwest and American airlines.

Anyone who’s been working to bring justice to Farmers Branch is all right in my book.

DC court denies summary judgment on preclearance

Nov 9th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

It’s official, the maps the Lege drew for itself and for Congress will not be used in the 2012 election.

A Washington-based federal court on Tuesday rejected Texas’ request to approve new political districts without a trial.

In a brief ruling, the court agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice that the GOP-led Legislature used an improper standard for determining whether the new districts discriminate against minorities. The order clears the way for a trial.

[…]

The ruling means temporary maps, being crafted by a San Antonio court, will likely be implemented in the interim to allow election workers and candidates to make necessary arrangements for next year’s primary elections.

You can see the short and sweet order here. As noted by Texas Redistricting, the court ruled as follows:

Having carefully considered the entire record and the parties’ arguments, the Court finds and concludes that the State of Texas used an improper standard or methodology to determine which districts afford minority voters the ability to elect their preferred candidates of choice and that there are material issues of fact in dispute that prevent this Court from entering declaratory judgment that the three redistricting plans meet the requirements of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Remember, the state sued in the DC court because they’d get a better deal than the Justice Department. They also thought, or at least they believed AG Greg Abbott when he claimed they’d get a quicker resolution than the traditional route. Oops.

The order applies to the Congressional, State Senate, and State House maps that were drawn by the Lege. The SBOE map did receive preclearance and is good to go. Expect to see an awful lot of campaign activity in the coming weeks, once people realize where they are and what the new districts really will look like. Among other things, the Senate map may well look a lot brighter for Sen. Wendy Davis, but it wouldn’t stop there. If you look at the population analysis, the Davis/LULAC map creates 13 Democratic Senate districts – the 12 existing ones plus a new one in Dallas County (SD09) that it achieves by pairing John Carona and Florence Shapiro, the latter of whom is retiring anyway. To say the least, if the San Antonio court adopts that plan, it’s quite a game changer. Postcards, PoliTex, the Trib, BOR, and Texas Redistricting have more.

Senate changes

Oct 17th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

I’m not worried about the State Senate becoming more conservative, I’m worried about it becoming more stupid.

“A seat in the Texas Senate does not come open very often, and all of a sudden now there are four,” said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, one of the four who have announced their retirements.

“The Senate is pretty conservative now but that could change, depending on who wins the seats. It’s going to be an interesting election.”

Retiring with Shapiro, the longtime chair of the Education Committee, are Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan; Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Chris Harris, R-Arlington; and Economic Development Committee Chairman Mike Jackson, R-LaPorte.

The four senators will take with them a combined 64 years of experience in the upper chamber.

And that’s before next year’s election, when all 31 senators are up for election because of redistricting, instead of the usual one half. In addition to the retirements, some senators could lose their re-election bids.

Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, for example, was one of only two freshmen senators in 2009. Now, she is expected to have a tough time running in a new district that the Republican-majority Legislature drew to elect a Republican.

Other senators are drawing challengers from the right. On Oct. 3, Donna Campbell, a Columbus ophthalmologist and tea party favorite who ran for Congress in 2010, announced that she will challenge longtime Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio.

I can’t speak to whatever ludicrous litmus test is controlling Republican minds this week, but none of the four retiring Senators can be reasonably classified as anything but solid conservatives. Ideologically speaking, whoever replaces them will be very close to them. What concerns me is that Ogden and Shapiro are well-informed (if generally wrong) on policy and care about outcomes, while it is highly likely that the people who replace them will be cookie-cutter Dan Patrick wannabees that won’t be able to add anything to the discussion beyond sound bites. (I see Jackson and Harris as essentially fungible; swapping them out won’t matter much.) Our discourse is dumb enough already, we don’t need it dumbed down any further. As for Davis and Wentworth, who may be the last remaining pro-choice Republican in the state, losing them would indeed make the Senate a more conservative place as well as a less intelligent place. I’m hopeful that Davis at least will get a court-mandated lack of preclearance reprieve, but beyond that it’s all up to the campaigns and the voters. In other words, one more thing to add to your list of things to worry about.

Rethinking school discipline

Jul 24th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Wow.

Nearly 60 percent of junior high school and high school students get suspended or expelled, according to a report that tracked about 1 million Texas children over a six-year period.

About 15 percent of the Texas seventh- through 12th-grade students tracked during the study were suspended or expelled at least 11 times and nearly half of those ended up in the juvenile justice system. Most students who experienced multiple suspensions or expulsions do not graduate, according to the study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and the Public Policy Research Institute of Texas A&M University.

“The findings in this report should prompt policymakers in Texas and in states everywhere to ask this question: ‘Is our (public) school discipline system getting the desired results?’ ” said Michael Thompson of the justice center, one of the report’s co-authors.

The findings suggest an urgent need to stop the criminalization of students for simply misbehaving, said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, longtime chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, and Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson.

Some highlights from the study:

The report also found that during a six-year period, about 15 percent of the students studied were suspended or expelled 11 times or more — and more than half of those students had been on probation or incarcerated by juvenile justice authorities.

The study also found that:

• Nearly 6 in 10 public school students studied were suspended or expelled from at least one class during grades seven to 12, most of them at least four times.

• Only 3 percent of the disciplinary actions were for conduct for which state law mandated suspensions and expulsions; the rest were made at the discretion of school officials primarily in response to violations of local schools’ conduct codes.

• Repeated suspensions and expulsions predicted poor academic outcomes. Only 40 percent of students disciplined 11 times or more graduated from high school during the study period, and 31 percent of students disciplined one or more times repeated their grade at least once.

• Schools that had similar characteristics, including racial composition and economic status of the student body, varied greatly in how frequently they suspended or expelled students.

Michael Thompson, director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center program and one of the report’s authors, said classroom removal is highly related to an increase of students repeating a grade, dropping out or entering the juvenile justice system.

“We see significant differences in the rates of suspension and explusion for similar student populations, indicating, I think, that it’s possible for schools, by relying less on suspension and expulsion, in theory, to actually reduce juvenile justice involvement and improve academic performance,” Thompson said.

You can find the report and related information here. It’s a first of its kind longitudinal study – every seventh grader was tracked for six years. I think we would all agree that every kid at that age occasionally engages in some knucklehead behavior. What we need to do with all this data is learn how to better distinguish between and deal with the good kids that do dumb things and the real troublemakers. The Trib notes that some school districts are already taking steps.

What the report ultimately means is that schools’ current methods of punishing kids are ineffective, said Deborah Fowler, a contributor to the report and director of Texas Appleseed, an Austin-based nonprofit social justice research and advocacy group.

“The good news is that we know there are alternatives that do work,” Fowler said. She said schools can stop disciplinary problems from happening in the first place with an approach that emphasizes positive behavioral intervention and support, or a “PBIS” model. That allows teachers “to focus less time on disciplinary referrals and … more on the purpose of their role, which is educating the students.”

Several school districts across the state have implemented PBIS models, Fowler said, including Austin, Leander, Amarillo and Pflugerville.

Jane Nethercut coordinates a positive behavioral support program at Austin ISD. She said the model was based on praising students when they are doing something right, rather than punishing them when they are doing something wrong — and that it has “changed the schools” around the district.

“Disciplinary referrals have gone down; attendance rates have gone up,” she said, “This is not rocket science — in the schools that practice PBIS, academic performance has also gone up. We have seen thousands and thousands of hours of recovered learning time.”

That’s the goal, right? Click on to see the full press release from the Council of State Governments Justice Center. There’s a lot we ought to be able to learn from all this data.

(more…)

Senate approves teacher furlough bill

Jun 9th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Another divisive bill, another party-line vote.

Legislation allowing school districts to reduce teacher pay and furlough them — to help absorb big budget cuts — sailed through the Texas Senate on Monday with a straight party-line vote.

Lawmakers are working to cut $4 billion from the state’s 1,040 public school districts. Giving school administrators flexibility to cut teacher pay and allow up to six days of unpaid leave — which existing law does not allow — will save teacher jobs, Senate Education Chair Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said of school reform measure SB 8.

[…]

Shapiro, the Senate education chairwoman, said school reforms “allow our school districts to get through a temporary problem with a temporary solution. There is nothing in this bill that has to be forever.”

[Sen. Wendy] Davis and several other Democrats tried unsuccessfully to put a firm, two-year expiration on the school reforms.

Objectively, I can see the argument for allowing school districts to use furloughs or pay cuts as an alternative to firing teachers. If you’re going to underfund the school districts, you have to give them some means to deal with it. But here again, the Republicans are essentially saying “Trust me” about the objections to their bill when they could have fairly dealt with those objections in the bill itself. If this is a temporary solution as Sen. Shapiro says, then why not put a sunset date on it? Instead, they did this:

The Senate bill also would eliminate seniority protection for certain teachers and allow districts to non-renew teacher contracts much closer to the end of the school year. The legislation does not address class size or the minimum salary schedule for teachers as did a House bill that was killed during the regular session. Shapiro said the new authority for school districts would expire as soon as education funding levels exceed those of the 2010-11 biennium.

Who’s to say that funding levels will ever exceed those of this biennium? The Republicans have changed the way public education is financed. It’s no longer the case that funding is determined by formula. Public schools are now funded the same way everything else is and thus are now subject to being cut if that’s what the Lege needs to do to balance the budget. Why should anyone take the Republicans at their word on this? Their actions – and Dan Patrick’s words – speak so much louder.

[Fort Bend ISD science teacher Randy] Colbert said his Republican friends and family are upset that lawmakers are cutting education instead of pulling money out of the state’s $6.5 billion rainy day fund, which the Legislature created more than 20 years ago specifically to spare education from cuts during bad economic times.

“They are ready to vote these people out. They want education to be first, not first cut,” Colbert said.

I sure hope the plural of anecdote is data in this case. It’s going to take a lot of people like that changing their voting habits to undo what has been done here. A bunch of petition signatures are nice, but it’s votes we need. If there aren’t significant changes in the Legislature for 2013, it’s just going to be more of the same.

Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Southside Place, said the public education funding cuts are unwanted but a necessary reaction to hard economic times.

“And we have to live within our means,” she said.

Huffman’s talks with Houston-area school superintendents convinced her funding cuts — in the 6 percent range for most school districts in the first year — are something the schools can handle.

“Hopefully, in two years, the economy will have turned around, and we can hope for more funding for the schools,” she said.

Huffman figures the state could not afford to dip into the rainy day fund because “we have to be prepared for the future. I feel we have done what we can under the political climate and under the circumstances.”

Actually, Sen. Huffman, the reason the Republicans aren’t using the Rainy Day Fund to mitigate these cuts to public education is because their dishonest budgeting gimmicks have forced them to reserve that money for the Medicaid hot check they’ve written. And I’d like to know who those “Houston-area school superintendents” are and what exactly they said. That may be your interpretation of what they said, but then it would be, wouldn’t it?

The Senate is now done with these bills. Today the House will take up SB8, and will also vote on legislation that will increase the class size limit. The Statesman has more.

Back to school finance

Jun 3rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
4 comments

The Lege has started the process of picking up where it left off on school finance. The Trib reminds us how we got here.

[T]he earlier failure of SB 1581, which put a behind-closed-doors conference committee in charge of any decisions about how to distribute $4 billion in cuts in state funding across school districts, was a dramatic warning of just how much further lawmakers had to go to find consensus on what they repeatedly called the “second most important bill” of the session. As lawmakers again tackle the issue in the special session the governor called on Tuesday, it is worth revisiting the demise of SB 1581.

Passing a new school finance plan, said veteran education consultant Lynn Moak, often depends on selling lawmakers on what changing formulas will mean for their districts. That can lead to a situation, he said, where “we’re really passing a printout and having to translate it back into a school finance bill.” Difficult under normal circumstances, that becomes infinitely more challenging when the state is coming up $4 billion short in funding for public education.

“Nobody has ever done this before. Nobody has ever had the kind of massive cuts to deal with,” he said, adding, “The Legislature really did not spend any time prior to January trying to work out a game plan, and wrote one as they went along, and it showed.”

Before the conference committee were three options to chose from: separate proposals from Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, and Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, that enacted cuts relative to a districts’ wealth, and a proposal from Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, that chopped districts the same across the board. Each, though, contained a numbers game nobody really wanted to play.

The simplicity of Eissler’s approach — which was originally a last-minute amendment to SB 1581 — gave it a political advantage among House members. In a scenario with no real winners, lawmakers newly unsettled by the stark realization of what the gaping reduction meant for schools in their districts realized they wouldn’t have to return to their superintendents and explain why they voted for deeper cuts for some and not others.

That still wasn’t enough for the House to coalesce around Eissler’s plan in time to pass it as a part of SB 1581. As the bill was debated on the House floor, “there was no single bloc of votes for anything,” said David Anderson, an education lobbyist for the Austin-based HillCo Partners, a government consulting firm, who described a “meltdown” that night between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. as members began taking a hard look at projections of the cuts for their districts.

[Rep. Jimmie Don] Aycock and Eissler both said that until shortly before then, members had been concerned with what the budget cuts were going to look like across the state, and hadn’t had an opportunity to consider the impact on their individual districts.

“People were so focused on the cuts that only those few geeks of us who wade around in school finance even saw it coming,” Aycock said, adding, “It was only late in the session when we figured out the number, and then the question became how do we divvy it up.”

In other words, these yahoos voted to cut billions of dollars from the state public education budget without having any idea what the effect would be on their own school districts. And remember, the House initially voted to cut $8 billion from public ed, which is double the amount that wound up getting cut. If they’re blanching at what that means, imagine what they’d be thinking if the House budget had been adopted as it was. The mind boggles.

Meanwhile, of course, more than enough money is in the Rainy Day fund to cover this shortfall. It still wouldn’t account for growth and other higher expenses, but it would moot this current exercise. More seriously, the legislation that’s being considered, which the Democrats fought tooth and nail against, would not just distribute cuts for this biennium but would mean permanently lower allocations for public schools.

For about 60 years, Texas lawmakers have afforded public education a special status in terms of state funding.

Written into law is a guarantee that schools would get enough money to provide a basic, foundational education for each student. That obligation has dictated what the state has put into the Foundation School Program to cover growing enrollment and a changing student population.

But the school finance plan now under consideration by legislators wipes that guarantee out and makes future appropriations dependent upon how much money is available rather than how much is needed.

“The commitment to fund current law would cease to exist as a legal commitment,” said Lynn Moak, a school finance expert and consultant. “Public education has lost its special status.”

[…]

On Sunday, state Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, highlighted the shift in Texas’ future obligation to schools during an exchange on the House floor with Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, one of the House negotiators on the compromise.

Eissler had already acknowledged that the change would mean that school districts would no longer be legally entitled to a certain amount of state aid.

Hochberg asked him if that change would allow the state to routinely short school districts.

“That would allow us to,” Eissler said, “but I don’t see that happening.”

“This is not a good year to make that argument, Mr. Chairman,” Hochberg responded.

Anyone who thinks that we can simply take the Lege’s word for it that they wouldn’t use their new authority to short school districts to actually short school districts needs to pay attention to Dan Patrick:

State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said the school finance change “is a true cut in an entitlement” and an essential cut at that.

“There are no guarantees, and for a Legislature to say we can guarantee this forever is not being straightforward to the people,” said Patrick, who was deeply involved in the Senate’s school funding discussions.

[…]

But in the future, a specific vote to change the law would not be necessary. Lawmakers would simply put less into the budget than the funding formulas call for, as is the common practice for higher education funding.

“That is a very, very big change in the way that we do funding for the schools,” Hochberg said.

Patrick agreed that it is a significant change to how the state has done its business.

“I think it’s a change that is needed as we move forward. We need to have real cuts,” Patrick said.

So at a time when Texas has a population that is much younger than the national average, which is a key driver of the state’s population growth, Dan Patrick thinks we need to cut education funding, not just now but forever. If you think that maybe isn’t such a hot idea, you need to vote that way in 2012.

House gavels in and out

May 31st, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

That was quick.

The House gaveled in shortly after 10 a.m. today and adjourned about 10 minutes later after Speaker Joe Straus announced that he’ll have a better idea about the special session’s schedule when the body reconvenes at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

So far, only one bill has been filed in the House, and Straus said House and Senate leaders will be meeting to coordinate which bills will taken up first in the individual bodies.

“It will be more apparent tomorrow what our schedule is,” Straus said.

Several other bills have been filed in the Senate, including SB8, the health care compact bill that will likely be more sound and fury than anything else. Three bills are scheduled for committee hearings on Thursday.

A school district mandate relief bill is among the select few so far that will be considered during the special legislative session.

No text is available yet so it’s not clear which approach will carry the day: the limited and temporary Senate version, which did not include lifting the cap on class sizes; or far-reaching and permanent as House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, has preferred.

Neither cleared its respective chamber, though the Senate proposal seemed to have some legs if it could have made it to the floor. The Democrats blocked it but that will not be an option this time around.

Another education bill, formerly known as House Bill 6, is also back. That one, which became a bit of an education free-for-all, didn’t get out of the House before the midnight deadline on Sunday.

Last but certainly not least is the school finance measure, which is still nestled among the budget-related tome that is the real reason we’ve all returned, now called Senate Bill 1. That bill frees up the revenue, mostly by deferring a school payment into the next budget, to pay for the $172 billion two-year budget.

Robert Miller thinks the filibuster by Sen. Wendy Davis at the end of the session was a strategic mistake on the grounds that the Republicans plan to pass their school-related bills before any further opposition can get organized. However, the House doesn’t expect to see any action till next week, which doesn’t sound particularly quick to me. We’ll see how it goes.

Vote on school finance today

May 29th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

On Friday night, the Lege finally reached an agreement on school finance, which is to say on how to distribute the $4 billion in cuts to public education to the school districts. Today the Lege gets to vote on that deal.

House leaders wanted a two-year plan cutting school funding across the board by about 6 percent.

The Senate insisted lawmakers address the controversial “target revenue” system that has created disparities in school district funding. The compromise will use across-the-board cuts for the coming school year before turning to the Senate’s version for the 2012-13 school year.

“We believe it’s the best way to distribute those dollars out to our communities,” Shapiro said.

The deal has been called part Eissler and part Shapiro, which is to say part of HB400 and part of SB22.

Preliminary numbers indicate that Houston ISD will lose about $84 million the first year and an estimated $119 million in the second year — or cuts of roughly $328 per student in the first year followed by $490 the second year. Those numbers are based on earlier printouts that should be fairly close when the newest district-by-district impact figures come out, Shapiro said.

Based on the preliminary details, HISD faces a smaller cut next year than district officials had projected, but they expressed concern about deeper cuts the following year.

Hair Balls noted on Thursday that the HISD Board of Trustees was cautiously optimistic that their remaining shortfall would end up being less than they had originally planned for.

Although leaders reached an agreement on school funding, individual lawmakers will have to assess the impact of the funding cuts on the school districts they represent before ratifying the plan. Most if not all 49 House Democrats are expected to oppose the plan to cut funding to public education — especially when use of the state’s rainy day fund could have avoided those cuts.

“It’s unbelievable that we would lay off teachers, increase class sizes, cut Pre-K programs and hurt our schools across the board while there is more than enough money sitting in the rainy day fund to avoid the cuts completely,” said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston.

Without Democrats, House Republicans would need 76 of their 101 members to support the agreement. Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, one of the House negotiators, said, “I think we can sell this.”

I hope you can, too. I can’t wait for the 2012 campaigns to start noting that this Republican or that voted to cut billions of dollars from public schools. Remember, the House and every Republican in it originally voted to cut $8 billion from public education, so whatever cuts they end up approving for their own schools, they were prepared to approve cuts twice as big. Oh, yeah, I’m ready for this to quit being a legislative issue and start being a campaign issue. Have fun voting on your cuts, Republicans. School Zone and EoW have more.

More on the budget deal

May 21st, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

From the Statesman:

The agreement is hinged on the House passing a so-called fiscal matters bill, Senate Bill 1811, that would free up money to help pay for the $3 billion in additional spending to which the House negotiators agreed.

“Once they get (SB) 1811 passed, I think we’ll resume deliberations on the budget, and hopefully we can get it closed out tomorrow,” Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said Friday.

The Senate agreed to back off $1 billion in spending to reach consensus on the budget – of paramount importance to the state’s Republican leaders, who want to avoid a special legislative session this summer.

[…]

On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate did its part to deal with the budget package by advancing its school finance plan.

The budget deal shorts school districts by $4 billion over the next two years compared with current law. But neither chamber had passed separate legislation that would change that law and reduce the state’s obligation.

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, had previously been unable to muster the 21 votes to bring the school finance bill up for debate in the Senate because Democrats refused to support a $4 billion reduction in funding for school districts. But an opportunity presented itself when Senate Bill 1581, a budget-related education bill, got kicked back to the upper chamber because of a procedural issue.

Senators voted 17-13 to attach their school finance proposal, which changes how state aid is distributed to districts. The House might take it up as early as Monday.

Shapiro said this approach is “the best chance, the very best chance that we have as a body to protect the classroom.” She added that the Senate plan might not be perfect, but it is an effort to soften the impact of reduced funding for public education.

Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said cuts to public education are inevitable. But he said he voted against the measure because Senate leaders had failed to fix a system that they acknowledge is broken. “We are going to accept broken as normal,” he said.

As noted by the Trib’s liveblog, the House passed SB1811 at about 1AM Saturday morning. I figure today and tomorrow will be about passing other bills, with SB22 being a top priority for the House next week. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: If you really want to get into the nuts and bolts of SB1811, read the LSG analysis of it and the many amendments to it that were filed.

Budget deal reached

May 21st, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

One less reason for a special session. Assuming nothing else goes wrong, and Rick Perry doesn’t veto it out of whatever sense of grandeur and vanity drives him.

House Speaker Joe Straus indicated legislative negotiators have reached an agreement on the state budget, and the House soon today will consider the much-delayed revenue-generating bill crucial to balancing it.

“We wouldn’t be going with this bill until there was an agreement, so you can draw your own conclusion,” Straus told reporters, referring to Senate Bill 1811. “We’re ready to go.”

Straus didn’t give details, but one sticking point had been higher education, an item on which senators initially wanted to spend $1 billion more than the House. The House countered with an offer to narrow that gap by $300 million.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said a bit earlier after leaving a meeting on the House side, “We’re working on it … We’re in better shape than we were a few hours ago.”

SB1811 “has to pass in some form in order to balance the budget,” Ogden said. The measure includes deferring about $2 billion in state school payments.

Postcards and the Trib have more. Looks like Sen. Florence Shapiro’s SB22, which was added as an amendment to SB1811, will be the plan to officially reduce funding to the public schools. We’ll see if those House teabagger freshmen and others who’ve been expressing heartburn about voting to slash funding to their own schools wimp out or not.

I normally put statements from elected officials beneath the fold, but this one from Rep. Garnet Coleman deserves to be seen by everyone.

Rotten Deal Bad for Texans, Nursing Homes, Schools and Colleges

Republicans in the Texas House and Texas Senate have come to an agreement for the 2012-2013 state budget. The rotten deal cut by the Republican supermajority cuts nursing homes, public schools and universities, and financial aid for college students. Their celebratory rhetoric does not match the reality of their budget’s painful cuts to Texans.

Texas needs to pass a budget with $99 billion to provide the same level of services to Texans. No real effort was made by the conference committee to improve the painful cuts made in the House and Senate.

$21 billion short of current services – House budget
$16 billion short of current services – Senate budget
$18 billion short of current services – “Rotten Deal” Budget

All Republicans have done is come to an agreement between bad and worse. Republican leaders are boasting that they cut a deal, but for some reason haven’t bragged about their cuts to nursing homes, public schools, and public universities, all of which will adversely affect Texans. Those in control in the two chambers have come to an agreement to burn down the house we know as Texas.

The cuts from the current biennium, like the 3% rate cut for nursing homes, carry forward under this budget. On top of the new level of cuts, the rotten budget deal uses funny money and accounting gimmicks like delaying payments to push off the cost to the next Legislature. They also left money in the Rainy Day Fund during a storm and didn’t even address the permanent budget shortfall created by Gov. Perry in 2006. Republicans are writing a hot check so they can skip town and not fix the mess they’ve made.

Untouched money sitting in the bank:
$6.6 billion Rainy Day Fund
Drastic Cuts:
$4 billion cut from public schools for Texas children
Funny Money:
$4.8 billion in unfunded Medicaid services for elderly, disabled, children and pregnant women
Accounting Gimmicks
$700 million “assumed savings” from Medicaid waivers that likely won’t be approved.
$2.2 billion “deferral” of Foundation School Program payment
Permanent Structural Shortfall Not Addressed
$10 billion shortfall every 2 years

Future shortfall
$10 billion shortfall every 2 years
$700 million “assumed savings” from Medicaid waivers
$2.2 billion “deferral” of FSP payment
+ $4.8 billion in unfunded Medicaid
$17.7 billion shortfall for the 83rd Legislature

There’s no way this is a balanced budget. It’s billions short of where Texas is supposed to be on Medicaid and education. Even worse, it means Texas is going to be at least $17.7 billion of current services next session. Those in control of the budget should have crafted a budget that invests in our children, ensures that our seniors are cared for, and protects vulnerable Texans. Instead, they’ve developed an irresponsible budget, made devastating cuts to Texans, and created a huge shortfall that Texas families will have to make up for in the next legislative session.

Keep an eye on that $17.7 billion number. There’s no question that a lot of the “cuts” from this budget are just bills being deferred to the next Lege, and as we’ve discussed before, the Rainy Day Fund that Perry and his minions have been so mulish about not using will be tapped at some point in 2013 to pay the piper. What I want to know is, what excuse will the Republicans use for the next ten-digit budget shortfall? Who will they blame next time? The 2014 elections may wind up being more interesting than the 2012 elections will be. A statement from Sen. Wendy Davis is here and a statement from Sen. Rodney Ellis is beneath the fold.

(more…)

School finance issues holding up budget deal

May 12th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

News flash: School finance reform is hard. Especially when all it’s doing is taking money away from everyone.

The clock is a-tickin’ for Texas lawmakers to cobble together a budget compromise that enacts deep cuts to public education.

But with less than three weeks left in the legislative session, neither chamber has debated, much less passed, a school finance bill that would reduce the state aid owed to school districts by as much as $6.5 billion.

Both the House and Senate budgets are precariously balanced on the assumption that such legislation would be approved. Failure to do so would probably force lawmakers into a special session this summer.

“It’s essential that we pass some type of school finance reform in order to successfully end the session. So it’s the No. 1 priority right now,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan.

On the House side, Calendars Committee Chairman Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, said the school finance legislation would not be among the bills to make it to the floor before a key deadline at the end of the week.

“There are a lot of interconnected parts that aren’t fitting together yet,” said Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands.

The House plan could still hitch a ride on another piece of legislation, but at least one local lawmaker, Rep. Paul Workman, R-Austin, said he wouldn’t be able to support it.

Although Workman backed the House budget bill that reduced the school funding, he said Tuesday that the House school finance bill hurts his school districts too much to get his vote.

Well that’s mighty thoughtful of him, and I’ll bet he has plenty of company in that regard, but just what exactly did Paul Workman expect when he voted to cut $7.8 billion from public education? The attitude he’s expressing here is basically “it’s all right to cut as much as needed from everyone else, just not from me”. Hey, you voted for those cuts, you live with the electoral consequences. If you don’t like what you see, you should have done something different. I have no sympathy at all, even if his dithering may work to put pressure on the Republicans to ease the pain. But let the lesson be learned: It’s easy to favor “living within our means” and “cutting spending”. It’s a lot harder to vote for cuts to your own school district.

The budget work is far from done

May 6th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

The Senate may have passed its budget via some creative interpretation of its rules, but there’s more to what has to happen now than just the conference committee. As Abby Rapoport notes, they still have to rewrite the formula for school finance.

You see, under current law, schools are entitled to a certain amount per student. Districts raise what they can with property taxes, and the state must pay for the rest. (For more on our troubled school finance system, read my March cover story.) The state can’t make good on those obligations, and for the first time in 60 years, we won’t automatically fund public schools.

When budget writers opted to cut from public schools in order to balance the budget, they knew that they would need extra legislation to change the school finance system. The House and Senate each have bills that cut the necessary amounts to schools in order to make their budgets’ respective cuts to school districts—$4 billion in the Senate and a whopping $8 billion in the House. Those bills are integral to the budgets that each chamber approved.

But as we knew back in February, these school finance bills will be hard to pass. In the House, Democratic Rep. Scott Hochberg’s bill isn’t even on the calendar yet. His bill tries to shield the poorest districts from cuts by putting all districts on a formula system. But that means that those school districts that have been living high on the hog will get slashed by huge percentages. It’s certainly not going to be an easy-pass in the House.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Education Chair Florence Shapiro’s bill hasn’t yet had the votes to come to the floor, and Democratic senators have a clear chance to block the bill.

Assuming the 2/3 rule is still in effect, of course. See here, here, and here for some background on Hochberg’s bill and the nature of how school finance currently works. All of this takes place against a background in which there have been over 12,000 documented job losses in public education in Texas, and that’s just scratching the surface. The worst is very much yet to come. A statement about the budget from Sen. Mario Gallegos is here, and one from Sen. Rodney Ellis is here.

Finally, on a related note, HB400, the bill to increase class sizes for grades K-4, which was derailed on a point of order last week, is on the House calendar for today. I suspect that without this bill, which has enough sponsors (all Republicans) to guarantee its passage, the rest of the pieces to redo school finance won’t fit. Keep an eye on this.

Is it time to fix school finance?

Apr 21st, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

It’s pretty much always time to fix school finance, since school finance is always broken, so here goes the Senate. Maybe.

State Senate leaders want to end the much-despised public education funding system by 2017, although they disagree on how to do it — and time is growing short.

Some prefer a goal to end the “target revenue” system based on what school districts received in 2006. That system has not been adjusted for inflation and has created huge funding disparities over the past five years. A goal of ending target revenue will keep pressure on lawmakers, Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said Monday.

But others argue that such a goal is meaningless until the state fixes its $5 billion-a-year structural revenue deficit.

Lawmakers don’t lack pressure, said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. “We lack courage, courage to admit that we made a mistake and how to fix it. … We’re not going after the core problem. All we can do is make the patient feel a little better while they are totally miserable, and we’re not doing the cure.”

That’s about the size of it. There’s no plan on the table, so speculation is all we have. But anything that doesn’t address the structural deficit – and to his credit, Finance Committee Chair Sen. Steve Ogden has talked about this – is broken right out of the box. And they’re doing it from a starting point of cutting $4 billion from public ed, which is still a hell of a lot better than the House. But only if they can pay for it, and now that Sen. Ogden has admitted they need to tap the Rainy Day Fund for $3 billion to achieve the revenue restorations they’ve budgeted, it’s not clear they’ll get there. They’re right to go for the RDF, but they’ll be fighting the House and Rick Perry for it. All we can do is watch and hope.

Senate Education Committee passes furlough bill

Apr 17th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

This is still better than layoffs, but not by much.

School districts would be able to reduce salaries and furlough teachers for up to six days – with layoffs used only as a last resort – under a compromise bill approved Thursday by a Senate committee to help districts deal with funding cuts.

The measure, drafted by Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Education Committee, would authorize school boards and superintendents to take certain steps to reduce expenditures as the state slashes funding over the next two school years.

Those reductions would average at least 6 percent under a preliminary Senate proposal and more than 11 percent under a budget passed by the House this month. Consultants for school districts estimate that the House version would mean 65,000 employees would lose their jobs.

“This gives flexibility to our school districts in a very, very tough budget crunch,” said Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.

Shapiro pointed to a key provision in the legislation that limits the cutbacks to no more than each school district’s loss in basic funding. That would be defined as the difference between the district’s current funding and what it will be after the Legislature passes a new budget and school funding plan.

“As long as their funding is below what they received in 2010-11, they will be allowed to furlough employees for up to six non-instructional days and reduce contract salaries in an amount equal to the same percentage as their funding cuts,” she said. “Only after furloughs and salary reductions proportionate to their funding cuts are made may school districts consider an employee reduction-in-force.”

For example, Shapiro said, if a district has funding trimmed by 8 percent, it could only do a combination of salary reductions and furloughs equaling 8 percent – with layoffs allowed if the 8 percent cannot be achieved with pay cuts and furloughs.

Under current law, school districts may not reduce salaries of teachers and other employees under contract, or furlough those employees to save money. Layoffs are the only option.

The Senate bill is SB12; the harsher House bill is HB400. That estimate of 65,000 jobs is on the low end of what has been mentioned, and it should be noted that many school districts have already done reductions in force. I wonder if any of them will reconsider after one of these bills passes. Like I said, it’s better than layoffs, but only in the sense that the flu is better than the Ebola virus. It’s still a disaster, and it’s one that we still haven’t made a serious effort to fix.

HISD lays off teachers, discusses school closures

Apr 14th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

We knew this was coming. There may yet be more of it to come.

Officials with the Houston Independent School District announced Tuesday that about 730 teachers have been notified they won’t have jobs next year — because of budget cuts or poor performance.

Like many districts across Texas, HISD is purging jobs and possibly closing schools to save money amid a state funding shortfall. But HISD leaders have coupled those cuts with a rare, aggressive approach to weeding out teachers deemed ineffective.

“This is about helping teachers improve, but it’s also about being responsible to students to ensure that each of them has an effective teacher,” said Ann Best, HISD’s human resources chief.

The district so far has eliminated 567 teaching jobs because of budget constraints and fired 163 teachers for poor performance, according to preliminary data released Tuesday. The cuts represent about 6 percent of HISD’s teachers and do not include voluntary resignations and retirements, according to Best.

District officials emphasized that the numbers could change as the budget process continues.

I say again, remember that HISD is operating under the assumption that the budget cuts will be about half as severe as what’s in the current House budget. You may be wondering what the effect of Texas receiving the $830 million in federal money that had previously been unavailable to it. The answer is, in effect, “nothing”, because the Senate was already factoring it in.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said the senators have been struggling to find new nontax dollars to help them pay for $5.3 billion in school aid that they recently added to their initial bare-bones version of the 2012-13 budget.

This change frees up $830 million for the 2012-13 budget that will go toward — but not add to — the $5.3 billion, Shapiro said. She said that will save teacher jobs, just as last year’s legislation intended.

In other words, the Senate Education Committee said “We’re going to restore $5.3 billion to education on top of what the House provides. Now we just have to figure out where to find that money.” The $830 million that Texas may now get merely covers some of that still-hot check. That’s a very good thing, but it’s not anything new. Note also that the Senate budget is slightly better than the scenario for which HISD is preparing, meaning that HISD would be able to restore some of its cuts if the current Senate version of the budget is adopted. There would still be a lot of cuts, just slightly less than what they’re now planning to make.

HISD also could see fewer schools next year. Grier said this week that he will consider closing or merging up to 17 of the district’s 300 schools.

He will review elementary schools with fewer than 400 students and middle schools under 500. Many have space for far more students but aren’t drawing them.

With HISD reducing its funding to its schools, Grier said he worries those with low enrollment won’t be able to deliver a good education. HISD funds each campus based on its student count.

You can see a full list of schools being considered for closure or consolidation at School Zone. This sort of thing is always very unpopular, and there has been a fair amount of pushback, especially from Love Elementary in my neighborhood. My guess is that the Board will delay taking action on this for as long as it can.

School finance reform bills on tap

Apr 8th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

Whether you look at the House budget or the slightly less drastic Senate version, public schools will not get the funding they are due under the current defined formulas. That means that how the funds are distributed needs to be redone as well. The first bills to tackle this highly sensitive issue have been laid out, with more to come.

On the heels of a newly approved House budget that leaves public schools $7.8 billion short of what they’re entitled to under current funding formulas, the House Public Education Committee [Tuesday] considered a round of school finance bills.

Two of the bills came from the lower chamber’s veteran school finance wonk, state Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston. One came from freshman state Rep. James White, R-Woodville, who made his first appearance before the committee.

During seven hours of testimony — and in sometimes tense exchanges that revealed the frayed nerves of committee members and witnesses alike — representatives from districts across the state spoke repeatedly about the dire consequences of the House’s budget cuts. At one point, as Alamo Heights Superintendent Kevin Brown urged the Legislature to provide its fair share of funding, state Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, emphasized the strain lawmakers have felt attempting to fund essential programs and meet voters’ demands for no new taxes.

“We’ve seen HB1; we don’t have the money … We’re trying to create a system that is reasonable and equitable under some parameters,” he said. “Obviously, as you can tell, the past couple of weeks have been very frustrating for us, and we’re getting a little short on temper.”

Cry me a river, Dan. To say “we don’t have the money” is a copout that absolves the House’s Republican majority of its responsibility for its penurious budget. There’s still $6 billion left in the Rainy Day Fund. There’s still the structural deficit caused by the 2006 property tax cut, which the Senate is willing to address but the House isn’t. You guys know damn well that HB1 is a steaming pile of failure. You deserve all the strain you’re feeling.

It’s too early to say what will happen here. The budget isn’t finalized. House Public Education Chair Rob Eissler has a bill of his own in the works, as I believe does Sen. Florence Shapiro. At least one group, the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented, has come out strongly against the latter of Hochberg’s bills on the grounds that it “would eliminate weighted funding for the majority of special programs, including gifted education”. I’m sure other groups will weigh in as well. This wouldn’t be a problem if education were adequately funded, but the House has already spoken on that subject. The ultimate endgame of all this is still likely to be litigation, as everyone acknowledges the basic unfairness of how public education funding is currently done. The main question that a school finance reform bill is likely to answer is what form that litigation will take.

How does school finance work, anyway?

Apr 4th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

The Trib has a useful guide to this incredibly complex topic.

Here’s our layman’s guide to figuring out the current system, compiled with the help of experts at the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, the Equity Center and the Texas Education Agency.

The state’s 1,030 traditional school districts operate with a combination of federal, local and state revenue. In the 2008-09 school year, the federal government paid $4.7 billion, the thinnest slice of the pie at 10 percent. At $20 billion, the state paid 42.9 percent of the total funding for schools, and local districts paid 47.1 percent, $22.2 billion (the state’s portion includes money “recaptured” from local property taxes; more on that later).

Most federal money comes through Title I, the law intended to help districts educate economically disadvantaged students. That money is distributed based on the number of students who qualify for free and reduced meal plans — and almost all districts in the state receive some amount of Title I funds. They can also receive specialized federal grants, including those for students with disabilities, English-language learners, preschool programs, migrant students and vocational education.

Texas allocates most state funding for schools through a mechanism called the Foundation School Program, which was created in 1949 to distribute money from the state’s Available School Fund. Now the program distributes operating funds to school districts via two streams that each contain a local and state component. A portion of state facilities funds also comes from the Foundation School Program. The Available School Fund contains earnings from something called the Permanent School Fund, which was established in 1876 and is made up of revenue from land sales, fuel taxes and leases on offshore oil lands. It also finances instructional materials and technology for schools outside of the Foundation School Program.

It goes from there, so go read the whole thing. There’s a good chance that the entire system will be overhauled this session, as the current shortfall combined with the structural deficit and some glaring inequalities in how funds are distributed have made an increasing number of people aware of its deficiencies. Abby Rapoport takes it from there.

Before 2006, the state gave money to school districts based on how much it would cost to educate students in the districts. Schools got extra money for students who were more expensive to educate, but they also got more money for other costs. For instance, small schools got extra money because, if your district only has 500 students, you can hardly take advantage of buying in bulk. The costs per student are higher. Logical enough, right? It was called funding by “formula.”

The problem in 2006 was that the formulas were out of date. The “cost of education index,” which was supposed to account for the costs of teacher salaries and other expenses, was based on data from 1989. Districts that had been rural in the ’80s were still funded that way—even if they’d become booming suburbs. The formulas didn’t offer enough money to districts. But at least the distribution of funds was based on the cost of educating students. Formula funding, which the state had used for decades, was imperfect. It made sense, though.

Sense went out the window in 2006. Updating the formulas would take time—and huge amounts of money—and it would raise all sorts of political fights between members. Rather than go for a systemic solution, the Legislature opted for what they said would be a temporary quick fix. They would add money and freeze district funding at a certain amount per average daily number of students. (They weighted the counts for expensive-to-educate students, like those who are bilingual or special needs.) Most education advocates supported reform because it offered them more state funding. There was even a modest pay raise for teachers. Districts were too desperate to sweat the long-term implications. “They hadn’t gotten any new money in a long time,” said Rep. Scott Hochberg, a Houston Democrat and the Legislature’s leading school-policy wonk. “If you’re on the side of the road and you don’t have any gas and someone comes along with half a gallon, you take it, and you go on down the road as far as you can even if it doesn’t get you to where you’re going.”

The new funding amounts, frozen at 2006 levels, quickly became irrelevant to actual costs. The amounts—now called “target revenue”—were based partially on how much a school district received in formula funding in previous years, but they also took into account how much a district could raise in its own tax base. That heavily advantaged wealthy districts. The result, five years later: While some districts get upwards of $8,000 per average attendee, others make do with less than $5,000.

“We supported the bill with the understanding that it was a first step,” said longtime education consultant Lynn Moak, whose firm, Moak Casey, represents some of the biggest school districts in the state. “We could see pretty clearly that the bill was going to have major problems in the future.”

The future turned out to be pretty near.

Again, read the whole thing.

Smaller cuts from the Senate

Mar 26th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Trail Blazers:

The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday adopted a school funding plan for the next two years that would cut basic funding for school districts by nearly 6 percent – or $2 billion a year – to handle a massive state revenue shortfall. The committee voted 13-2 to approve the recommendations of a special subcommittee on education funding that was chaired by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who also serves on the finance committee. The two no votes were cast by Democrats on the panel.

The proposal is less than half the 15 percent reduction in education funding contained in a preliminary Senate budget plan and is well under a House proposal that would trim an estimated $3.9 billion a year – or $7.8 billion over the next two years – from school district budgets. Senators are still looking for potential revenue sources to make up the estimated $5.3 billion that would be needed to fund their budget for public education. Tapping the state’s rainy day fund also has been mentioned as a possibility.

This is considerably better than the House version, not that that’s a high bar to clear. It’s also slightly better than the optimistic scenario that HISD optimistic scenario, a fact that was noted by trustees.

[HISD Chief Financial Officer Melinda] Garrett said the senate finance bill is looking at a 7-8 percent cut in funds which for HISD would amount to a cut of $105 million to $119 million – a lot but still less than the $160 million HISD had projected. In addition to that, HISD projects added costs of $11 million in the next year.

That’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that the Senate hasn’t figured out yet how to pay for any of this yet. It’s also far from certain that the House would go along with whatever they come up with. Sen. Shapiro’s plan still includes nearly $800 million for new textbooks and discretionary grants, which means she’s still prioritizing the new STAAR tests. I’d rather see every penny go to keeping teachers and support personnel. And the fact that we’re talking about “only” a $4 billion cut to public ed in positive terms gives you some idea of how debased this session has been. But you take your itty bitty teeny tiny signs of progress where you can. Postcards has more.

Meanwhile, another Senate committee did more of the same.

Deliberation about what to cut — and whom to save — ended with a vote to restore $4.5 billion to state health agencies at a Senate Health and Human Services sub-committee hearing this morning. The issue now goes to the full Senate Finance Committee, which will debate whether to add the funds back into the Senate appropriations bill.

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, says this morning’s vote “represents our best effort to address our top needs first,” and will restore 505 full-time positions and funding for programs like Early Childhood Intervention and foster care. It will also, she says, significantly reduce cuts to reimbursement rates for physicians, hospitals and nursing homes.

But some senators argue that funding should be restored for more services. “Certainly the $4.5 billion restoration is a positive step, but we all know that we need more,” says State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who voted against moving the measure to the full Finance Committee. “How can I vote for something that I know is going to create pain [and] cut basic services for thousands of Texans, when I know there’s still an option of … the Rainy Day Fund that’s across the street in the bank?”

As with the Finance bill, this has the same obstacles of needing to identify where the revenue is coming from and convincing the House to go along. Again, I’m glad to see even inadequate baby steps in the right direction, but there’s so much more that is needed. The Trib has more.

SBOE wants its new textbooks

Mar 20th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

But it may not get them.

State board members are growing increasingly anxious that lawmakers might not provide funding for new textbooks and instructional material – even though they’re giving the Legislature $1.9 billion from a 157-year-old endowment established to help schools, including providing free textbooks for students.

Board member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, warns that students won’t be able to handle tougher school accountability tests without updated instructional materials.

“It’s a moral imperative that you provide the proper instructional material,” Bradley said this week in an effort to focus attention on the conflict.

A unified board insists that lawmakers spend $500 million on textbooks and instructional material for biology, chemistry and physics in high school, and for English language arts and reading in lower grades, Bradley said.

“This is non-negotiable,” he said.

Some legislative leaders, however, question the wisdom of buying new textbooks when schools face up to $11 billion in budget cuts.

“Right now it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend money on textbooks and then fire the teachers who would be using the textbooks,” said Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, vice chair of the House Public Education Committee and school finance expert on the Appropriations Committee.

Personally, I think Hochberg has the better argument here, and with the SBOE being short on friends these days, it’s not clear how they will overcome it. Sure, the new STAAR tests will require new materials, but we can always push back the implementation date on that. Given all the other upheaval that schools and school districts will be facing, that seems like the obvious thing to do. It hasn’t sunk in yet with Senate Education Committee Chair Sen. Florence Shapiro yet, though, as she insists there will be at last $400 million spent on new texts. Something will have to give, that much is for sure. Martha has more.

Hochberg’s “Let’s get real” bill

Mar 10th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Rep. Scott Hochberg has filed a school finance bill that he himself wouldn’t vote for. It’s to make sure everyone realizes what the proposed cuts to public education really mean.

Under HB 2485, all school districts would be treated as equal passengers on the Titanic, Hochberg, D-Houston, said Tuesday, as Senate members on the other side of the Capitol discussed ways to allow schools to furlough teachers and modify class size limits in an effort to deal with the budget crisis.

“All are in the same lifeboats,” he said.

Without lawmakers finding new revenue or pulling money out of the $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund, Hochberg’s bill would mean a $326 million cut for Houston ISD, or about $1,328 less per student. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD would see a $60 million cut, or $455 less per student; Spring Branch would get cut $52 million, or $1,282 per student.

“It’s important for members to know what $9.8 billion (in cuts) means, and what it means for their school districts,” Hochberg said.

The proposed $9.8 billion cut in the basic public education funding program does not include at least $1.3 billion in discretionary state grants covering services such as Pre-K, dropout prevention programs and teacher excellence bonus awards.

Hochberg’s bill is largely an effort to create attention for the realities of mega cuts in public education.

It would cut about 20 percent out of the Houston ISD budget.

“For us to make that kind of cut would vastly impact schools. You are talking about significantly fewer teachers when students return to class next fall,” Houston ISD spokesman Jason Spencer said. “You are talking about layoffs the likes of which this school district hasn’t seen in generations. It’s catastrophic.”

Remember, HISD is assuming they’ll lose about $170 million, or half of what Hochberg says they would as things currently stand. “Catastrophic” is a good word for this. The question, given the blind allegiance to not finding new revenues, is whether the reality of what that means will make legislative Republicans reconsider their positions. All I can say right now is that I hope they feel very uncomfortable.

More on Hochberg’s bill is at Postcards and the Trib, with the latter including audio from an interview with him. You can see HB2485 here, and you can see the effect on each ISD in this Excel spreadsheet on Hochberg’s website. Burka and BOR have more.

The story also notes that the Senate Education Committee laid out two bills to give school districts “flexibility” in dealing with whatever lack of funds they are given. These are committee chair Sen. Florenence Shapiro’s SB3, which would among other things allow for furloughs and teacher pay cuts, and Sen. Dan Patrick’s SB443, which would raise the class size limit for grade K through 4. Abby Rapoport has a good summary of the discussion about those bills. This bit, about SB443, is the key:

The latter change is pretty straight forward. The state currently allows schools with an “exemplary” rating to forgo a variety of requirements. Since exemplary schools have the highest rank, the logic goes, they don’t need to be told how to provide an education. Patrick would let “recognized” campuses—the second tier in the ranking system—have the same privileges.

According the Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis, that would mean around 70 percent of campuses would be exempt from a whole lot of the state regulations. She questioned witnesses, and Patrick himself, with unveiled skepticism, arguing the bills were “using the budget crisis for purposes of changing policy.” Much like [Sen. Royce] West, she argued the only reason the Senate would consider such a rule change would be to help the districts save money in anticipation of inevitably deep cuts to education.

In other words, the Republican way to deal with education funding shortfalls is to lower our standards. That’s pretty much all there is to it.

HISD’s opening thoughts on dealing with budget cuts

Feb 28th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

It’s not going to be pretty, no matter how you slice it.

Fewer police officers would patrol school hallways, property taxes would rise, several campuses would close and about 300 central office jobs would be cut next year under HISD Superintendent Terry Grier’s initial cost-cutting proposals.

Grier asked the Houston school board on Thursday to consider increasing the property tax rate by up to 4 cents and reducing a tax discount known as the optional homestead exemption.

“Of course you can balance the budget without them,” Grier said of the tax proposals. “But you can’t balance the budget without them without having draconian cuts at the school level.”

Houston Independent School District officials are preparing for a shortfall of $171 million based on deep cuts in state funding. The amount could change as the Legislature finalizes the state budget, and the board isn’t expected to vote on a final budget until June.

The largest tax increase option Grier presented to the board would increase the rate by 4 cents from $1.1567 per $100 of assessed value and lower the homestead exemption to 15 percent from 20 percent. The exemption reduces the taxable value of the property.
Under that scenario, the tax bill for the owner of an average-priced home, $195,680, would increase by $173.70.

As noted before, HISD could actually raise the tax rate more than that. For a variety of reasons that won’t happen, not the least of which in my mind is the thought that they may find themselves in a similar position two years from now and want to keep some options open. Plus, I think Harvin Moore has it right:

Trustee Harvin Moore said it was a weak negotiating tactic to make decisions while state lawmakers have yet to amend their bare-bones budget proposals.

“I do not think it’s a good move to say, ‘Well, OK, we’re willing to cut this much or to raise taxes this much,’ ” he said. “The state’s going to say, ‘Well, that worked well.’ ”

And then the legislators that passed the budget that forced HISD and other school districts to raise their taxes will spend the next 18 months bragging about how they balanced their budget without raising taxes. It’s a sucker’s game.

Hair Balls has more on what HISD is considering, which is clearly still in the “run it up the flagpole and see who salutes” stage. There’s also the related and as yet unresolved matter of magnet schools, on which the budget issues will have some unknown effect.

In the meantime, some Senators are working on a way to help school districts delay decisions about firing teachers, while the debate about how much is spent on education administration continues on.

State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston and the vice chairman of the Senate Education Committee, called the 58,575 people employed in nonteaching support positions by Texas public schools —”your math department supervisors, your curriculum experts” — a “soft target” for budget cutters. Those positions “must be seriously addressed,” he said. “That number is not based on reality.”

According to Patrick, the ratio of teachers to nonteachers, which includes those employed in administrative and support capacities, in districts has grown to nearly 1 to 1 today from 4 to 1 in the 1970s.

But while it may be more palatable to think of those cuts as trimming bureaucratic fat rather than as damaging the vital organs of a school, there may be less to cut than lawmakers imagine, said Michael Griffith, a school finance expert with the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan research organization. In reality, Griffith said, administrative spending “is not as bad as some of the rhetoric you’re hearing.”

“You might look at a school district and say ‘well, they have 35 people in their office doing administrative work, that seems excessive’ until you find out that 15 to 20 of them are actually paid for in federal grants,” he said. When districts receive Title I and IDEA grants, that money can also cover administrative costs, so cutting those positions doesn’t mean those dollars will go to saving teachers.

Griffith said, there is no “magic number” that reflects the optimal number of teaching to nonteaching personnel for districts, because it’s difficult to make comparisons across campuses. “The best you can see is if people compare their district to similar districts,” he said, “but that means having 1,200 separate little studies” in Texas.

[…]

Ed Fuller, a special research associate at the University of Texas, said that data from the National Center for Education Statistics showed that the number of central office administrators has actually decreased in Texas since 2003. The number of administrators per school is just below the national average, he said, and there is evidence that districts with more administrators may actually increase the effectiveness of schools.

In an analysis that used campuses’ scores in the Texas Comptroller’s recent Financial Accountability for Texas study — which rated schools and districts based on student achievement relative to spending — he found that the more central office administrators per school, the higher the FAST rating.

This could be true, Fuller said, because it could mean that school principals are receiving more guidance and therefore staying in their jobs longer and improving their abilities more rapidly. “If you don’t have enough central office administrators,” he said, “then principals don’t get the support they need.” He said preliminary results from a survey of principals in Texas suggests that this is accurate.

There’s something I’ll bet you’ve never heard before – I sure hadn’t. The existence of a correlation is by itself meaningless, but it sure would be interesting to see what a rigorous study might reveal. One other point that I often hear but which wasn’t raised in this story is that a lot of the jobs that Patrick is complaining about exist because of mandates by the state. All this accountability stuff we’ve laid on schools and school districts in recent years represents real work – data crunching, report writing, and so forth – that has to be done by someone. You can’t have it both ways.

More charter school stuff

Feb 25th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Now that you’ve listened to my interview with Chris Barbic, here are a couple more charter school-related articles of interest. First, from the Trib, a story about charter schools getting help for facilities from the Permanent School Fund.

Fledgling charter schools, like any other start-up business, have difficulty establishing credit. Because the schools must renew their charter with the state every five years, banks can view them as a risky investment, said Cinnamon Henley, executive director of the Austin Discovery School, a charter that opened in 2005.

Without access to financing for buying or building new facilities, charters are subject to the whims of the rental market, which can make budgetary planning difficult.

Some state lawmakers are pushing to change that with legislation allowing some charter schools to be eligible to access the Permanent School Fund.

Proceeds from several sources — including revenue from taxes and offshore oil-drilling leases — go into the $23 billion fund, which is managed by the State Board of Education. Interest from the fund feeds the Available School Fund, which helps pay for public school textbooks.

The proposal to expand access to the fund has prominent backers, including state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano and chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, who introduced the legislation. Her House counterpart, Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands and chairman of the Public Education Committee, filed a companion bill last week.

Not everyone is on board: Traditional school districts do not like the idea. The Texas Association of School Boards opposes opening the bond guarantee program to charters, said Dax Gonzalez, a spokesman for the association, adding that charter schools are generally deemed to be poor credit risks.

“We’ve had around 280 charters awarded over the last few years,” Gonzalez said. “Out of those, 71 are no longer operating anymore. That’s about a quarter of charters that have been abandoned or closed down. That doesn’t show that they are going to be around for the state to recoup their investment.”

I’ve discussed this before, and my feelings haven’t changed. I don’t think the PSF is the right vehicle for this, because I don’t think it’s a sufficiently sound investment on the state’s part. There should be a way for charter schools with a good business plan and/or a track record of success to get state resources for facilities, but it should be created and funded by the Legislature. If that gives some charter school supporters in the Lege heartburn because of the budget crunch, that’s just too bad. If you want this to happen, you can find or create a revenue stream for it.

We also have this op-ed from the Sunday Chron about why Houston is such a hotbed for quality charter schools. The three people referenced are Soner Tarim, founder of the Harmony schools, Mike Feinberg of KIPP, and Barbic.

Houston’s charter school sector, which accounts for a rapidly growing 16 percent of public school enrollment, is among the biggest in the nation, and almost certainly the best. So why does Houston host three great charter chains, along with what may be the best urban school system in the nation? I recently asked Tarim, Feinberg and Barbic, and got answers that would not surprise any student of entrepreneurship. Just like Silicon Valley, Houston’s education miracle shows the importance of entrepreneurs, capital, transparency and political leadership favorable to competition.

To start with, entrepreneurs see a need, and as Soner Tarim points out, with a rapidly growing and increasingly low-income student population, “there was such a need.” But there was also great talent. Houston has attracted entrepreneurial educators from across the globe, many, like Tarim, drawn by the University of Houston, Rice and nearby Texas A&M. Other educational entrepreneurs were not new to the country, but were new to Houston. Feinberg, Levin and Barbic were among an army of young, idealistic TFA corps members from out of state drawn to Houston to save urban schooling. Houston has the nation’s largest TFA chapter. Unlike many cities, Houston welcomed TFA rather than seeing corps members as taking jobs from locals.

So what makes Houston different? First, the Houston Federation of Teachers never had the power to keep out TFA or hamstring KIPP and other charters. But that still left a bureaucracy, which, as Jay Mathews writes, resented KIPP’s notoriety and success. Before KIPP became a charter, the Houston Independent School District central office investigated KIPP, and at one point reassigned its classrooms. Political leadership saved the day. HISD Superintendent Rod Paige publicly praised KIPP and intervened when bureaucrats attacked. Paige also had HISD serve as an incubator for YES Prep. As Barbic recalls, “A lot of superintendents would have seen that innovation and tried to kill it, but Paige did the exact opposite.” Paige’s successors have followed his lead, fashioning a public school system that can compete with the charters.

In many cities opponents manipulate zoning and building rules to keep charter schools from finding sites, but Houston has few regulations. Not coincidentally, it also has low construction costs and cheap land. As Mike Feinberg points out, “Fifteen acres in Houston is about the same cost as one acre in Los Angeles.” That meant that once school leaders like Feinberg, Barbic and Tarim refined their operations at one or two campuses, they could expand cheaply and rapidly.

This expands somewhat on what Barbic mentioned in the interview about how charters coexist with HISD and in an ideal world each would push the other to be better. I don’t think you can fully discuss this subject without noting that our entrepreneur-friendly environment here is also attractive to a range of hustlers and con men and that the charter school business has seen its share of each as well. That would make a good subject for a longer analytical piece, not a short op-ed. Greg has more.

Where’s the money for new textbooks coming from?

Feb 24th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Nobody knows just yet.

Neither legislative chamber’s base budget appropriates funds for any new textbooks. The primary concern in the short term is funding for science materials that reflect the 2009 curriculum changes made by the State Board of Education. Those changes are significant, according to Patsy McGee, a Beaumont school district science supervisor and past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas.

The new, more rigorous testing regimen — the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness system — emphasizes college readiness and will count toward students’ graduation requirements.

Twelve mandatory exams for high schoolers will be phased in over the next four years; the class of 2015 will be the first to complete the full STAAR program.

Last fall, the State Board of Education, recognizing the likelihood of a state revenue shortfall, asked the Legislature for supplemental science materials that would reflect the curriculum changes and be available online only. By going the digital route, the price tag for the materials dropped from $347 million to $60 million.

In total, state Education Commissioner Robert Scott is asking for about $520 million in updated instructional materials for the fall, for the online science materials and for new language arts materials based on standards also recently altered.

[…]

The Texas Education Agency intends to press on with the new testing, textbooks or not, and, barring action from the Legislature, is required by law to do just that.

Since the possibility of high-stakes testing without updated instructional materials became real, Scott has repeatedly warned that students might have legal grounds to sue districts or the state for failing to provide them with an opportunity to learn the subject matter on which testing is based.

At a board meeting in September, Scott said providing the materials is “an absolute moral and legal imperative.”

Seems to me there are only two possible choices here. The Lege can suck it up, find the money, and buy the textbooks and supplemental materials needed for the new STAAR tests (for which incoming high school freshmen this fall will be responsible), or admit that they’re incapable of doing so and push back the start date on STAAR until they can do it. The latter would be a stark admission that student performance will be affected by the budget cuts, so I take Sen. Florence Shapiro, who is quoted in the story saying getting this funded is a high priority for her, at her word. How they’re going to square that with all of the swaggering “no new revenue” talk, I have no idea. Reality is a harsh mistress.

Performance pay for teachers

Feb 9th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

I’m very wary of this.

Pay for Texas public school teachers should be connected to appraisals of their work and other factors instead of the 60-year-old salary schedule based on seniority, former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige and other school reformers said Monday.

They want more flexibility for school districts to base teacher pay on performance, professional development and educator career paths. The state’s severe budget shortfall creates an opportunity to dramatically reform public education by taking away state control, they say.

“Let’s get a compensation system that makes sense. Let’s get rid of the 60-year structure and relegate it to the Smithsonian where it belongs,” said Paige, the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District before President George W. Bush appointed him to head the U.S. Department of Education.

[…]

The recommendations come from a report, “A Teacher Compensation Strategy for Excellence in the Texas Classroom,” by Chris Patterson for the Texas Institute for Education Reform.

Michael Aradillas, who helps organize about 1,600 Texas members of the American Federation of Teachers who work for Northside Independent School District, said he can appreciate the ideas coming out of Austin but wishes teachers were included in the conversation.

“A good launching point for all of that would be to say, ‘Let’s first start a dialogue and let’s include the teachers in the thought process of how they’re going to be compensated,” Aradillas said. “If it’s going to be a one-sided conversation then it’s going to be a one-sided evaluation. And that can, potentially, lead to unfair pay.”

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but everyone should take a moment to read Joel Spolsky’s essay about incentive pay and performance reviews. There may well be merit to allowing local districts to make their own decisions about salaries, and I don’t have any problems with scrutinizing how we do things in any context to see how we can do them better. My point is simply that any system of teacher pay we might transition to will have its own set of inefficiencies and inequities, and we ought to have our eyes open about that. And let’s be honest: In this context, the main driving factor behind any change to how we pay teachers will be cost cutting. Yes, reducing everyone’s pay a little is better than firing a huge number of teachers. But we all know that once their pay is reduced, it’s never going to get restored when times get better. We should be clear about what we’re doing.

The other point that should be made is that any performance-based pay scheme is going to be highly dependent on standardized test results. Don’t be surprised when people figure out ways to game that. If you think we might be leaning a little too heavily on standardized tests in the curriculum now, going this route will make them even more important. And the current shortfall is likely to have an effect on the new standardized tests that are in the pipeline.

The [Senate Education 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.

[Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert] 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.

[Committee Chair Sen. Florence] 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.”

How fair do you think performance-based pay would be under these circumstances? Abby Rapoport has more.

School districts begin preparing for the inevitable

Feb 4th, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

If nothing else, we have a clear winner in the furloughs versus layoffs debate.

School superintendents want more freedom in determining class sizes and permission to cut employee pay or to furlough teachers and other district employees, which school boards cannot do today under state law.

School districts also could save money by using the Internet to provide public notice about budget issues or hearings that now require paid advertising in newspapers, they said.

There will be many such hearings in coming months as Texas lawmakers deal with a budget shortfall estimated at $15 to $27 billion without raising revenue or dipping into the state’s $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund. Preliminary budgets released by the House and Senate last month would take a $10 billion slice out of public education.

“Recognize and be aware that this is the new normal,” Senate Education Chair Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said during the daylong hearing on the challenge facing both legislators and school officials.

Sen. Shapiro has now filed a bill to allow school districts to cut pay and impose furloughs, among other things. It’s not fleshed out yet, so it’s too early to say what exactly it means. The bill in question is SB468.

Let’s be perfectly clear about what this all means:

Furloughs of teachers, support staff and administrators, including superintendents, may be one way for school districts to absorb some of the budget cuts. Increasing class sizes would put the state on a retreat from the 1984 landmark public education reform in HB 72 that capped public classroom sizes at 22 students per teacher in kindergarten and the first four elementary school grades.

[…]

“Our members are extremely concerned that a temporary budget crisis is going to drive permanent change in policy that will do lasting damage to students’ education and to our schools that will set us back for a very long period of time,” said Eric Hartman, of the Texas American Federation of Teachers.

Liberating school districts from various mandates will not be nearly enough to absorb the budget cuts, they said.

The bigger issue will be the state’s effort to embrace new school accountability measures and increased academic rigor prescribed by HB 3 that lawmakers approved in 2009, said Richard Kouri, spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association.

“You do not have the resources for the system to accept the mission that you have laid out,” Kouri said.

Add this to the pile, too:

If the Legislature fails to reform the state’s school financing formulas this session, [Texas Education Agency chief Robert] Scott said, a new school finance lawsuit over the equitable funding of districts will be “an inevitable reality.” Scott also addressed the possibility of postponing the roll-out of the state’s new student assessment program, the STAAR test — an idea that drew cheers from the audience. While he said the Texas Education Agency is on track to roll out the new standards, he said that will be “the debate of this Legislature.”

“If you are 15 billion in the hole, what are you going to do with student expectations?” Scott said, adding, “If there is no money, will you raise standards?”

Quite the reverse, it would seem. Put aside the question of how many teachers will ultimately get fired for a moment. The bottom line is that these “flexibility” measures are about undoing previous attempts to make schools and students perform better. Doing these things costs money, so since we don’t have any money we just won’t do them. I trust no one will be surprised when test scores go down and dropout rates go up and other bad things happen. Abby Rapoport has more.

Finally, it should be noted that some money-saving ideas don’t involve these kinds of cuts. State Sen. Wendy Davis has filed a bill that would give school districts the same 20% discount to their base electricity rate that Texas’ colleges and universities get, which would save them a few bucks here and there. That bill is SB504, and I would certainly hope that it can pass easily. Her press release is here. Also, State Rep. Mike Villarreal is circulating a petition to protest the Pitts and Ogden budgets. Please take a moment to add your name to it.

Furloughs or layoffs?

Feb 1st, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Maybe instead of firing 100,000 teachers, it would be somewhat less awful to allow for furloughs and salary cuts instead.

“One of those burdens that we have placed on our school districts is that they cannot decrease your salary. They can’t have furlough days. It’s not allowed in the law. The only option is to fire,” said [State Senate Education Committee Chairman Florence] Shapiro. “We need to give them the ability to lower teacher salaries.”

Shapiro said she hopes to have a committee meeting “the very first thing out of the box” on so-called unfunded mandates, such as the salary issue.

“The last thing we want to do is put people on the unemployment rolls,” she said. “So we’ve got to make sure that that particular part of the law is erased.”

[…]

Under current law, the standard teacher contract is a minimum of 187 days, including 180 days of instruction and the rest for purposes such as professional development.

A school district can reduce pay for noncontract workers — janitors and cafeteria workers, for example — and it can reduce teacher salaries from one year to the next if notice is given at least 45 days before the first day of instruction, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe said. However, under a provision meant to safeguard a state salary increase, teachers and several other classes of employees who work for a school district in the 2010-2011 school year cannot get a salary cut if they stay with the same school district.

[…]

Richard Kouri, a Texas State Teachers Association spokesman, said his group is split on the issue of furloughs and salary decreases.

It does not want to limit options to deal with the funding crisis but believes the state should be increasing professional development days and “getting our salaries out of the bottom third in the country” to recruit and retain the best, he said.

“If we’re going to look at a long list of things that are bad options that are going to take public education in Texas the wrong direction instead of the right direction,” he said, “they might as well be on the list of things that are going to take us in the wrong direction.”

I guess the positive way of looking at this is that the reality of firing 100,000 teachers has sunk in a bit, and it’s made a few Republicans blanch, though they’re doing their best to put a happy face on things. The “solution”, if you can call it that, might soften that blow a bit – you will note that no one is claiming that even if furloughs and salary cuts are in the equation that there would not still be teachers getting fired – but at what cost? Does anyone really think that classroom instruction and student performance won’t be affected by this? Does anyone really think this won’t greatly damage our ability to hire and retain good teachers? Does anyone really think that the Republicans will make it a priority to undo any of this when better times return? I sure don’t. Martha has more.

The coming fight over class sizes

Dec 30th, 2010
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

We’ve discussed the looming cuts to public education, in which the focus of the battle will be class size limits, which are currently mandated at 22 students per classroom. That was part of the sweeping 1984 overhaul of the education code that was spurred by Ross Perot, which included the no-pass no-play law. Research since then has shown a benefit to students resulting from the lower student/teacher ratios, though much of that research is now several years old.

Maintaining these class size limits is expensive, however, so as this DMN story reminds us, it’s a natural place for legislators to look to for cost savings. And it makes me wonder about something.

[Comptroller Susan] Combs, a Republican, renewed attention on the issue recently after recommending that lawmakers scrap the 22-student limit in kindergarten through fourth grade and switch to an average class-size standard of 22.

In practical terms, that means an extra three students per class on average in those five grades. The current average with the 22-pupil limit is 19.3 students per class, according to figures gathered by the comptroller’s office.

Combs, noting that many school superintendents support the idea, said the change would save an estimated $558 million a year – primarily through elimination of thousands of teaching jobs.

[…]

The class-size standard has been in place since the Legislature approved a landmark school reform law in 1984. Among the highlights and other results:

•The law included the no-pass, no-play rule, pre-kindergarten for low-income children, and the state’s high school graduation test. It was passed under the leadership of Perot and former Democratic Gov. Mark White.

•There is no doubt the 22-pupil limit is costly because every time a class in the five affected grade levels hits 23 or more students, a new class must be created with an additional teacher and classroom. One superintendent from the Houston area said each new class costs his district $100,000 to $150,000.

•The law allows school districts to get a state waiver if they can’t find enough teachers or have insufficient classroom space. The state rarely turns down waivers, and last year 145 districts received waivers that allowed larger classes at 548 elementary schools. The Dallas school district had waivers at 31 campuses.

Whether or not we think 22 is a magic number for class size limits – Rep. Rob Eissler has said that you don’t really see a benefit from smaller class sizes until you get considerably under 22 per class – there is broad agreement that student performance benefited from the 1984 reforms. I have yet to see any claims about what the effect of larger class sizes might mean, but it seems to me that with all the waivers that have been granted in recent years, there ought to be enough data to allow us to draw some conclusions. Why not commission a study to compare the districts that have received waivers to similar districts that have not, and see what it tells us? And if such a study has already been done, please show it to us. Why fly blind when we don’t have to?

Which leads to a second question. Given that we don’t necessarily know what the effect of undoing the 22:1 ratio will be, and given that school districts have been able to get waivers to that whenever they’ve needed to, why make a permanent change? Why not just suspend the rules related to getting waivers for two years, and let the school districts work it out as best they can? Because otherwise it sure looks to me like the goal here is to force school districts to fire a bunch of teachers – for which superintendents and school board members will be blamed, not the Lege – while using the discussion of the class size limit as a distraction. If the Republican intent is to increase unemployment, the least they can do is be honest about it.

The coming cuts to public education

Dec 10th, 2010
by Charles Kuffner.
6 comments

We know that public education is a huge part of the state’s budget, and in the absence of any willingness on the part of the Republicans to ensure that it’s properly funded, we know there will be cuts coming. How deep, and what form they take, no one is sure yet.

First, expect fewer teachers in classrooms. For most Texas school districts, personnel costs — employee salaries and benefits — account for 80 percent to 90 percent of total expenses. While the goal for belt-tightening districts will be “to stay as far away from the children” as possible, says Wayne Pierce, the executive director of the Equity Center, which advocates for increased funding to districts, there’s only so much they can do without touching such a large chunk of their budget.

With the specter of the 2011 shortfall looming, many districts have already stripped what they can from administrative and custodial positions, he says. And delaying routine maintenance like fixing leaky roofs until better times can only take them so far. That leaves spending on teachers, which in turn means cutting salaries and, in some cases, eliminating positions. “You have to have electricity, you have to have gasoline for the buses, you have to have teaching supplies,” Pierce says. “So bottom line, you have to cut personnel.”

It’s important to remember that school districts have been operating on tight budgets for years now thanks to the 2006 property tax cut, and that they’ve already been cutting back on things like school bus service. As is the case with Texas’ budget, there’s just not that much fat to cut in many cases.

More cost savings could result from lawmakers lightening the regulatory burden on districts. “The Legislature says we’re giving you less money, but we’re not going to make you do this, so you figure out how to spend it,” explains Sheryl Pace, a senior analyst at the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association.

For instance, state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, has proposed lifting the cap on class size. A state law passed in 1984 requires no greater than a 22-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio in pre-kindergarten through fourth grade. If the Legislature decided to temporarily remove that mandate, it would relieve districts from the burden of creating a new class with an additional teacher and classroom every time the number of students in the class hits 23 — something Patrick has said would save them “millions and millions of dollars.”

Teachers’ groups oppose that approach. They question whether the benefit will outweigh the detriment to students’ educational experience, and if it will actually help reduce costs. Districts can already apply for a waiver if they lack the space or qualified teachers to create a new class. Brock Gregg, a lobbyist with the Association of Texas Professional Educators, says his organization is “very focused” on making sure the lawmakers understand how essential small class sizes are to effective public education. “If cuts occur,” Gregg says, “the priority should be on keeping experienced, qualified teachers in front of each student in an appropriate-sized class so students can receive individual attention.”

Let’s be clear about what this would mean.

Nearly 12,000 elementary school teaching jobs would be slashed – for a total annual savings of $558 million – if the state scraps the current 22-pupil class size limit in elementary grades, Comptroller Susan Combs recommended Wednesday.

[…]

“This is the typical penny-wise and pound-foolish arithmetic that this state has engaged in for decades,” said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association. “It’s no surprise that if you put more kids in classrooms and fire a bunch of teachers, you’ll save money. And you don’t save $558 million a year without firing thousands of elementary school teachers.”

Brock Gregg of the Association of Texas Professional Educators said the class size limit is one of the main reasons that Texas elementary school students have done better on national standardized tests than most of their peers.

“The question is whether we should eliminate a program that we know works and helps give students the best opportunity to succeed,” he said.

Texas American Federation of Teachers President Linda Bridges noted school districts can now easily obtain waivers from the class size limit – and 145 districts did so last year, citing lack of classroom space or enough teachers.

That’s an awful lot of lost jobs for a fairly modest amount of savings; if the numbers cited in the Trib story are accurate, you’d still be looking for $2.5 to $4.5 billion more to cut. Maybe allowing for an average class size of 22 instead of a maximum won’t have a negative effect on student performance, but it seems unlikely to be a net positive. Other than a demonstration of just how far the Republican Party is willing to go to defend their ginormous unaffordable property tax cut from 2006, what does this accomplish?

Also on the table is more charter schools.

The [Senate Education Committee] recommendation on charter schools would remove the cap of 215 charter school operators – a limit that has been in effect for several years. Republican lawmakers have generally favored the allowance of more charter schools, while Democrats have called for stronger state oversight of existing charter campuses.

Committee members also recommended that the state’s Permanent School Fund be used to guarantee construction bonds for charter schools and that their state funding be increased to match what regular public schools receive.

The four Democrats on the committee voiced objections to some of the charter school recommendations, saying the state cannot commit more funding to charter schools at a time when regular public schools are facing possible cutbacks.

Well, at least this might provide a landing place for some of the 12,000 teachers the Republicans want to fire. I don’t necessarily oppose this particular measure. On the whole, I don’t believe charter schools are any better or worse than public schools – there are good ones and bad ones – and I’m willing to give some help to the good ones in return for some assurance that we’ll do a better job of policing and closing down the bad ones. If that’s on the table, then I’m open to hearing more. I fear that the basic plan will be simply to swap in more charter schools to pick up the slack, and as with the class size limits I don’t see how that’s going to help student performance.

Scrap it and start over

Sep 21st, 2010
by Charles Kuffner.
7 comments

Good to hear.

Texas needs to scrap its school funding system and start all over, Senate Education Chair Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said Thursday, as other members of a special school finance committee agreed that the existing system is hopelessly broken.

“We need to find a better system that works for all of us,” said Shapiro, who also is co-chair of the Select Committee On Public School Finance Weights, Allotments and Adjustments.

According to committee members and experts, the system has vast inequities of more than $1,000 per student and is built on adjustments for low-income students, rural school districts, small districts, medium districts and other factors that are nearly 30 years old with little reflection of real costs.

“We need to change our system so people understand it because we don’t understand it,” said Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, who co-chairs the special committee.

Well, yeah. It’s nice to see legislators talking about this before the next lawsuit gets filed. The next step, as Rep. Scott Hochberg noted in the story, is to come to grips with the fact that the schools are underfunded as well. When we’re ready to deal with that, we’ll really have something. But this is still a good first step.

And when we do get around to changing this system, let’s make sure we don’t make it worse.

Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said he favors a sales tax increase to fund public education instead of property tax revenue.

“The homeowners and the commercial business owners can’t stand much more,” Patrick said, noting that all consumers would directly contribute to public education if the funding source shifts from property to sales.

Every penny increase in the state’s current 6.25 cent sales tax rate would generate $2.4 billion, he said.

What isn’t being said here is that Patrick would also cut property taxes by an equivalent amount. That would not only ensure that the schools remain perpetually underfunded, it would also give people like Dan Patrick a sizable reduction in their tax bill while imposing a significant tax increase on the vast majority of Texans. If you want Dan Patrick to raise your taxes, without doing anything to improve the schools, you should be cheering him on. If you want to see actual progress being made to fix this problem, you shouldn’t be. You should also be supporting Bill White, but I figure that goes without saying by now.

Helping middle schoolers

Sep 16th, 2010
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

You’d think this would be a pretty basic thing to do.

Texas Sen. Florence Shapiro was stunned a few years ago when state auditors answered her request with a white surrender flag: They could not tell her which programs designed to help struggling, low-income students worked and which didn’t.

Billions of dollars flow into programs designed to boost poor students and to keep them in school. But there are too many variables to measure their impact.

The Plano Republican, chair of the Senate Education Committee, plans to team up with Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, on legislation that gives more personalized attention to middle school students.

One of her favorite lines: “Students drop out in the sixth grade and walk out in the ninth grade.”

The focus will be on reading, writing and math, plus absenteeism and behavior for struggling sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students. She’s still working out the details to draft the bill.

I know that measuring performance is a challenging thing to do, but you’d think that with all the emphasis we’ve put on standardized testing we’d have some idea what sorts of things tend to help students with their test scores, if nothing else. It’s not like we’ve just started with this stuff. Surely other states must have some ideas we can crib. Let’s get with the program already.

Our Hispanic schools

May 19th, 2010
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

Take a look at the future.

If you want to see how profoundly the state’s population is changing, look at the faces of the children in Texas public school classrooms.

In all but rural areas, Hispanic enrollment is rapidly surpassing that of whites. Hispanic schoolchildren make up nearly 49 percent of Texas’ 4.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade students, according to the Texas Education Agency. About one-third of students are white.

Demographers have long projected dramatic population changes for Texas, and the state’s leaders have acknowledged the economic, social and political impact they will have — but hardly ever in the present tense. Now, they must confront the realization that the state is not adequately funding the education of a growing population that is generally poorer and less proficient in English.

“We were warned about this,” said Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano. “You look at the future, but you don’t think it’s going to be now.”

Texas has been a minority majority state for several years now, so none of this should come as a surprise. In fact, we saw a similar report from the TEA last year. Really, this isn’t even news, in the sense that it isn’t new. It’s just finally starting to sink in for some people.

Which makes the timing of our budget crisis all the more unfortunate.

During the past decade, enrollment from low-income families has grown to 2.8 million, or nearly 59 percent of all students. The number of English-language learners has increased to nearly 816,000.

Both types of students are more expensive to teach.

[…]

Key lawmakers already are warning they will not seek new taxes next year to address a severe state budget shortfall. But shortchanging education is not a smart response, some observers say.

“Education is not something we do for children. Education is something we do to children for society. This demographic is an asset — if it’s educated. It’s a liability if it’s not,” said Scott McCown, executive director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

But McCown warns that Texas cannot meet its growing education demands with the current tax system.

“It’s not the best time to be talking about investing in the future, but, nonetheless, we have to begin a serious study about revising that state’s tax system,” McCown said. “We are not keeping up with enrollment growth and inflation in public education, much less providing the money to meet higher standards and closing the dropout rate.”

As noted before, we know what we need to do, we just have to be willing to do it. Money we’re not investing in education now is money we’ll be spending later, on social services and the criminal justice system. It’s terribly short-sighted, yet the almost certain outcome of the next legislative session will be cuts to the education budget. And even if that’s only a small step backwards instead of a giant one, we’ll still have a structural deficit that we continue to be unwilling to talk about, much less solve. But that’s where we are, and the future be damned.

A decade ago, former state demographer Steve Murdock warned that the average household income in Texas would drop by around $6,500 by the year 2040 from 2000 levels unless the education trend line changed.

“I see no signs of a reversal in such trends,” said Murdock, now on the faculty of Rice University. “The demographics are very overpowering, and we clearly show signs of falling farther behind. It is, as we have noted, the major challenge to Texas’ future.”

Here was Murdock saying the same things five years ago:

By [20]23 or [20]24, we’re talking about three out of every four Texas workers being non-Anglo. I like to say, well, if I, as an aging Anglo, forget that the quality of services I’m going to have—fire, police, and other services—depend on how well primarily the working-age population is doing, I really do so to my own detriment. Our fates are intertwined and related. How well our non-Anglo citizens do in Texas is how well Texas will do.

I wish I felt optimistic about that, but I don’t. Too many people in our state government have demonstrated by their actions and priorities they just don’t care about it. I just hope it won’t be too late by the time we have enough people in government who do care.

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