Parents for Educating Texas

How Did We Get Here? Texas School Funding Crisis, Part 2

Dr. Burkett is on a roll - here is part two of the great Texas school finance mystery. In tonight's post, Burkett takes us from the Robin Hood financing he wrote about last week to the present day. Fascinating look at where all the money has gone.

School finance in Texas has a checkered and varied history, as lawmakers in modern eras have sought to meet their state constitutional requirement to provide a free education.

In the late 1980s the state of Texas faced a school funding crisis. This crisis was different than that facing school districts today – this time the issue was property taxes and a school district’s ability to levy funds from local sources. The result of the crisis was several law suits, including a groundbreaking suit known as Edgewood ISD v. Kirby.

Edgewood ISD in the San Antonio area has been a historically poor school district with limited ability to levy property taxes comparable to neighboring districts. For example, home values in Edgewood ISD were relatively low when compared to the affluent Alamo Heights ISD. By sheer comparison of home values, Alamo Heights could levy local taxes at a near 3-1 rate when compared to Edgewood. Since this was the sole source of school funding at the time, the issue of equity was raised in the courts.

Edgewood would win their case as the courts asserted that the issue of equity was contrary to the intent of the constitution's Texas Education Clause. The state had always provided a minimum per-student wealth to school districts with a provision to allow local school districts to levy their own taxes. With that, Edgewood proved inequity thorough their inability to levy taxes equal to property wealthy districts.

The legislative result of this lawsuit was the requirement to develop a new system of funding which ultimately became known as “Robin Hood.” The Robin Hood system was aptly named as it recaptured funds from wealthy school districts and redistributed those funds to poorer school districts in an effort to balance equity. School districts would continue to levy local property taxes, but property-wealthy districts would have to send money back to the state for redistribution to property-poor districts.

The system successfully achieved the goal of balancing equity. Clearly, property-poor school districts benefitted from the program as it gave them increased funding for programs, instructional supplies, teachers, and other needs. Independent School Districts (also known as County Education Districts) were developed on the county level to redistribute funds to school districts at a local level, and more oversight was given to monitor the spending of funds. The program worked well for property-poor districts that now had equitable funding to compete with property-wealthy districts.

However, Robin Hood was not well received by most property-wealthy districts. With the recapture of their local funds by the state, affluent areas were beginning to struggle to meet growing student populations, housing booms, and cost of instruction.  With the increased student growth in the 1990s and a robust economy, the cost of education was rising and districts were forced to raise taxes to meet the needs of students; particularly in wealthy districts whose budgets were shrinking each year from recapture. By the late 1990s, nearly 10 years into Robin Hood, most school districts in the state of Texas had reached the state-mandated property tax cap of $1.50 per $100 valuation of a property.

As costs continued to rise, as well as frustrations over recapture, a contingent of property-wealthy school districts sued the state of Texas to again fix school funding; this time over both equity and adequacy. Additionally, they challenged the legal authority of the state to issue a statewide property tax (unconstitutional in the state of Texas), which became evident with nearly 95% of the school districts in the state capped at $1.50.

The suit resulted in our current funding formula system, which is a system that takes into account a variety of funding factors known as weights to distribute funds from the state back to the school districts. These weights take into account technology, programs such as special education, and bilingual education, as well as other costs to education. Funding considerations are also made for regional variations in costs of living, as well as areas that experience declining property values. (See How Did We Get to This Point?)

With the state promising to pick up some of the slack from the cost incurred by levying local property taxes, in 2006 the state lowered, or compressed, the local property tax rate for school districts from $1.50 to $1.04 (or lower in some areas). The state promised to make up the difference in funding through state revenues and reduced the burden on property owners.

However, that promise has proved challenging for the state of Texas as their biennial contribution to school districts has steadily declined. To make up the difference, the state instated a tax on businesses in the state which has fallen short of expectations (the tax is currently being challenged in the Texas State Supreme Court as an income tax on business). In addition, with increased foreclosures and decreasing property values across the state, localities have struggled to make up the difference in funding for local districts. 

Lastly, the formulas used to process state funds to local districts has proven itself broken and inadequate, giving some school districts significant discrepancies in per student funding when compared to other districts. (See "My Kid is Worth More Than Your Kid.")

Now, with nearly $5 billion cut to education funding from the state in 2011, school districts are again suing the state of Texas to fix our broken funding system in the name of equity and adequacy. (See “Open Letter to the Texas State Legislature.")

 

Dr. Jerry Burkett is an elementary school principal in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex who has worked in education for more than 11 years. He received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Dallas Baptist University with specialization in alternative and traditional certification and its relationship to classroom management. Dr. Burkett has served as an advocate for education, writing and speaking on educational topics ranging from school finance to educational issues in the classroom.  He was recently featured on the Scott Braddock Show on KRLD 1080 radio. Contact him on Twitter, or visit his blog, Texas Public Education.

Texas School Funding Crisis - How Did We Get Here?

Welcome back DFW principal Dr. Jerry Burkett, who is going to explain how Texas school funding works in a series of posts beginning with tonight's - how "Robin Hood"  and its fallout shaped our present school funding system. He'll also address the question that is on all of our minds: where did all the money go? According to the latest statistics, Texas ranks 37th in the nation in per-student spending; we are 47th in literacy skills, and 49th in verbal SAT scores. 

by Dr. Jerry Burkett

Many of you have been reading this blog, news sources and other sites to be more informed of the Texas school funding crisis that is facing our state and legislature. The information is scary when we throw around terms like "billion dollar deficit," "teacher lay offs," and "financial exigency." The reality is that many educators don't really know how schools are funded in Texas, and there is no real reason why they should. Teachers teach. Period.

Now teachers are seeing their schools close and their colleagues lose their jobs all in the name of "not enough school funding." Why? How did we get here? Recession? Bad economy? Housing crash? No.These are but minor contributing factors to what ultimately became the undoing of school finance in Texas. Let me explain.

Let's go back to the year 1993. I was a junior in high school - good times. But this was also the year of the birth of "Robin Hood." I am not talking about our cloaked hero played by Russel Crowe or Kevin Costner (American accent and all). I am talking about the school funding juggernaut that was dubbed "Robin Hood" because it very simply took (recaptured) from rich school districts and gave (redistributed) those funds to poor school districts. This school funding formula was all done in the name of equality and equity.  Texas was facing a series of lawsuits in the 1980s and 90s that forced the state to provide exactly that--equity and equality--for all Texas schools and their students. Hence, "Robin Hood" was born.

"Robin Hood" lived quite awhile in Texas and many would argue that it did exactly what it was designed to do: provide an equitable education for many of the poorer school districts in Texas. "Robin Hood" allowed for many schools, once the focal points of those lawsuits back in the 80s and 90s, to thrive and see some
success.

But let's look at "Robin Hood" conceptually. Since school funding is largely based on property tax values, and many of those higher-taxed properties are in community-driven, close-knit suburban school districts, it became a very hard pill to swallow for those suburban districts to have their hard-earned
property tax dollars taken (recaptured) from them and given (redistributed) to poorer urban districts. To make matters worse, in order to provide an adequate education for our students, districts began to raise those property taxes and by 2004, most were hitting the state-required $1.50-per-$100 property valuation cap. These higher taxes were driven by the fact that educating our students was becoming more expensive in the 90s and early 2000s. So let the lawsuits begin!

And that is what happened. By 2004, "Robin Hood" and his band of thieves (recapturers) were on their death bed in Austin, and the state legislature had to go back to the drawing board to once again come up with an equitable and equal form of school funding for all students in Texas.

And they came up with a new system...well, they tried. They gave us our current system, which was driven in equal parts by necessity and politics. Let's start with the necessity.

Taxes were very high and many people disagreed with the concept of "Robin Hood." Plus, with the $1.50 cap having been reached by many school districts in Texas, it became necessary to alleviate the burden. So, let's cut those taxes by 1/3. Yes, 1/3. This lightened the tax burden on citizens, but we still have to provide for students--equal and equitable--so everybody sends in their (property tax) money and that money is given back to the school districts based on very complicated formulas that I will not explain here. To put it simply, some school districts have students with higher needs than others. Those higher need districts get a little bit more money. (Google "WADA or Weighted Daily Attendance Average" for more info.)

Seems a little more fair, right? Everyone pays their share and the money is given out based on need. Plus, local school districts can still pass bond elections and raise their local tax rate (a very small
amount) to raise local revenue. Not a bad deal. But, the state was well aware of this and established a provision in the new funding system that said that if your local property values go up, you don't
need more state money. So, property values go up = less allocations from the state. The inverse is true as well.

In fact, the only way the state is going to give you more money is if your student population goes up. Your Weighted Average Daily Attendance (WADA) will not be reconfigured.  For 2011, school districts have had to operate on a system that is figuring school funding based on what was established back in 2006. IT HAS NOT CHANGED!

Now, the politics. I'll just make a list for you:

• Governor Rick Perry ran in the 2006 election on a platform of "I lowered your property taxes." He did not mention that it had to be done, or any of the other facts mentioned above. He needed the votes and the confidence from the voters and he won.
• This funding system was designed to be a temporary fix.  It was obvious to the state comptroller at the time, Carolyn Keeton Strayhorn, that the state had created a structural tax deficit for school fundings.  How can you take 1/3 away and still expect the districts to perform?The cost of education has increased steadily and that funding has not been available to keep up with demand.
• A business franchise tax was put into place to help recapture more funds to take the place of the missing 1/3 - but it did not generate enough revenue. Certain business were exempted from the tax in 2008, producing even fewer funds.
• Aside from money provided for student enrollment growth, the only way for districts to access additional funding is by asking local voters to approve a tax rate increase or asking the legislature for more resources.
• The school finance system is not adjusted for current instructional requirements and rising performance standards.

What the State of Texas has left us with is a structural tax deficit that does not seem to have plans of going away any time soon. Schools need more money to simply meet the needs of students - it costs more to educate kids today, in 2011, than it did in 2006. No adjustments were built into the system to address this reality.

 

Dr. Jerry Burkett is an elementary school principal in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex who has worked in education for more than 11 years. He received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Dallas Baptist University with specialization in alternative and traditional certification and its relationship to classroom management. Dr. Burkett has served as an advocate for education, writing and speaking on educational topics ranging from school finance to educational issues in the classroom.  He was recently featured on the Scott Braddock Show on KRLD 1080 radio. Contact him on Twitter, or visit his blog, Texas Public Education.

 

Texas statehouse new idea on the budget: do nothing

According to the lastest report from The Texas Tribune, "What if Texas Doesn't Pass a School Finance Bill?", both House and Senate school finance bills are stalled or next to dead with only two weeks left in the session. (Get more info on Senate's bill, sponsored by Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, here, and the more severe House bill, sponsored by Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston here). This latest development leaves room for a third option for funding our schools: do nothing at all. 

What does do nothing look like? According to the Tribune, the state would be forced to continue to pay the districts under existing law. Then, "That would mean borrowing from the second year of the biennium to fully fund the first year. When the money dwindles in the second year, Commissioner of Education Robert Scott would have to ask the Legislative Budget Board to tell the Legislature to vote on using the Rainy Day Fund to fill in the gap."

A second idea allows districts to raise property tax revenue to allow districts to make up the difference, an idea that the Commissioner of Ed - a Perry appointee - is likely to dismiss. 

While most parents agree that neither the Senate or the House plan adequately provide for the cost of running our districts, I worry that no plan is actually worse. What happens if the money runs out and Scott refuses to ask for the Rainy Day Fund? What if they ask the districts to make up the slack in the second year? What if we're left holding the bag before 2013, when the next legislative session meets?

 

Texas parents, help stop HB400

 

According to this morning's Texas Tribune, we have a second opportunity to kill HB 400, which seeks to "eliminate minimum salary requirements, lift the 22:1 class size ratio, authorize unpaid furloughs and remove termination notification requirements." Last night was the second time that those who oppose the bill (both Democrats and Republicans) pulled a parliamentary move and snagged a vote on the bill due to a technicality. 

If this bill passes, who do you think will be teaching your students? The cheapest teachers, that's who - ones who have the lowest level of training and require the least amount of money to be hired. (Please go to the National Council of Teacher Quality and download the first entry, a study performed on "alternative certification.") And who will these new teachers be teaching? The highest number of students that will fit in a room, in order to save money.

Governor Perry has cried over and over that he does not want to use the Rainy Day Fundfor public schools, leaving it instead for "real emergencies." The Texas House of Representatives has made perfectly clear that a complete dismantling of public education, especially among the poorest and neediest students, doesn't bother them one bit. Governor Perry is no friend to public education, and neither is the House. Who will speak up for us? 

If the proposals as they stand in HB400 don't make you very angry, they should. Our property taxes were lowered by Gov. Perry four years ago (according to Perry, saving Texas taxpayers $16.4 billion in paying public school taxes, see the governor's website under "achievements"), and we are now faced with a startling budget shortfall that leaves all of our schools - in the short future, we could be educating nearly a tenth of the nation's population - in crisis. Here in DFW, 1,000 teachers, aides, librarians and nurses have already been let go, and we don't know what more extreme cuts may lie in waiting.

While the budget crisis is the focus of the problem right this minute, I don't believe it's the cause. The citizens of Texas voted these lawmakers into office, so it's difficult to be angry at them now - they are only doing to us exactly what they promised they would do. The budget crisis is merely a symptom of a much larger malaise, a stand-in for a philosophy that promotes individual freedoms at the cost of any and all common good that gets in its way. That is not to say that the budget should not be balanced, or that Texas does not have problems in the public education system, because it does; yet take one look at the facts and it's perfectly clear why we rank near or at the bottom of every national assessment in education. 

1. Texas has the highest repeat teen pregnancy rate in the nation (undoubtedly due in some part to our rabid focus on abstinence education at the detriment to real and substantial sex education and easy access of contraceptives).

2. Texas spends more of its state budget on public education than anything else, yet our per-student dollar amount ranks near the bottom nationally.

3. Texas is a "right to work" state that, along with non-union states South Carolina and North Carolina, ranks at the bottom of national assessments - yet states with strong teachers unions rank near the top. 

4. Between 1980 and 2000, the ratio of growth in Texas corrections to higher education spending was 7:1.

On top of fighting for the budget - and fighting for the money to educate our children properly is of the highest priority - we need a statewide (and perhaps a nationwide) change in attitude. We need to come together and decide that education is a top priority, not with our dollars, but with everything we've got. Our children are losing ground both nationally and in the world; until we decide that the common good is good for Texas, public education will continue to deteriorate. 

All that to say, email and call your representatives today and say NO to HB400. 

 

 

What can we do for the American teacher?

KERA radio reported this morning that over 200 DISD employees received pink slips on Friday, while close to 700 teachers, nurses, and teachers' aids will be let go this week in Tarrant County. I can't help but ask myself, what are we doing?  It's difficult to remember the citizens of Texas elected those to the statehouse who seek to slash our education budgets and rip the rug right out from underneath our most precious assets. They promised to do this to us, and we elected them anyway. Now we will pay the price.

It's time to turn the tide away from those who want to hoard the emergency fund (for a "real emergency"), enlarge classroom sizes, pour millions into new standardized tests - ones that promise to actually be difficult enough to assess student achievement - and fire hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers across the state. How will we react to what the politicians are feeding us? 

We must continue to fight. We must continue to hound our state and national representatives, sign petitions, organize at our schools, and inform ourselves of the alternatives. But most of all, until we recognize as a people how valuable education is to everything - the civic, economic and cultural fabric of Texas itself - we will continue to fall nearly last in the nation.

Wake up, Texas. 

Here is an op-ed from yesterday's New York Times by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegeri printed in full. Read it and think. This is no time to give up on our public education system. 

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

By DAVE EGGERS and NÍNIVE CLEMENTS CALEGARI

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.

So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?

We’ve been working with public school teachers for 10 years; every spring, we see many of the best teachers leave the profession. They’re mowed down by the long hours, low pay, the lack of support and respect.

Imagine a novice teacher, thrown into an urban school, told to teach five classes a day, with up to 40 students each. At the year’s end, if test scores haven’t risen enough, he or she is called a bad teacher. For college graduates who have other options, this kind of pressure, for such low pay, doesn’t make much sense. So every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the United States $7.34 billion yearly. The effect within schools — especially those in urban communities where turnover is highest — is devastating.

But we can reverse course. In the next 10 years, over half of the nation’s nearly 3.2 million public school teachers will become eligible for retirement. Who will replace them? How do we attract and keep the best minds in the profession?

People talk about accountability, measurements, tenure, test scores and pay for performance. These questions are worthy of debate, but are secondary to recruiting and training teachers and treating them fairly. There is no silver bullet that will fix every last school in America, but until we solve the problem of teacher turnover, we don’t have a chance.

Can we do better? Can we generate “A Plan”? Of course.

The consulting firm McKinsey recently examined how we might attract and retain a talented teaching force. The study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do.

And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a maximum of $150,000. Could we do this? If we’re committed to “winning the future,” we should. If any administration is capable of tackling this, it’s the current one. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan understand the centrality of teachers and have said that improving our education system begins and ends with great teachers. But world-class education costs money.

For those who say, “How do we pay for this?” — well, how are we paying for three concurrent wars? How did we pay for the interstate highway system? Or the bailout of the savings and loans in 1989 and that of the investment banks in 2008? How did we pay for the equally ambitious project of sending Americans to the moon? We had the vision and we had the will and we found a way.

Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari are founders of the 826 National tutoring centers and producers of the documentary “American Teacher.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 1, 2011

 

An earlier version of this article misstated one finding from a McKinsey poll of 900 top-tier American college students. The poll found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a maximum — not a minimum — of $150,000.

 

TEXAS TRIBUNE reports Dallas magnet schools will take the biggest hit

Whether it's the Senate or House version of the budget, DISD magnet schools will take the brunt of the budget cuts in the district, according to an article published yesterday at the Texas Tribune.

Two of the Townview schools, the high schools of Science and Engineering and Talented and Gifted, have been consistently rated in the top five by Newsweek's annual list of best schools in the country. The Talented and Gifted school has earned the number one spot for every year except one since 2006.

I posted a comment at the bottom of this article on the Texas Tribune website:

If we, the parents of the state of Texas, don't stand up and tell our leadership what to do, it appears we are sunk. The decisions continue to get more preposterous by the day - like this one, which will in essence punish the most successful schools, which are housing the leaders and innovators of tomorrow. In any sane environment this would be seen as ludicrous, as these schools are nationally recognized and the pride of Dallas; they could be used as a blueprint for the other schools in the district. Unfortunately, we somehow elected these folks to office and are now upset that they are doing to us exactly what they told us they'd do. We need to begin voting in our own best interest, taking care of our communities and our children. Until we begin to do this, we will keep reading articles just like this one. 

Could you post one, too? Click on the comments button at the top of the article and let your voices be heard.

 

Can we fix what's broken?

I was struck this morning - as I scanned my Google Reader page of aggregated education info, skimming the latest doomsday headlines and trying to put together a post to help excite you (and me) into action - by a memory of a piece I read a couple of months ago in The New York Times about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which, simply put, is defined as "our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our own incompetence." I have the Dunning-Kruger Effect in regards to public education - I believe it's happening to me right now.

In other words, I will be brave enough to admit I don't even know what I don't know about public education, and how to make it right. I've read and analyzed just enough to make me little more than dangerous; although I'm angry that the budget's going to be cut and I want something done, I've never taught in a child's classroom, and my oldest son is only in the second grade.

I am going to assume that a lot of you parents out there might feel the same way: obviously the system is broken, but there are so many problems, it's easy to get overloaded as we try to focus on the ones that matter most. Or even to know which ones matter most. It's the states and their budgets; it's the federal government; it's the miles of red-tape administrators; it's the ever-growing mountain of standardized testing. But, we all know it's more than that: it's rampant poverty among children, it'steachers who are demoralized, bombarded, and certainly underpaid. It's the parents, the class sizes, and lest we forget, the children themselves. It's a society that values outcomes more than process, quick results over a journey that might lead to discovery.

And I'm not even thinking about how the DISD could very well close my son's magnet school.

Then I read this piece, about the Strive Together partnership in Cincinnati. Suddenly, my lungs expanded and I could breathe again. This sounds like the kind of idea I had envisioned for Texas. It seems that the people of Ohio and a few counties in Kentucky have found a way to climb out of the education blame-hole and do something for the children who are struggling, and guess what? It does not involve more mandatory testing. In a quick summary, Strive Together is a group of business leaders, government agencies, district superintendents, early childhood advocates, college and university presidents and service providers who have come together "to improve results for every child, every step of the way, from cradle to career."

What's working for Strive Together is the consideration of the entire child from birth. Making sure each child is prepared to enter school, supporting them throughout their public school career, and then getting them into college. As we all know, it takes a village, and they've got the whole village working on it - with volunteers tutoring, United Way working on the early childhood years (where so much of future success is determined), and community leaders organizing recruitment and preparation of the most talented teachers and principals.

According to the Times article, the leaders of Strive Together focus on the data they receive as to what's specifically working, so they are able to constantly evaluate which kids are successful and why. I like that it's a large and involved work-in-progress.

Texas culture must change in order to provide opportunities for our children - and Stand Together is a great example of how a community has come together and put aside differences in ideology to offer solutions. I think this is exactly along the lines of what must happen here in order for us to surmount the growing pile of educational problems.

Please let me know your comments and ideas by clicking on the 'comments and reactions' link right below this line!

 

Rainy Day Fund is now 'on the table'

Several parents have emailed me, asking if I'll look into the $9 billion 'rainy day fund' of taxes from oil and gas revenues that the state has in its coffers. We are all wondering if lawmakers will dip into that fund to alleviate some of the pain caused by upcoming budget cuts to our schools.

I read this piece in The Statesman (Austin) about freshman Tea Party Caucus members of both Texas House and Senate turning away from campaign promises and leaning toward opening the fund. It seems that austerity and small government don't work so well when the new lawmakers have to return to their hometowns and explain why they have to fire teachers and close nursing homes.

According to The Statesman, Rep. Dan Huberty of Humble, Texas, says, ""I think there were a lot of deer-in-the-headlight looks when the budget was laid out."

The Texas Tribune has a very comprehensive section on the Rainy Day Fund, explaining in detail many lawmakers' positions as well as special tricks devised by the politicians who do/do not want to use it and why (see Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools).  Recent headlines show that state Comptroller Susan Combs wants to use the fund, because state agencies have already made all the cuts they can.

If this is the case, why not make this the time to go after our representatives and beg them to keep the Rainy Day Fund on the table? Can you send yours an email and ask that the Rainy Day Fund be used to help your child? That would certainly soften the blow of the terrible cuts that are headed our way.

 

What's a Mom to do about public education? Or, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. And don't you forget it.

Late last evening, I received a phone call from a friend who had just left the Save Booker T. Washington School of the Performing Arts rally in downtown Dallas. I was working hard on my piece(s) regarding the low standards for Texas teachers that I've been promising, but I stopped.

"Hearing these kids talk about how much they love their school brought me to tears," said my friend, whose children are not quite school age. "I had no idea things were this bad."

Yes, they are that bad. What has been a slow downhill slide for public schooling in general has screeched to crisis mode with the looming multimillion dollar budget cuts that threaten our teachers and classroom sizes. My friend also said that someone at the rally mentioned that legislators had heard from lots of teachers but not from many parents (anecdotal but important information).

 At that point, I put down my notebook, and figured we'll get back to the teacher issues soon. They are important, I think, in understanding how we can help our schools get better - but, for now, they have to wait.

First, we need to talk. You and me.

You may not see yourself as an activist. Neither do I. I sit by myself in my small, sunny office (er, laundry room) and type on my little blog and hope that I can reach some other parents and get them interested in changing their schools - well, okay, changing the school, the school district, the State Board of Ed, and yes, the whole Texas culture and views toward education.

But that's too overwhelming. For now, let's just start with your school.

Or better yet, let's start with your child.

I read a startling article in the New York Times this morning about City University of New York's big problem - nearly 75% of incoming freshman must take remedial courses before they are ready for the actual college courses. At LaGuardia Community College in Queens, where 40% of math classes are remedial, faculty members feel they're nothing more than high school teachers. "'Most students have serious challenges remembering the basic rules of arithmetic,” Dr. Ianni said of his remedial math class. “The course is really a refresher, but they aren’t ready for a refresher. They need to learn how to learn.'”

I realize that that is New York, and this is Texas, but as a state ranked 49th in verbal SAT scores, can your imagination make the leap?

How about this one? Two days ago, the Texas State Legislature passed SB 79, a bill that had to clarify a previous bill prohibiting teachers from setting minimum grades on assignments - evidently teachers and administrators still wanted to be able to inflate students' grades so it appeared they weren't failing. The original bill, SB 2033, prohibited policies that disallowed teachers from scoring students below 50, 60 or sometimes 70%. Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott was quoted, when testifying before the Senate Nominations Committee, as saying "I recently asked teachers attending a conference how many were barred from giving low grades. I was stunned when half of the hands went up," he said.

And finally, I'd like you to take a look at this piece by first-year teacher Pamela Kripke,How Urban Public Schools Have It All Wrong, written about Marsh Middle School in Dallas ISD.

Your child needs you. How can we possibly expect to compete in a global economy when a majority of children graduate from high school not knowing how to read? Or do basic math? What are we doing?

You can save your school. You can save your child. If you get that done, and you want to move on to other schools, and other children, then do that. Your voice can be heard; mixed with mine, and hers, and his over here, we can begin to chip away at what may seem to be massive problems, but to keep from getting too disheartened and depressed, for now let's see them as a massive opportunity.

You may be sitting in your office or laundry room and saying to yourself, but, what do I do? Where do I start? How can I help? Well, I found this nifty little webpage for you. You can start here.

And you can start here:

Texas PTA

Keep Texas Smart - Save Texas Schools

Texas Tribune Public Ed page

Dallas Friends of Public Education

We've waited long enough; let's get together and change this, one child/school/school district/Board of Ed/culture at a time.

 

Fund Texas' Future Day

The Texas PTA has declared today Fund Texas' Future Day - they want all of us to write our representatives and beg them not to cut funding for our starved schools. If you need info for your rep, you can find it here. Here are the talking points the PTA has on its website to help you get started:

"Please personalize your message, but here are some important points to include in your email to your state representative:

• Texas PTA's legislative position is that funding public education is a priority.
• Regardless of what your campaign promises might have been, there are nearly five million reasons for you to look at all sources of funding to protect public education.  
• Cutting funding to public education is not acceptable.
• The Rainy Day Fund and all revenue sources should be considered to fund Texas's future.
• Texas children are our future.
• Texas businesses cannot thrive without an educated workforce.  The economic viability of our state is directly related to the education of our children."

 

I'm still working on pieces about Texas teachers, look for those coming tomorrow and Friday! And as always, please let me know if there's anything you'd like to know more about and I'll try and find it.