Cruel budget cuts to Texas Schools.

Texas is cutting its school budgets _ like California.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-03-11/save-our-schools/

Politicians (Particularly in Texas) Leave the Children Behind

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Will 2011 be the year of fiscal austerity? At the federal level, it’s still not clear: Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.

And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children.

Now, politicians — and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians — always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation’s children. Back during the 2000 campaign, then-candidate George W. Bush, touting the “Texas miracle” of dramatically lower dropout rates, declared that he wanted to be the “education president.” Today, advocates of big spending cuts often claim that their greatest concern is the burden of debt our children will face.

In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.

Consider, as a case in point, what’s happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America’s political future happens first.

Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you’re in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state’s rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.

But here’s the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.

It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.

But things are about to get much worse.

A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)

So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.

But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.

The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?

Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”

What California should learn about schools, budgets, and taxes from Texas

The so-called Texas Miracle is in trouble, demonstrating that fashioning fiscal policies strictly along low-tax lines doesn't protect you from budget deficits or business slumps or make your residents necessarily happy or healthy.

Michael Hiltzik Feb.9, 2011.

Billions of dollars in government red ink. Classroom spending near the bottom of national rankings and heading down. Desperate appeals to Uncle Sam for emergency funds to stave off cuts to the poor and elderly.

All this points to the obvious question: What's the matter with Texas?

Texas? Yes, the so-called Texas Miracle is in trouble. Unemployment soared and state tax revenue came in sharply below estimates during the recession, and the deficit mushroomed.

California's Legislature has won national renown for its dysfunction, but Texas lawmakers know how to squeeze dysfunction until it squeals. The late Molly Ivins reported years ago that when a good-government group ranked the Texas Legislature 38th among the 50 states, the reaction among knowledgeable Texans was, "You mean there are 12 worse than this?"

Maybe things have improved in the Texas statehouse since Ivins' day. But given that the legislators put off action on the budget this year so they could first debate an anti-abortion measure, a balanced-budget amendment for the U.S. Constitution and a voter-ID law, maybe not.

Pondering the problems of Texas isn't merely an exercise in schadenfreude, the pleasure one takes in the misfortune of others (some examples evoked by the puppets of the show "Avenue Q": "Football players getting tackled; CEOs getting shackled … "). The goal is to gain perspective on our own crisis and the conventional proposals to address it. The bottom line is that fashioning fiscal policies strictly along low-tax lines doesn't protect you from budget deficits or business slumps or make your residents necessarily happy or healthy.

The budget crises afflicting states coast to coast arise from a combination of the nationwide recession and obsolete or wrongheaded state taxing schemes. The National Council of State Legislatures says that at least 15 states face large deficits this year and 35 in fiscal 2012.

As things stand now, the council's figures place California's projected 2012 deficit at $19.2 billion, or 18.7% of its general fund, and the Texas deficit at $7.4 billion, or 17% of its budget. States with broad-based tax policies that balance property, income and sales taxes are best equipped to ride out economic cycles, because those levies don't all move in lockstep with the economy. Neither California, with its over-reliance on income and sales taxes, nor Texas, which has no income tax, qualifies.

Many state budgets will get worse before they get better, because federal stimulus funds used to close their gaps over the last two years are drying up. That points to a fact that hasn't been widely remarked upon: President Obama's stimulus program helped both California and Texas — indeed, many states — manage their deficits.

While Texas Gov. Rick Perry sucked up to the "tea party," declaring himself opposed to "government bailouts" and prattling about seceding from the union, he papered over his state's budget gap with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act funds, including increased federal handouts for education and Medicaid. So when you, the California taxpayer, hear talk of the Texas Miracle, you should take pride in having helped pay for it.

The supposed superiority of Texas over California in fiscal policy long has been a conservative article of faith. In 2009 the libertarian American Legislative Exchange Council published a report co-authored by the conservative economist Arthur Laffer underscoring the contrast. The report posited that "Texas' superior policies over the past several years are making the Lone Star State more resilient to the current economic downturn."

But Texas was hardly immune to the recession. From 2006 through 2010, the unemployment rate in Texas soared from 4.4% to 8.3%. Yes, that's a better showing than California, which went from 4.9% to 12.5%, but the difference may reflect the huge effect on California's economy of the popping of the housing bubble, which jumped our unemployment rate to a new magnitude and is likely to keep it there for a while.

The Laffer report focused chiefly on tax policy, its guiding principle being the lower, the better. Yet Texas' resistance to raising taxes to cover the cost of state government hasn't proved to be any more sustainable on the banks of the Rio Grande than it is on the shores of the Pacific.

With a Republican legislative majority in Austin adamantly refusing to raise taxes to cover a shortfall estimated at as much as $27 billion over the state's two-year budget cycle, budget drafters are talking about shutting dozens of nursing homes, taking a hatchet to college financial aid and university budgets and paring K-12 spending by $5 billion a year.

That last action could drop Texas out of its 2009-10 rank of 37th among states and the District of Columbia in per-pupil spending, as calculated by the National Education Assn., depositing it firmly in the cellar with California (42nd).

Laffer's admiration notwithstanding, part of the problem in Texas is fiscal stupidity. Californians love to cut their own taxes and expand spending programs; Texas in 2005 cut property taxes, which fund the schools, by one third, while increasing business taxes. But the business tax doesn't bring in as much money as the property tax did, and is more vulnerable to the economic cycle besides. The result was a widened budget deficit.

Curiously, Texas' reputation as a low-tax, business-friendly state survives although its state and local business levies exceed California's as a percentage of each state's business activity (4.9% versus 4.7% in 2009, according to a report by the accounting firm Ernst & Young). What's different is that Texas business taxation relies more on property, sales and excise taxes and government fees than California, which relies on taxing corporate income.

Of course, one reason many business owners and executives favor Texas over California is that the Lone Star State doesn't have a personal income tax — a big deal when you're pulling in a Texas-size paycheck.

But self-interest aside, what's at stake from fiscal policy in both states is the same — the services and programs that really matter to business owners, such as functioning schools, high-caliber universities and serviceable transport infrastructure.

Even more important are the measures that point to public well-being. In many categories, California and Texas are closer together than either state's residents would probably find comforting.

But here are a few where they're not: Texas ranks 49th in the nation (that is, third worst) in teen births; California 22nd. In providing prenatal care to expectant mothers, Texas is dead last, California eighth. Texas ranks 34th in median family income, with $47,143; California 13th, at $56,852. This is the harvest of its "superior policies," and given the current budget crisis, it's bound to get worse. Miraculous.

Article at latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110209,0,573520.column

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Texas Textbooks & California

From a talk which I gave in Odessa, Texas on Feb.25 ,2010. Re; the current textbook conflict. See prior post.

The history of the Chicano /Mexicano people exists, but  the Texas Board of Education has recently debated whether Mex American history to not be very important for the children’s textbooks in Texas. 

This is the way it was described in one report in the Texas Monthly.

“In January, members of the predominantly conservative Texas Board of Education discussed revising the state's social studies curriculum to include highly partisan perspectives on civil rights, the role of government, and American history in general.  Some of the more divisive suggestions range from banning mention of activist and union organizer Cesar Chavez to citing Ronald Reagan's "leadership in restoring national confidence' following Jimmy Carter's presidency."  The Board also discussed instructing students to "describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association."  There were further proposals to reference the United States as a Christian nation with a divine mission in the world.”

I think that decisions on this proposal will be made this spring.

There is an election for the State Board of Education next week.  Eight members are up for election. Have you considered who to vote for? Or against?  Hopefully during the conference you can figure out who is who on these issues. [Update.  The most conservative members were defeated. However, they remain on the Board until next December.

Now, in May, they have passed the new, biased, standards}

Most schools fail to teach an accurate, complete, history of the Chicano- Latino people.  This essentially means that the writers are choosing not to recognize reality. – not to tell the full story.

This  a problem created  in part by the  current State Board of Education.

When  students do not seem themselves as a part of history, their sense of self is limited.

         Marginalization negatively impacts their connections with school and their success at school.

         Dis empowers.

         Accurate history provides a sense of self, of direction, of purpose.

         Lack of history of self, does not commit students to democratic participation in the society.

         An outline of Latino history is in my book Choosing Democracy, and on my web site  The history of the Chicano /Mexicano people exists, but  the Texas Board of Education has recently debated whether Mex American history to not be very important for the children’s textbooks in Texas. 

This is the way it was described in one report.

“In January, members of the predominantly conservative Texas Board of Education discussed revising the state's social studies curriculum to include highly partisan perspectives on civil rights, the role of government, and American history in general.  Some of the more divisive suggestions range from banning mention of activist and union organizer Cesar Chavez to citing Ronald Reagan's "leadership in restoring national confidence' following Jimmy Carter's presidency."  The Board also discussed instructing students to "describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association."  There were further proposals to reference the United States as a Christian nation with a divine mission in the world.”

I think that decisions on this proposal will be made this spring.

There is an election for the State Board of Education next week.  Eight members are up for election. Have you considered who to vote for? Or against?  Hopefully during the conference you can figure out who is who on these issues.

Most schools fail to teach an accurate, complete, history of the Chicano- Latino people.  This essentially means that the writers are choosing not to recognize reality. – not to tell the full story.

This  a problem created  in part by the  current State Board of Education.

When  students do not seem themselves as a part of history, their sense of self is limited.

         Marginalization negatively impacts their connections with school and their success at school.

         Dis empowers.

         Accurate history provides a sense of self, of direction, of purpose.

         Lack of history of self, does not commit students to democratic participation in the society.

         An outline of Latino history is in my book,  Choosing Democracy, and on my web site of the Education and Democracy Institute.  See the link on the left.   along with lesson plans.  I urge you teachers to teach your students the truth- Yes, come inconvenient truths, not just myths.  For example, if a person is going to understand Texas society and the economy, they need to understand immigration. 

BTW. California is stumbling toward a better Framework- in about 2014.  See the Education and Democracy Institute. http://sites.google.com/site/democracyandeducationorg/Home/why-california-students-do-not-know-chicano-latino-history

  

The Texas Textbook controversy

The New Texas School Board Curriculum – Hee, Hee, Hee or No, No, No?

Oh, boy.

The Associated Press reports today, March 13, 2010, that, “A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history, and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.”  Apparently, down in Texas, there is a ferocious squabble as to whether students should be taught that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.  There are also some prevailing gold bugs down in Lone Star country that want to be assurred that students learn about the decline in the value of the dollar and that they are aware of the history of America’s abandonment of the gold standard.   The history of hip-hop as a cultural movement is to be excluded, while classification of historic periods will remain to be taught as B.C. and A.D.   So, is this something to get worked up about here?  Is there really anything that is newly controversial about school history curriculums that  Texas has revealed to us in ”three days of impassioned and acrimonious debate”?

In a word – No.

The late Howard Zinn, former professor of political science at Boston University, former activist, and former historian, said that he learned the same history in elementary school that he learned in high school, that he learned in college, and that he learned in graduate school.  The only difference was that, in graduate school, footnotes were included.  Professor Zinn earned his Ph.D. in history at Columbia University.  What Zinn learned later in his work was that there is really little dispute as to what took place in history.   Fact-checking can easily be used to determine whether something actually occurred.  The real issue with the writing of history is omission.   Zinn argued that what is chosen to be left out of history books is as important as to what is chosen to be included.

While Zinn’s opinion of contextual history was surely not original or unique, he did make a quantum leap.  Seeking to remedy many of the important omissions in American history, as we all learned it in school, he decided to write a book with an emphasis on the omissions.  His wonderful book was, of course, “The People’s History of the United States.”  In that book, one can read about American history, not from the powers-that-be viewpoint, not from the standpoint of the political/economic movers and shakers, not from the dogmatics who had the power and means to determine what our American children would read but, instead, from a completely different perspective.  Zinn made an incredible effort to write history from  minority perspective, from a dispossessed people’s perspective, indeed from the view of largely forgotten and historically invisible peoples.  He wanted to tell their stories, and he was not happy that these stories had been omitted from the teaching curriculum of not only elementary and secondary education, but also, from higher education – indeed from most all widely published sources.  He knew that he, as a professional historian had never learned about this omitted part of history in his education.  It was time, he thought, to shed some light to others on these historical events.

I say, “Let the powers-that-be in Texas re-write the student’s history books as they see fit in their parochial, political and regulatory process. There is really nothing new about these sorts of political squabbles.”  However, I do recommend that, when you deem your children old enough to read an alternative view about American history, encourage them to do so – and start with,”The People’s History of the United States.”  The book will, unfortunately, not likely be introduced into mainstream American curriculums in ours lifetimes, but why not hope?

            PUBLISHED IN: HISTORY HOWARD ZINN TEXAS ON MARCH 13, 2010 AT 9:36 PM COMMENTS (24)

TAGS: HOWARD ZINN, TEXAS CURRICULUM, HISTORY, CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL AGENDA, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, BU, TEXAS

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 author:  Michael Funk

Tales of Texas

  In March  the Texas Board of Education held hearings and adopted over protest new History /Social Studies guidelines moving   the textbook selection process of Texas  significantly to the right.  Dolores Huerta, retired Vice President of the Unite Farm Workers  was excluded from inclusion in Texas’ version of history because she is a known socialist- a member of DSA.  She was replaced in the list by Hellen Keller- also a known socialist.

One Commissioner voting for the tilt to the right says,

"When you are in a position, to make a contribution to the well being of the learner, Do It!,but I can tell you that ALL Children deserve quality education, even it it means uping the standards for ALL teachers. How will Texas fare, TEXAS will be FIRST IN MATH and FIRST in SCIECNE,because TEACHERS in Texas  make a difference."

Commissioner Quintanilla

The Commissioner believes Texas will be first in Math and first in Science, but she fails  spelling.

Obama and the paranoid style in educational politics

“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds.” So opened a classic 1964 essay of the renowned American historian, Richard Hofstadter, in which he analyzed a style of politics which is remarkably evocative of what has passed for political discourse these last two months. Consider how Hofstadter’s pithy characterization of this political style – “[a] sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” — so aptly fits the sort of behavior we have seen on display in town halls, on Fox TV “news” shows and on blogs from the right. What term better describes the conjuring of “death panels” out of thin air, the waving of photos of Obama defaced to resemble Hitler, than that which graces the title of Hofstadter’s essay, the “paranoid style?”
After weeks of the paranoid style in health care politics, it is now in full bloom in the realm of educational politics as well. Obama, we are told, has set out to indoctrinate American school children with his socialist doctrine through a planned address to American school children next week. The Cato Institute blog has outstripped its usual prodigious output with nearly hourly condemnations of Obama’s planned speech and the lesson plans produced by the USDoE for the event. Its torrent of criticism culminated most recently [at least at this hour] with the charge of an Obama “cult of personality,” a term of art that arose to describe the murderous rule of Stalin.* The Amen chorus at the National Review blog, led by Jonah Goldberg of Liberal Fascism fame, all agree with Cato on the existence of a dangerous Obama “cult of personality.”¶ Fox News commentator Monica Crowley decries Obama’s words urging students to stay in school and work hard as “Orwellian,” proclaiming that “this is what Chairman Mao did.” World Net Daily’s Bob Unruh compares the Obama speech on the importance of education to Hitler Youth. For the second time in two days, American Enterprise Institute house educational expert Rick Hess denounces the proposed Obama message of personal responsibility, this time as “groupthink.” Hess approvingly quotes Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame, that “if George W. Bush had proposed to make a national speech to schoolchildren, complete with lesson plans, isn’t ‘creepy’ a word that would have come to mind?” Little does it matter to Murray and Hess that George W. Bush [and his father] not 0nly proposed, but actually delivered such speeches. Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer opines that he is “absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.” And for good measure, Michelle Malkin throws in a shot at “zealous teacher unions.” It appears that someone forget to tell both the Obama DoE and us that teacher unions were the instrumentalities of Obama’s socialist propaganda.
This is surreal beyond all belief, in a way that makes the descriptor “paranoid” an inadequate understatement. Obama is so much of a socialist that in the real world he could not bring himself to propose the modestly social democratic single payer system of health care insurance, a form of which exists in every other Western democracy, and he has been hinting of his willingness to abandon the “public option” in his proposals for health care reform. Get a grip, boys and girls.
___________________________________________________
* Republican State Senator Steve Russell of Oklahoma makes the reference to a “cult of personality” explicit for the historically illiterate: “This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”
¶ “The quintessential liberal fascist,” Jonah Goldberg informed us in his book by that name, “is not an SS storm trooper. It is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.”

by Leo Casey
From Edwize.com

Texas Legislature considers revising testing

TAKS may lose its sting
Texas lawmakers consider school ratings that reward student progress
08:43 AM CDT on Monday, April 14, 2008
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com
AUSTIN – Lawmakers who lead the way on education policy are warming to the idea of major changes to Texas' report card system for public schools, which already gets failing marks from superintendents and teachers.

A new version, as currently envisioned, would dramatically alter the focus of student testing, which forms the basis for school report cards, and introduce new incentives for schools that make gains.

Also Online
Survey: What would make a better testing system than TAKS?
Blog: Education/DISD
At the same time, educators and lawmakers – not to mention parents – want to see less drilling of students for the annual Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and less severe penalties for schools that have trouble meeting their achievement goals.

All in all, dissatisfaction with the current testing-and-rating regimen is building momentum for significant changes when the Legislature next meets in January.

"The stick can work, but the carrot works better," said House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, co-chairman of the committee that is considering revisions of the accountability system.

"Our system should be recognizing and rewarding the best schools and helping repair those that are low performing," said Mr. Eissler, a Republican from The Woodlands.

The current system annually grades every school and district in the state based on their TAKS scores and student dropout rates. Schools are graded exemplary, recognized, acceptable or unacceptable.

Superintendents, school boards, teachers and parents anxiously await the performance ratings each year, as they represent the chief measure of how well schools are doing in educating their students. Parents and real estate agents typically use the evaluations to locate neighborhoods with the best schools.

Increasingly, though, educators and parents have voiced dissatisfaction with the grading system, arguing that the massive changes in education since the system was first implemented in 1994 have made it obsolete. Among those changes are increased federal attention and a stronger state curriculum.

"It fails to address the individual needs of students," said Plano Senior High School science teacher Karen Shepherd. "It looks at students en masse as numbers, not as individuals."

Ms. Shepherd, who was the state's 2005 secondary school teacher of the year, said teachers want a system that is diagnostic instead of punitive. "It needs to determine where students start and look at their growth over a year instead of expecting them all to meet a certain level of proficiency" on a single test, she said.

"I know as a person I don't like being judged on one action, and I would never look at my students on just one day," she said.

Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, agrees. She would like to see a major shift in the testing program so that it focuses on academic growth of students over the school year rather than requiring them to meet minimum standards, as the state now does with the TAKS.

Acceptable performance ratings for schools are based on a minimum percentage of all students at each campus passing the exam in the spring, along with a certain share of various student subgroups. For example, schools last year had to have 65 percent of their students pass in reading and 45 percent pass in math to be graded "acceptable."

"We need to look at a system that shows the progress of youngsters over a school year and not base everything on a one-shot test," said Ms. Shapiro, who leads the Select Committee on Public School Accountability with Mr. Eissler.

One way to do that, she said, is to measure the improvement in skills from one year's TAKS to the next. If students at a particular campus registered enough improvement over a year's time, it would result in an acceptable rating. If the average improvement in test scores was good enough, it would bring the school a higher rating.

Ms. Shapiro said many lawmakers also want more concentration on how to improve low-performing schools and less focus on punishing failure.

Incentives could include expanding the state's merit-pay plans or giving schools more flexibility on state requirements.

Another reason to revamp the accountability system is the new testing program that will be launched in high schools in the 2011-12 school year. Beginning with ninth-graders that year, students will be required to take a dozen end-of-course exams through high school and get a passing score in each subject area to earn a diploma.
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Perhaps someone could get the attention of the California legislature