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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘schools’
Vouchers continue to be a tough sell
I won’t be happy till they’re dead and buried, but it’s something. Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, doesn’t think the Senate has a taste for vouchers. Noting that a two-thirds vote of the 31-member chamber is needed to bring up a bill for discussion, she said, “I believe there are 11 votes to block.” House Public [...]
Guest post: A response to Sen. Patrick on school choice
Note: The following is a guest post, by Aboubacar Ndiaye. It was sent to me unsolicited. I liked it and agreed to print it, so here it is. In an editorial published last Wednesday in the Houston Chronicle, State Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) again argued for what he sees as education reform. In the article, [...]
Some people still want to move backwards on equality
I’ve noted several bills that aim to move Texas forward, however incrementally, towards greater equality. These are all good and fine things, but don’t mistake their existence for evidence that the Legislature is through trying to move us backwards. The first Texas school district to offer health insurance benefits to domestic partners is under fire [...]
HISD cold on Patrick’s charter proposal
HISD has a bone to pick with Sen. Dan Patrick’s school choice bill. The Houston Independent School District was charter friendly long before other school districts were, mainly due to the influence of then-Superintendent Rod Paige. The nationally known Knowledge is Power Program, for instance, probably would not exist on the scale and scope it [...]
Some charter school stories
Now that Sen. Dan Patrick has filed his school choice bill, I thought this would be a good time to review some recent stories about charter schools. There were a couple of interesting stories relating to charter schools in the DMN the weekend before last. This story is about four charter school applications that contained [...]
Patrick files his “school choice” bill
From the Trib: The State Board of Education currently oversees applications for charter school contracts, which state law caps at 215. Patrick’s Senate Bill 2 would create a new state entity to authorize the contracts and lift that cap, allowing for an unlimited number of charter school operators in the state. “There is no one [...]
Supplement this!
Time for the Lege to pay a few past-due bills from 2011. That’s where a supplemental budget comes in. It is literally a second budget added to the original one lawmakers approved in 2011. It’s not an unusual course for lawmakers to take to address lingering IOUs, but this year’s efforts are becoming more complicated [...]
North Forest ISD fighting closure
This was to be expected. About 60 attended a meeting Saturday in response to TEA Commissioner of Education Michael Williams’ recommendation on Thursday to dissolve NFISD due to poor academic performance and low high school completion rates, among other issues. Leaders of the 6,900-student northeast Houston district said they will fight the decision all the [...]
School districts are still a long way from getting relief
School districts may have gotten a favorable ruling in the latest school finance lawsuit, and if it survives appeal it could have far-reaching effects on the current system, but that doesn’t mean that things will get better for them now. If anything, they’re likely to get worse first. “It’s pretty bleak for next year,” said [...]
TEA orders North Forest ISD shut down
This could be the end for North Forest ISD. Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams recommended that the district of 6,900 students be annexed into the mammoth Houston ISD effective July 1. His statement came just two days after the district said it would seek a partnership with Texas A&M University to assume day-to-day operations of [...]
Laptops for all
HISD Superintendent Terry Grier would like to bridge the digital divide in HISD. Superintendent Terry Grier said his goal is to equip all 130,000 students in grades three through 12 with a laptop and hopes to start with at least some high schools next year. He will try to rally community support for the concept [...]
This time it’s different
Why is this school finance ruling different from all other school finance rulings? For one thing, it was way more comprehensive. The changes needed to correct the constitutional violations [Judge John] Dietz identified could comprise the most far-reaching overhaul of education policy the state has enacted in more than 40 years, said Lynn Moak, a [...]
Here come the STAAR reform bills
Fire one: State Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, the newly appointed chairman of the House Public Education Committee, filed legislation Wednesday that would restructure the state’s high school graduation and student testing requirements. Aycock’s proposal, House Bill 5, would move public schools to an accountability system with grades of A through F, a concept that [...]
School finance system ruled unconstitutional
Surely no one is surprised by this. The system Texas uses to fund public schools violates the state’s constitution by not providing enough money and failing to distribute the money in a fair way, a judge ruled Monday in a landmark decision that could force the Legislature to overhaul the way it pays for education. [...]
Sunsetting tax expenditures
Sens. John Carona and Rodney Ellis have the right idea. Over the past 18 months, many of our constituents told us they have trouble finding a reliable, accurate and up-to-date source of information on these tax breaks, exemptions and special treatments — often called tax preferences or loopholes. Unfortunately, so do we. The Legislature makes [...]
Committee time
Now the real work gets started. House Speaker Joe Straus announced committee assignments for the Legislature’s lower chamber on Thursday, ending speculation over key chairmanships and giving lawmakers the go-ahead to start considering bills. Here’s his list. Of the standing committees, 32 are chaired by men, six by women. That’s one more female chair than [...]
Crocodile tears over the school finance lawsuit
This is little more than blaming the victim. A state judge is expected to rule next week on whether the school finance system is broken, but lawmakers aren’t anywhere near ready to launch repairs. Instead, Republican leaders plan to wait for an appeal and a final Texas Supreme Court ruling so they know exactly what [...]
How would you pay for extra school security?
Would you be willing to tax yourself for it? Texas school districts could create special taxing districts to fund more security under a proposal unveiled Tuesday by three Houston-area lawmakers. The Texas School District Security Act would allow school boards to hold elections on whether sales or property taxes should be raised to fund more [...]
Zack Kopplin
Remember the name Zack Kopplin. Rice University sophomore Zack Kopplin says he has been called the Antichrist, a godless liberal and, bizarrely, the cause of Hurricane Katrina. Kopplin, 19, has gained notoriety for championing the fight against his home state of Louisiana’s 2008 law that made it easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into [...]
From the “Anyone can call themselves an expert” department
Now see, this is what happens when you go soliciting expert witnesses on Craigslist Joseph Bast, president and CEO of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, is a witness for Texans for Real Efficiency and Equity in Education, or TREE, a group led by former state Rep. Kent Grusendorf that is not a plaintiff but was permitted [...]
More STAAR changes proposed
Everyone’s least favorite standardized test is a fat target these days. State Sen. Kel Seliger, the Amarillo Republican who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee, filed a bill Tuesday offering broad changes to student assessment and high school graduation requirements in Texas. Senate Bill 225 would significantly reduce the number of state standardized tests students [...]
More from the Larry Marshall files
This guy is a piece of work. HISD trustee Larry Marshall, fresh off a two-day school board retreat, flew from Houston to Tampa, Fla., on a clear winter day to watch the 2009 Super Bowl in Raymond James Stadium. Cheap seats for the match-up between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals cost $500 each, [...]
Here come the tax cut proposals
When the sunny revenue forecast came in, we immediately got one crappy tax cut idea, to eliminate the margins tax at a cost of $4.5 billion. The Texas Association of Business didn’t care for the idea, at least at first, but are now warming up to it, because this is what they do. For Bill [...]
Meet the new budget
Same as the old budget. Republican leaders in both chambers of the Legislature on Monday offered spare first drafts of the state’s next two-year budget that continue $5.4 billion in cuts to public education made last session and freeze funding for an embattled state agency set up to find a cure for cancer. Upending recent [...]
School finance dispatches
Some bad news for the state in the school finance lawsuit. State District Judge John Dietz directed state attorneys Wednesday to redo a key study that underestimated the funding advantages of higher-wealth school districts — a blow to the state’s arguments in a school finance lawsuit that current differences among districts are insignificant. Dietz asked [...]
School Land Board votes to transfer $300 million to Available School Fund
From the Trib: The School Land Board voted Tuesday to release $300 million into the Available School Fund for public schools. The money will be released in two $150 million installments, one in February and the other on June. The funds had been caught in a standoff between the Legislature and the School Land Board, [...]
The revenue estimate is in
And under normal circumstances it would be very good news. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, laying out the parameters for state spending on the eve of the legislative session, said Monday that the rebounding Texas economy gives lawmakers $8.8 billion unallocated in state coffers for this budget period and an improving picture for the next two [...]
A look ahead to the 2013 Lege
The Trib previews the biennial hijinks of the 2013 Texas Legislature. The last time Texas lawmakers convened in Austin, they were absorbed with numbers and boundaries: how to make ends meet with a deflated state budget and draw new district maps the courts would approve. But with improving fiscal conditions and redistricting mostly in the [...]
The dog that hasn’t barked yet
The most dispensible member of the Harris County legislative caucus hasn’t done what she normally does yet. Camping out in the Texas Capitol to ensure a prime designation for your legislation on illegal immigration? That’s so 2011. State Rep. Debbie Riddle braved a cold, creepy-noise-filled Capitol two years ago in part to obtain a priority [...]
What they’re saying about education
The Chron has a couple of stories focusing on area legislators and their priorities for 2013. There will be many new faces in the Lege and the Senate in this session, so the more we know about what these folks have in mind, the better. This story is about Pearland Rep. Ed Thompson (R, HD29) [...]
So how’s public education doing under the Republicans?
Well, for starters, there’s larger class sizes. Northside’s predicament mirrors that of several other local districts with expanding enrollments. It’s part of the argument hundreds of Texas districts are making in an ongoing school finance lawsuit against the state, blaming lawmakers for a funding scheme that doesn’t keep up with growth. Administrators say larger classes [...]
Everybody hates the STAAR test now
In reading this story about the flood of legislation being filed to scale back or defer the STAAR tests, I am struck, but not surprised, by the genesis of this activity. The clamor for change may have more to do with who’s finally speaking up, said Patricia López, a research associate at the Texas Center [...]
CompSci in the curriculum
HISD Trustee Paula Harris coauthors an op-ed in the Chron advocating computer science to be part of the standard school curriculum. While STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education is a hot topic in education circles these days, only math and science courses are required for graduation from high school. The few computer science courses [...]