Effective August 31st, the controversial CSCOPE curriculum support system designed to help Texas teachers align with state standards will be pulled from classrooms. State Senator Dan Patrick announced that all twenty board members that are responsible for overseeing the CSCOPE system have signed a letter that pledges to scrap the lesson plans.

 ”The era of CSCOPE lesson plans has come to an end,” Patrick, a Tea Party favorite who heads the Senate Education Committee, said at a news conference.

Will Weissert from Chron.com reports that this decision was spurred because of pressure from conservatives that worry the lesson plans were promoting anti-american values.

The criticism surrounding the lesson plans intensified upon the discovery that a lesson plan referred to Boston Tea Party Participants as terrorists. Students were also asked to design a flag for a new socialist country in another, and some conservatives believe the lesson plans promote Islamic values and question American patriotism.

 CSCOPE offers Web-based lesson plans and exams designed to help teachers adhere to state curriculum, especially those working in small districts that have trouble keeping up with Texas’ copious rules. CSCOPE is used in 877 Texas school districts, or 78 percent of districts statewide, and is supposed to be flexible enough for teachers to alter content to meet their individual needs.

The system was created by the 20 state-run service centers around Texas which are designed to support school districts. It offers about 1,600 model lessons that districts can access for a fee of $7 per student, though additional training for teachers on how to use the system can increase the per-pupil price.

Many of the lesson plans were not available to the general public due to intellectual property concerns. That particularly bothered certain Tea Party groups who were worried about classrooms being corrupted by “bureaucrats shrouded in secrecy”.

Dan Patrick’s critics say conservatives are too distrusting and should let teachers and administrators generate their own lesson plans.

Now school districts are forced to scramble in order to create their own lesson plans in time.

Dan Quinn, of the watchdog group the Texas Freedom Network, said ending CSCOPE lesson plans “throws hundreds of school districts under the bus” and will leave districts scrambling to devise their own lesson plans.

“This is what happens when you get enough pressure from outside groups to gin up a witch hunt with extortions and exaggerations,” Quinn said. “School districts are now going to have to come up with resources on their own to replace a service.”

The post Texas Scraps Controversial CSCOPE Curriculum Support appeared first on Education News.

The Dallas Morning News reports that Hispanics now make up 51% of all students enrolled in Texas schools and have become the majority ethnic group in the state’s K-12 education system. The growth is expected to continue well into next decade and has already brought many changes to the state’s classrooms as schools are dealing with a student population that is increasingly non-English speaking but is also mainly low-income.

Researchers warn that unless the state takes aggressive steps to adjust to the new classroom realities, Hispanic students could upon graduation not be prepared to enter college and will instead be doomed to low-income jobs — or worse, be forced to rely on Texas’ already overtaxed social service system.

This means that the state will need to get proactive in raising the high school graduation rates of Hispanic students, which currently stands at about 60% of adults over 25, according to the 2010 Census. In comparison, only about 8% of white adults over the age of 25 living in Texas don’t have a high school diploma.

Experts cite many reasons why Hispanics are dropping out: inadequate funding for school programs in Hispanic neighborhoods; teachers who don’t know Spanish; and some Hispanic parents having little time or money to invest in their children’s educational success. Hispanic immigrants often end up working in low-wage jobs that define where their children go to school, said Kandace Vallejo, who has been a leadership coordinator for the Workers Defense Project, a nonprofit with offices in Dallas and Austin.

Vallejo said that currently schools around the state lack qualified teachers, solid academic materials and funding for an enriched curriculum designed to help overcome the unique challenges of the Hispanic student community, especially when compared to the resources available in richer, whiter school districts. Vallejo decried the fact that when compared to kids from higher-income families, students from low-income, working-class or immigrant backgrounds get fewer education opportunities.

About 23 percent of Texas schools have a Hispanic student population of at least 80 percent. Fifteen years ago, it was 16 percent. About 25 percent of Hispanics live below the poverty line. Over a two-year period starting in 2010, the the number of low-income Hispanic students in Texas public schools increased more than 76,000 — the largest number for any racial or ethnic group.

According to the data, of the ten school districts that have experienced the biggest growth of Hispanic students in the past 15 years, five are located in large urban areas in the state such as Houston and Dallas.

The post Hispanic Students Now Make Up the Majority in Texas Schools appeared first on Education News.

Texas lawmakers’ efforts to expand online education in the state could hit a snag due to the cost, Dallas News reports. Currently a measure is pending in front of state Senate that would increase the number of students who are currently enrolled in online courses in lieu of traditional ones but the efforts to get it passed appear to be derailed both by opposition from teachers unions and the newly revealed price tag.

Although an expansion bill was passed by the House last week, the one under consideration by the Senate is broader. Introduced by Senator Glenn Hegar of Katy, it would open the virtual public school system to private school students and does away with the 3-classes-per-student limit in the House version.

Originally, Hegar’s bill made taking at least one online course a requirement for all Texas students from grade 6 onwards but the cost – which was estimated to be more than $1 billion over two years – forced Hegar to drop the provision.

He said he was stunned by the estimate because many experts say that online courses sharply reduce the cost of providing instruction to students. That’s one of the reasons the change has been catching on in other states.

A study on the Florida Virtual School, which served nearly 150,000 students last year, showed savings to the state of $1,345 per student. Savings resulted from not having to hire as many teachers and not having to build and maintain classrooms for students in the program.

Even after Hegar eliminated the requirement of e-courses for all older students, the cost of expanding course offerings and making the Texas Virtual School Network available to private and home school students still carries a price tag of nearly $200 million over the next two years.

Although Hegar hopes that some ways could be found to reduce the cost, the estimates strengthened the hand of Democratic members of the chamber who have been strongly opposed to the bill. Senator Leticia Van de Putte, who represents San Antonio, called the measure a handout to for-profit education companies that would do nothing to improve the quality of education for Texas kids.

Vice Chairman of the Senate Education Committee Eddie Lucio expressed concerns about providers outside of Texas offering courses to state students that don’t conform with state curriculum standards.

Raise Your Hand Texas, an advocacy group that has lobbied to protect funding for public schools, vigorously opposes the legislation.

David Anthony, a spokesman for the group and former superintendent of the McKinney and Cypress-Fairbanks school districts, said that while enrollment in Texas’ three full-time virtual schools topped 6,200 students last year, the achievement results have been unimpressive.

“Despite their rapid growth, the record to date shows that full-time virtual schools have performed poorly on academic achievement and accountability, and little or no information is available on the financial arrangements of providers who are paid with taxpayer funds,” he said.

The post Texas Plan for Virtual School Expansion Hits Financial Snag appeared first on Education News.

The US Justice Department gave its OK to a plan to oust the locally elected school board in El Paso, Texas due to uncovered instances of cheating in the district pubic school. The running of the El Paso Independent School District will be taken over by state-appointed managers, Yahoo News reports.

The plan to replace elected officials with those appointed by the governor, who would then serve for up to 2 years, needed preclearance from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division because of the voting rights law. The Texas Education Agency got its go-ahead from the feds this Monday and the new board members will meet for the first time next Tuesday.

The interim superintendent, Vernon Butler, said at a news conference Tuesday that he will work with the new board to meet its goals. However, he also noted that the ousted board had made policy changes and accepted the resignation or fired employees involved in the scandal to “ensure the illegal actions of the former superintendent never occur in the district again.”

The decision to remove the El Paso school board — one of the most severe sanctions a district can receive — came after former Superintendent Lorenzo Garcia pleaded guilty in June to devising a scheme to keep hundreds of low-performing sophomores from taking the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. Some students were held back in the ninth grade, while others were told to drop out before the 10th grade accountability tests. Before the removal of the board, the district had already been put on probation by the state.

The move allowed the district to look like they were performing better than expectated, something that resulted in more than $56,000 of additional performance bonuses for Garcia. In October he was sentenced to more than three years in prison for the crime.

Members of the ousted board are not going quietly. The president Isela Castanon-Williams, said that the board is looking at its legal options to overturn the decision by the TEA to replace the trustees with appointees. She added that the DOJ’s approval of the switch sets a very bad precedent and could ricochet in the future on school districts all around Texas and the country.

Three of the school board’s seven seats are up for election on May 11; a fourth seat has a candidate who is uncontested. The other three ousted members are about halfway through their four-year terms.

TEA said elections will continue to be held to ensure an elected school board is in place to resume management of the district once the temporary managers leave. TEA has not said how long the temporary managers will serve, though they can run the district for up to two years.

The post DOJ Approves School Board Replacement for Troubled El Paso appeared first on Education News.

Morgan Smith writes in Texas Weekly that notable political operatives are popping up in typically insular education committee meetings as lawmakers debate the terms of charter school legislation.

Most notable among those new faces has been Texans for Lawsuit Reform co-founder Dick Trabulsi, who is now lobbying for Texans For Education Reform, a newly formed advocacy organization headed by former Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, and whose priorities aside from charter school policy also include teacher quality and virtual education initiatives. The group also keeps several other prominent Republican consultants — Anthony Holm, Mike Toomey and Jordan Berry — on payroll.

Texans for Education reform has been a major force in advancing Senate Education Chariman Dan Patrick’s Senate Bill 2, however the education advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas has been campaigning against provisions that they believe will threaten the well-being of traditional schools which serve the majority of the state’s student population.

Raise Your Hand Texas has become an advocacy heavyweight since its foundation in 2006 by Charles Butt, and the group employs high powered lobbyists. They have already achieved significant transformation of the Houston Republican’s bill.

While Patrick’s bill originally intended to remove the state’s cap on charter contracts, the legislation will now raise the cap from 215 to 305 incrementally with the maximum 305 only reached in 2019. The requirement for school districts to lease or sell underused building for charter school use has also been dropped as has a provision to provide facility funding for charter schools.

Even though the bill has been trimmed by Raise Your Hand Texas, it would still represent the largest school choice reform passed by the Legislature in almost 20 years. There was a similar attempt at reform in 2011 but the current bill is thought to have a much better chance of success than the previous failed prospect.

The bill’s lone remaining dissenter on the Senate floor is Robert Nichols (R-Jacksonville) who issued a statement claiming that he could not support the expansion of charters until the issues of inequitable funding in traditional public schools and overregulation were properly dealt with.

During a recent House Public Education Committee meeting, Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, told members he intended to move quickly with the bill, indicating they would take a vote on it during Tuesday’s meeting. Questions about the legislation’s transfer of approval authority from the State Board of Education to the Texas Education Agency dominated the hearing, which also included an unusual appearance by Republican Party of Texas Chairman Steve Munisteri in support of the legislation.

The post Texas Charter School Reform Bill Under Lobby, Debate appeared first on Education News.

A Texas school accountability system unveiled this week would take into account how well educators are addressing closing income and racial student achievement gaps. Although the system stops short of issuing actual letter grades for schools – deferring that change for at least another year – the new system is the fulfillment of a promise by the Education Commissioner Michael Williams to find a way to hold publicly funded schools accountable for how well they do by their minority and low-income students.

The first set of rating reports for the districts and the schools around the state will be issued in early August. The new system will replace the one currently in place which relies entirely on student performance on state-mandated standardized tests.

The new system calls for rating schools and districts on overall student performance on standardized tests, student progress as they work their way through school, and their college-readiness upon graduation — with the latter only applying to high schools.

But Williams has focused on the student achievement gap proponent, saying that given that Texas public school students are now “60 percent economically disadvantaged and 60 percent black or brown,” the state’s accountability ratings can no longer afford to ignore large and growing achievement gaps.

In a statement, Williams explained that the new focus on achievement gaps will benefit schools that have made strides in closing those gaps. In particular, it will relieve the pressure on charter schools that enroll a high number of minority and low income students who might show improvement year-to-year but still not perform well enough on standardized tests in a way that might drag down the schools’ final ratings.

According to Williams, the new system will also give Texas residents a fuller view of performance of their local school districts and will allow them to better judge how well the schools are serving their most underprivileged students.

Still, the new rating system continues to heavily rely on student performance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR exam, a standardized test which has triggered a firestorm of controversy since it first was administered last school year. The student performance criteria is based on STAAR results, while academic progress examines how test scores improve across different subject over time. Even the progress of minority and low-income students is judged by comparing those students’ test scores to the scores of their peers.

The post TX Assessment System Looks at Racial, Income Achievement Gaps appeared first on Education News.

According to a recent poll released by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice a disconnect exists between voters and their representatives in Texas when it comes to school choice policies. Although education reform proposals – including increasing access to private schools for students across the state – have inspired some bitter debate in the state Legislature, more than half of Texas voters expressed support for such policies.

The survey, which was conducted on Friedman Foundation’s behalf by Braun Research, Inc, found that 66% of voters supported school vouchers, with 80% of Latino voters believing that children Texas would serve its students best by expanding access. The results are based on 613 landline and cell phone interviews in late March of this year. More than 70% also supported programs like tax credits for businesses that donate to non-profit groups that give scholarships to students to attend private school.

As for the quality of K-12 education in the state, 55 percent of voters said it is on the “wrong track” whereas 33 percent see it moving in the “right direction.” A similar percentage, 54 percent, labeled the state’s public school system as “fair” or “poor,” with 42 percent identifying it as “good” or “excellent.”
“Texans believe that every child should have a chance to attend a school that best addresses their specific needs,” Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said. “Even an excellent public school may not be the best fit for addressing the needs of every student in its district. Unfortunately, Texas’ education system provides too few opportunities for families seeking alternatives to their local public school.”

Commenting on the poll results, Robert Enlow, the Friedman Foundation’s president and chief executive officer expressed frustration with the fact that Texas policies were so friendly to free enterprise but didn’t support similarly liberal policies when it came to education reform. As Enlow pointed out, in this issue, lawmakers tended to lag well behind the opinion of people who had put them in office.

Both houses of the Texas Legislature are currently considering limited school choice measures.

The Senate Education Committee has approved bills that would create a tax-credit scholarship program and a voucher program for students with special needs. The House Ways & Means Committee is considering its own tax-credit scholarship bill. As the end of the legislative session approaches, it is unclear whether these bills will be allowed to come to a full vote in their respective chambers.
The survey’s questionnaire, full results, and methodology are available at www.edchoice.org/TXpoll.

The post Friedman Foundation Poll Finds Support for Vouchers in Texas appeared first on Education News.

Ever since Texas unveiled its system of high stakes testing, parents and education advocates have been fighting to have it rolled back. Now they’re beginning to reap the fruit of their efforts, as earlier this week the Texas House of Representatives voted to not only loosen the graduation requirement for high schoolers, but also reduce the number of high stakes tests each student has to take throughout their academic career.

Only 2 of the House’s 147 members voted against a measure that will reduce the number of tests administered to students from 15 to 5. One of the “Nays,” Mark Strama of Austin, voted against the bill after his efforts to add an amendment to expand more efforts in guiding students to college failed.

The bill also replaces the current “4×4” graduation plan — four years of English, math, science and social studies — with several different paths to a diploma. The aim is to increase flexibility for students, particularly those seeking career training.

The Senate’s version of testing and graduation reform could be taken up on Wednesday. It echoes the House bill on graduation plans, and it also reduces the high-stakes assessments to five, though it would require different tests.

Strama felt that by lowering the pressure on students legislators were giving up on something that has been shown to produce results and even went some way towards reducing the minority and low-income achievement gaps. He led a bipartisan coalition that argued that flexibility wasn’t a worthy goal compared to the benefits being given up by lowering the bar.

Among Strama’s supporters was Higher Education Committee Chairman Dan Brach of Dallas who said that creating two paths to graduation – one less challenging than the other – would move the state “in the wrong direction,” and would undermine the efforts to get high schoolers ready to take on college-level academic work.

Although Strama’s amendment was ultimately defeated, he did succeed in having the testing dates for the five remaining exams moved to the end of the academic year to give teachers more breathing room.

Last year’s ninth-graders were the first group of students to take the tougher State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. But parents across the state pushed back as they realized their children would have to take 15 high-stakes exams to graduate and the score would count toward the student’s final grade.

The parents have become a political force that made some testing changes inevitable.

The post Texas Parents Succeed in Campaign to Roll Back High Stakes Testing appeared first on Education News.

Although the testimony of charter school students moved state senator Dan Patrick to tears, he agreed to shelve a proposal to lift the limit on charter schools in Texas in favor of one that raises the number more gradually.

After listening to stories of kids who were set on the right academic path thanks to charter schools — who were there to testify in support of the unlimited charter schools — Patrick reiterated his commitment to bringing expanded school choice to the state.

The bill in question was submitted by Senator Leticia Van De Putte, and would have modified the accountability system used by public schools to more specifically identify those that served at-risk youth, especially those who had been dropouts and were least likely to graduate.

Van De Putte said that without such designations, schools that catered to former dropouts might show completion rates that were too low and therefore risk closure.

Bertha Vasquez, an 18-year-old former dropout in Austin who returned to school is now set to graduate this year and hopes to become a nurse. She cried as she detailed being raised by a single mother.

“I want to be the reason that she can smile every day, even though I made her go through a lot,” Vasquez said.
Patrick instructed a committee clerk to hand her a box of tissues — then said he needed them back as tears ran down his own face.

After the conclusion of the testimony, Patrick acknowledged that the session had brought to the surface emotions not only in him but in other members of the committee who he said were all supportive of school choice in Texas. He added that the stories told during the day were a reminder that beyond political infighting there were real people depending on the decisions the legislators make every day.

Patrick supports two charter school proposals, including one that would do away with the cap of 215 currently in place in the state along with creating a special body charged with reviewing and approving the new applications. The other proposal is a fairly classical voucher program that would offer tax credits to companies that donate towards scholarships that can be used towards tuition for private schools of the family’s choice.

During the hearing, though, Patrick also modified his charter proposal to call for 10 new charter licenses issued next school year and 20 new ones given out in 2014-2015, as well as 35 in the 2015-2016 academic year and beyond. He said he still supports an unlimited number of new charters, but understands that such a plan could be opposed by some in the Legislature.

Patrick also altered his bill to give the state the authority to issue five new charter licenses for every one that is revoked from an existing school because of poor performance. The Texas Education Agency says authorities only close about three charters in a typical year.

The post Charter School Testimony Moves Texas Lawmakers to Tears appeared first on Education News.

In a new report, the National Center for Policy Analysis is claiming that by embracing a private school voucher program, Texas could both save money and improve academic outcomes for its students. Currently, more than 40% of public school students are not in a learning environment that suits them best, and by providing more flexibility and putting more control into the hands of Texas families, the voucher program would not only benefit students but also provide public schools with an incentive to get better.

Texas public schools have a virtual monopoly on K-12 education dollars at the moment. Therefore, they have no real reason to change the way they approach learning, even if the current approach doesn’t work for a large chunk of their students. Creating a voucher program would provide a reason while at the same bringing about the increasingly-embraced concept of school choice.

School choice for Texas children could be implemented through universal tuition vouchers, as well as corporate and individual tuition tax credits. However, the most important reforms would give Texas students the option to choose to attend private schools. A voucher program open to all Texas K-12 students — enrolled in public or private schools — could be structured in a way that does not reduce the current funding per public school student, and adds no new cost to taxpayers. Indeed, the program would increase the funding available per public school student and there would be substantial long-term savings to public schools in reduced capital costs.

Savings could prove to be substantial. If the vouchers allowed students to use up to 75% of their per-student allotment towards private school tuition, all it would take is for fewer than half-a-million families to take advantage of the voucher for the state to save nearly $2 billion over just two academic years.

The report doesn’t speculate on what is behind the reluctance on the part of the state to adopt a voucher program, but points out that private school vouchers have been deemed constitutional by both the state and the U.S. Supreme Court.

A feasible voucher program could significantly lower discipline issues and dropout rates, allow for greater school choice and competition, and would not reduce the funding per public school student. Additional benefits of school choice include higher teacher pay due to the increased demand for high-quality teachers, increased private spending on schooling, and higher public school performance and standards due to increased competition for students and specialization of schools.

The post Texas Needs School Vouchers, NCPA Report Finds appeared first on Education News.