Amid School Finance Scuffle, Pre-K Measure Returns
Expect the Texas House to revisit old battles over school finance — and open a new one, for the lower chamber at least, over pre-kindergarten accountability — when it takes up Senate Bill 1 today on the floor.
Among the swarm of amendments offered to the fiscal matters bill will be several aiming to modify key elements of the state’s plan to distribute $4 billion in cuts across public schools — significantly one that eliminates the across-the-board reductions districts face in the first year of the biennium and replaces it with the sliding scale of the second, and one that keeps the ...
Comments (12)
Raleen Sloan
I am interested in the House's efforts to add a new unfunded mandate. Certainly accountability is a good and needful thing, but if you require it, you must fund it. I suppose many districts are already using the CIRCLE assessment, and would be interested in seeing how many are not. It has been very hard to find information about the full-day expansion grant. Has it been cut or not? For the 2011/12 budget?
Tribsupporter
wow. did susan keller pay for this article? 60% of it is her quotes.
Randy Rodgers
Kellner is speaking out of common sense and knowledge of assessment. One of the biggest problems facing education today is a belief by the uneducated (in educational assessment) public (e.g. Bill Hammond) that there is only one way to skin a cat--make another formal, standardized test. The state could save hundreds of millions each biennium by reducing the numbers of tests and still maintain accountability, if the public and legislators knew anything at all about the subject.
Jacob Anthony
There is ZERO data available on whether or not Spring Branch's Pre-K program has had ANY effect on kids. No wonder they want to avoid accountability. I suggest Susan Kellner and her fellow school board members publish some findings publicly that describe how their at-risk kids are doing once they graduate form pre-K. AND, it needs to be an EXTERNAL evaluation.
Chris Thornton via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Pre-K is babysitting. Kindergarten prepares you for 1st grade. I did just fine in school without pre-K. And my uncle did just fine without pre-K or Kindergarten. He started school in the 1st grade.
Raleen Sloan
I am guessing that those who see no benefit in pre-k have not had any experience in that area. It is naive to assume that what was good enough 50 years ago continues to be good enough today. The rest of our society has certainly not stood still (and do you really want to go back to those days before computers and cell phones and central air conditioning?) Today's children are expected to be reading when they go to first grade. Pre-k helps to even the field for those children from underprivileged homes for whom life has been a challenge from the get-go. Go ahead and blame their parents if you want, but as a country that claims to care for "the least of these" we must do what we can for these children. Four-year-olds are too little to be responsible for balancing our state budget. Their ability to read and function well is essential to our society. Without a good start, they will play catch-up for their entire school careers. And that hurts all of us.
LLC LLC1923
How did Bill Hammond become an expert on pre-k? TAB is promoting an ineffective unproven testing program based on two external evaluations. According to the recent taxpayer funded evaluation of TAB’s pet for-profit pre-k program, Texas School Ready, by Learning Point Associates, January 2011, the data was missing or destroyed so the program could not be evaluated.
Why are Hammond and his supporters sponsoring tests for ALL four-year-olds at a time of budget crisis? Does the business community stand to gain financially? Pushing tests to the lower grades generates more profits. Will we test infants next?
Native Texan
Pre-kindergarten is a totally unnecessary waste of taxpayer money. Those children are simply too young to be separated from their mothers. Sadly, they will probably go to daycare if not to public Pre-K. Infants now go to daycare while their mothers work. Very sad thing for those children and very sad for society. I realize some mothers have no choice but to work, but not all. There are sacrifices people can make but are just not willing to make.
The education industry is too large. And indeed, that's what it is: an industry. The federal government has no rightful business in education, and we should not take one dime from it. The state's role is questionable from the standpoint of creating a one size fits all system for the entire state, regardless of community standards, culture, and needs.
There is a huge amount of waste in public education. Look at the list of expenditures for each Texas ISD (there is a website with that information) and you will see tons of unnecessary fluff. Especially in these bad economic times, we must cut the waste. Get back to basics and focus on practical education rather than unnecessary garbage, such as sex ed. Why do we need that course? We don't! The kids don't. They need to learn to read and do math and the other essentials that will equip them to earn a living. But even in those areas, liberals have intervened with ridiculous ideas about how to teach reading and how to teach math that simply DO NOT WORK! There is far too much liberal input into Texas education. Yet when conservatives in recent times have attempted to simply pull it more away from the left and put some balance in the matter, liberals scream and cry how conservatives are trying to ruin education.
Put more focus on the dynamic of the teacher and student, and cut out administrative fluff and waste. Also, face the reality that there is an underclass in Texas that could not care less about education, so it is not surprising that their children carry on that family tradition. Throwing money at such a lack of motivation is a lost cause. There are children in every society who are not cut out for higher education. They just aren't. It is better for them to learn a trade that will support them and their future families. It is just silly to think that every child should go to a university. Teach more practical matters in public schools so that we have children who grow up to be adults who can put food on the table.
Native Texan
@ Raleen Sloan,
It is absurd to expect first graders to be reading by the time they reach first grade, and to achieve this we must put them in public school when they are four years old. If schools are expecting that, they are way out of line. What does this kind of stress and pressure on children at so young an age eventually do for them and for society? Nothing. Children under the age of 6 have more important things to be doing, such as learning motor skills and bonding with their families, especially their parents, and developing emotional security. This society pushes children to be oh so educated so early, and for what? I know of people who were in all the "gifted" programs in their schools, but today are not even using an education and are making a below average wage in a below average job. The education machine in America is mostly about keeping education theorists and administrators in their jobs.
Raleen Sloan
We are Responsible for Children
We are responsible for children
Who put chocolate fingers everywhere,
Who like to be tickled,
Who stomp in puddles and ruin their pants,
Who sneak popsicles before supper,
Who erase holes in math workbooks,
Who can never find their shoes.
But we are also responsible for those
Who stare at photographers from behind broken windows,
Who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
Who never "counted potatoes,"
Who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead,
Who never go to the circus,
Who live in an x-rated world.
We are also responsible for children
Who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
Who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish,
Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
Who cover themselves with Band-Aids and sing off key,
Who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink,
Who slurp their soup.
But we are also responsible for those
Who never get dessert,
Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who watch their parents watch them suffer,
Who can't find any bread to steal,
Who don't have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures won't be on anybody's dresser,
Whose monsters are real.
We are also responsible for children
Who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse the tub,
Who get visits from the tooth fairy,
Who don't like tob e kissed in front of the carpool,
Who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at and
Whose smiles can make us cry.
We are responsible for those
Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who aren't spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being.
We are responsible for children
Who want to be carried and for those who must,
For those we never give up on
And for those who don't get a second chance,
For those we smother...
And for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.
~Ina Hughes
Kimberly Burkett via Texas Tribune on Facebook
"Districts would absorb the cost of developing the standards..." That's called an unfunded mandate, folks. The legislature does it constantly - that's about the third unfunded mandate for schools this session that I can think of just off the top of my head. Add these kinds of new costs to the third fastest growing student enrollment in the U.S. and subtract $4 billion from funding and you have a recipe for disaster. And the uninformed, selectively fiscal conservatives complain that ISDs overspend! If it weren't so dire, it would actually be funny.
Mary Smith
It seems pretty convenient to me that the data is missing or destroyed- CLI can then hide behind TEA's data retention policies without having to back up the effectiveness of their programs. Let's stop the unfunded mandates and stop funding programs with questionable outcomes.