TEA Chief Will Defer 15 Percent Rule
At a Friday gathering of educators, school administrators and student assessment specialists in Austin, Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams announced he would defer implementation of a rule that requires state end-of-course exams count for 15 percent of high school students' final grades.
The announcement, which earned a standing ovation in a crowded hotel ballroom, came a day after Gov. Rick Perry declared his support for such a change and as Senate Education Chairman Dan Patrick, R-Houston, has filed legislation that would permanently leave the decision of whether to apply it up to local school districts.
Making clear that improving the ...
Comments (8)
Kenneth Franks
Texas must move away from its "Test Driven Curriculum." We spend way too much time in preparation for tests, have too many high stakes tests, put too much emphasis on them, and should move away from this failed policy that public education has been forced to follow for way too long.
Bambi Clark via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Like this appointed minion knows anything about education. smh
Samdavis
How long will it take to undo all the damage Rick Perry has done by appointing unqualified cronies to state positions?
GS Crispus
To defer the 15% change is a good start.
I don't see the problem of going to a two track system if you incorporate the math/science/reading skills needed into the vocational programs. The difficulty would be finding teaching staff that has the appropriate certifications to certify successful students at the end of the career track.
As for vouchers, we have Milton Friedman's experiment in Chile to point to their failure. They do not work, and they become defacto class styled segregation. Where theyve been tried in the United States, the data does not show improvement (and in many cases, decreased performance).
Students do need choices, and schools do need more flexibility in alternative educational settings. This is very difficult to accomplish due to historic civil rights legislation. It is a very difficult needle to thread.
Alice Taylor
The choice should not be "CTE or Advanced". Career and Technology Education IS advanced, if done right. The idea that CTE is a dumping ground for low performing students is an outdated one. Federal grants that pay for CTE require that CTE students pass professional certifications or college level classes and low level kids can't do that.
Who is more "advanced"? A student graduating out of a CTE program with a year of college credit in computer networking or pharmacy or the traditional high school student student graduating with a regular basic high school diploma and no college credits?
GS Crispus
That is somewhat of a false equivalency, Alice. If you are going to compare programs in that way, it would be AP/DC programs for the academic subjects. The ole Booker T. Washington vs WEB Dubois fight is alive and well!
CTE is very broad and doing it right does not simply have to mean certifications or elite programs. A school might be focused on networking or pharmacy, or it could be focused on welding and hairdressing. Alternatively, CTE could be focused on allowing school to work programs count for the non-academically focused.
One of the worst things the state did a few years back is limit the amount of vocational slots a campus has to graduate those "low" students.
You are going to get your extremes in the bell curve. If education regulation is "done right" it should be about giving districts the ability to create a plan for students across the entire education spectrum.
Anya Khan
Kenneth: Agree with you
Bambi/Sam: sigh...whiny waste of time
GS: the voucher program has worked very well in DC
Vouchers have been successful in numerous school districts and would be a benefit to many in San Antonio.
It is a good thing that Williams is waiting on this policy
GS Crispus
Did the voucher program actually fix troubled schools, or let a few students escape? What about the voucher programs in Chicago, where parents were not concerned about achievement, and continued to place their students in schools that failed to achieve academically? Vouchers do not improve educational outcomes.
Vouchers do not deal with the troubling issue of, "why is a school failing?" They really do nothing at all.
How are those voucher programs in Louisiana working? I assume some parents truly want their children learning of the merits of the KKK?
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollars
DC vouchers a success? There are few quality controls, and very little improvement has been shown.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/quality-controls-lacking-for-dc-schools-accepting-federal-vouchers/2012/11/17/062bf97a-1e0d-11e2-b647-bb1668e64058_story.html
What about in Florida?
http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/09/19/voucher-programs-fail-advocates-claims/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog
The rationale is always, "put the needy children first," and somehow it always ends up being, "everyone should get them."
http://dianeravitch.net/category/vouchers/
Again, if you had read any of the literature from Milton Friedman's failed experiment in Chile on school vouchers, you would know that vouchers do not provide any measurable improvements to academics. In the long-run they just become class-based segregation.
Improving educational outcomes may be a little trickier than creating a duplicate school down the road for a few, no?