Simple cure:
1) No teachers union or cushy tenure. Pay for perform.
2) No assistance dollars for any household where a felon, illegal, juvenile delinquent or truant child lives.
Texas ranks 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
At least they have something to be proud of.
Amen.
Not to nit pick, but it seems to me that our state has somewhat of an albatross around its neck when it comes to literacy and graduation rates, given the huge numbers of illegals occasionally attending our larger metropolitan school districts.
Same sorry state of ed in Nevada. Courts say we must educate children of illegal aliens.
How many of those failing english could pass the test in spanish?
Dismantle the public school system.
Thank God for the parental passions and patriot fires of the almost 200 parents who showed up at a meeting last week to question the wisdom of school officials. They are fighting in their own personal education Alamo and presently have the upper hand. For the moment, the school district has backed off plans for its Arabic studies program.
Ah, I hadn't heard that. good to know.
Bless these parents for fighting the good fight.
Tell it to the unions, Babs.
Could part of the Texas “problem” be that english is almost a second language?
Well, part of the cure is to not average in Illegal aliens in the formula’s, break ‘em out seperatly and see what they are....if you can.
Difficult to educate children who are just learning English.
SAT tests for ALL students is ridiculous. Many will not be attending any college at all. Many belong in trade schools, and many are barely proficient in english.
If we want to serious about education then we stop telling everyone they must attend college and then subsidizing their education. While the colleges may enjoy this extra funding, they must provide remedial reading, writing, and arithmetic for years before a student is even marginally ready for college courses.
Show the scores by ethnic group and they’d find more an illegal alien problem than some general problem with their educational system. It’s deliberately misleading to use overall average scores in states such as Texas and California.
How are students going to do well in the SATs if they can’t speak English? If you take those out of the calculation where would Texas rank?
Barbara Bush is only interested in education because she is working to sell more of Neil’s computer crap to school districts. Don’t be fooled. She isn’t a meek little old grandma, she and most of her family are in it for the money.
I spent 21 years in Texas public education as a teacher and administrator. Texas school districts are all independent entities - that’s why there’s an “I” in their acronyms, so state-wide stats are misleading as there is not state school system. I am not arguing there should be. A education “map” would reveal that the stats are skewed by the Rio Grande Valley, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso where all the usual urban school problems exist along with the cultural pressures in some Hispanic communities for boys to get jobs and for girls to become mothers.
Also, no teacher unions enjoy collective bargaining rights or the right to strike in Texas - that’s a good thing!
Salaries mean nothing without the context of cost of living. Texas is an easy state to live in economically so the dollar goes a lot farther for housing, taxes and essentials.
I tell you what—I do NOT want to see America sacrifice its basic ideas about schooling just to raise test scores to South Korean levels. As other’s have pointed out, our students compare fairly well, once you control for race, nationality, socioeconomic status, etc.
Though there are aspects of Asian schooling that are admirable, Asian youth pay a tremendous price for many of them. For example, the only kids in Taiwan who play Little League baseball are those for whom it has already been determined that academic learning would be largely a waste of time. There are no serious school music or drama performances in most Asian schools. Very little in the way of art. No after-school soccer, etc.
The major problems in education are the same in Texas as elsewhere.
1) Bloated bureaucracies: Houston’s HISD has 2.6 OTHER employees for every classroom teacher. FIX: fire at least 70% of the non-teaching staff.
2) Lack of discipline: kids can cuss their teacher out, hit others, and they get a “ticket”. Those who disobey the rules are put in “special education” classes, which are warehouses for rotten little creeps. FIX: ramp up suspensions and expulsions. Send the ones who don’t want to learn to reform school.
3) Lack of parental involvement: many parents do nothing to aid their kid’s education, like making them do their homework - or speak English. FIX: deport ALL illegals AND their anchor babies. Make welfare mommas do volunteer work at the school. Encourage parents to support their kids. Let kids who want to quit school (and whose parents agree) quit.
Last but way too often put first, get rid of incompetent teachers and principals. The other three problems are crippling. Bad teachers are an irritation, but have been with us always. The three problems above have not.