Alarm sounded on schools
Legislative panel warns to prioritize education or jeopardize Texas’ future
AUSTIN — Texas slipped to 46th in the nation in fourth-grade reading. Even the best school districts report that just half their lowincome students are at grade level. And just 28 percent of graduating seniors earn a postsecondary degree or credential in six years.
As state legislators plan to make 2019 a banner year for capping property tax growth, some are warning in a much-anticipated report that the focus next year needs to be on pumping resources into schools or risk jeopardizing Texas’ long-term future.
“We have to stop lying to ourselves. We have to acknowledge who these students are, the circumstances they find themselves in. The state for a very long time has stared them in the face and said, ‘You’re going to get a little less from us. We have other things that we care about, whether it’s border security … or tax breaks for corporations,” said Rep. Diego Bernal, a Democrat from San Antonio on the commission that
released the draft report this week. “It’s shameful.”
The findings are dire, especially for low-income students and those who struggle to speak English. The 13-member committee found that the school system failed to adjust to changing demographics that mean more poor children, and more whose primary language is not English. The report also reveals a state where the majority of public school students are unprepared for grade-level work and adult life and fewer people are pursuing degrees in education to fuel the next wave of teachers.
“I think the commission learned some uncomfortable things about the challenges that our schools face,” said Mark Wiggins, of the Association of Texas Professional Educators.
While the panel is sounding alarms, top state education officials say they have made progress in recent years.
The Texas Education Agency, which oversees Texas schools, agrees these are issues to be improved upon. However, Texas is making progress elsewhere, according to the TEA 2017 Annual Report. Graduation rates are at an alltime high and among the top five states in the country. More high school students are earning college credit than in past years and African-American, Hispanic and white students outperformed students in all but eight other states in the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress.
Texas lawmakers have vowed to prioritize curbing property tax growth and school finance in the 2019 legislative session. Both issues are complicated and intractably linked.
The commission met over the past year to sort out the state’s options and priorities in educating 5.3 million students who make up about 10 percent of the nation’s public school children. Among the ideas are paying high-performing teachers up to $100,000 a year, increasing funding per student, shifting more money to educate low-income and English language learners, and funding full-day prekindergarten.
Texas grew by 770,000 public school students in the last decade alone. Roughly 8 in 10 of those students come from low-income families and 4 in 10 were English language learners, the report said.
Low-income students and English language learners lag far behind their peers, the report found. Just 36 percent of low-income students are proficient on state standardized tests, as are 24 percent of English language learners. Their more affluent peers who can speak English well have proficiency rates two to three times higher, according to the report.
Shortfalls in student outcomes are evident before first grade, the report says. In Texas, about 4 out of 10 young children are unprepared to start kindergarten.
Even a majority of students at some of the state’s highest-performing schools are unprepared for college. More than 900 high schools scored the equivalent of an A or B state rating for the 2017-18 school year. At 2 out of 3of those schools, the majority of students failed to score high enough on the SAT or ACT to be considered college ready, a Hearst Newspaper analysis found. That means students will need to take remedial classes in college and hurt their chances of earning a degree.
More than 200,000 students graduate high school but don’t have a college degree or credential, according to data from the Texas Education Agency and national reports. Some 22 percent of high school graduates failed to meet minimum test scores to enlist in the Army.
People with a two- or four-year degree or industry certificate earn about $1 million more over their lifetime than a high school graduate, representing a “forgone opportunity cost” of about $200 billion or one-eighth of the Texas economy for students who lack a postsecondary diploma.
“Too few of our own students are participating in the prosperity of Texas, and our future workforce and economic health are at real risk if substantive changes are not enacted in the near term,” warned authors of the report.
Lawmakers expect to decide in the legislative session that begins in January how they want to fund education while at the same time reforming the state’s property tax system. Texas has the sixth highest property taxes in the nation. Some lawmakers, like San Antonio Democrat Bernal, are concerned the push to fix school funding to address these problems is a Trojan horse for property tax relief and could do little for Texas’ children.
“It just so happens that these are people who don’t have lobbyists and don’t make campaign contributions, but their parents vote and those folks have woken up. I would legislate against their interests at your own peril,” he said.
Smith, president-elect of the Texas Association of School Administrators, said he’s optimistic lawmakers will invest in education instead of keeping the status quo.
“If you keep kicking the can down the road, kids lose, the economy loses,” said Greg Smith, a superintendent of Clear Creek ISD, where low-income students make up at least 40 percent of their student body. “We want to make sure that we’re a pipeline for not just our local community, but for the state and the world.”