For Texas to prosper, it needs to do more to educate its children

Children are the future, according to the old platitude, but Texans apparently don’t much care about either.

The latest statistics from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board confirm that educational achievement continues to lag in Texas, with only 144,911 students earning four-year degrees in 2016 in a state that had 350,684 students leave high school.

The word “leave” is critical here, since 6.2 percent of high school kids drop out without a diploma or GED. That’s not a bad dropout rate, but it belies the failure of Texas schools to prepare students for a career or college.

Only 41 percent of Texas high school graduates earn some kind of certificate or degree after high school, according to the coordinating board, one of the lowest rates in the nation. Such a low percentage does little to raise the poverty rate in Texas, which is 15.9 percent, also well above the national average.

If Texans want to see the state prosper, we must do better at educating our children. The coordinating board has a goal of ensuring that 60 percent of young Texans are earning some kind of post-high school

certificate in 2030.

Even meeting this modest goal, though, is proving difficult.

Texas remains far from the intermediate goal of 48 percent by 2025. That leaves Texas employers to recruit 100,000 college graduates to move to Texas each year because they can’t find indigenous Texans with enough education.

Texas can’t sustain its current economic growth without better educating its workforce. Every year there are fewer jobs for people without some kind of degree, and the most innovative companies will not come to Texas if they can’t find the educated and skilled workers they need.

Making matters worse, there are no easy solutions to this problem.

College administrators complain that Texas high schools fail to prepare students for college. Texas college test scores put the state at 44th in the nation with only 60 percent of high school students taking the test.

Public schools complain that they are underfunded and underequipped in a state where 59 percent of Texas children are economically disadvantaged and 19 percent are learning English. Too many kindergarten children show up ill-prepared to learn.

The Texas Legislature, meanwhile, has shown total disregard for early childhood education, granting funding only for parttime prekindergarten.

While Republican leaders dismiss pre-K as subsidized child care, most educational experts consider it the most important learning period in a child’s life.

Of course, parents ultimately are responsible for their children, and if they don’t teach their children to love learning at an early age, then there is little a schoolteacher can do.

Passing the blame, though, does not absolve Texans from doing more to ensure young people receive an education that meets the needs of the state. Our history is full of leaders who distrusted formal education, and that is part of the problem, but that doesn’t make it right.

If Texans truly care about children and the future, we will set aside ideology and examine what works in education in other places. We will adopt policies that achieve results rather than allow politics to stand in the way of success.

Education should be a top concern for every Texas businessperson next year, especially in light of statewide elections in November.