Lowering Education Expectations Hurts Texas' Children

Hurting whites to avoid facing the low educational achievements of blacks and Hispanics

Our country was founded on the premise that hard work and education are the keys to success and the American Dream. Home ownership, entrepreneurship, and especially rising out of poverty are all directly tied to one's education, perseverance and creativity. With this in mind, what is more important for our children than a rigorous education? Strong math, reading, and writing skills enable all students from a range of backgrounds to achieve their dreams.

Yet, much to our astonishment, the Texas House is reversing course after spending nearly 20 years raising standards and tweaking the accountability system. The House recently passed a bill that sunsets the accountability system, eliminates graduation exit exams, and makes social promotion easier - gutting the high school accountability system.

Almost everyone wants to get rid of the high school TAKS test. Students, parents, educators, teacher groups, and policymakers all support replacing the high school TAKS test with exams at the end of each course called end-of-course exams. Beyond that, the agreement ends.

Education reformers are trying to raise the rigor of the exams required for graduation to help students graduate ready to succeed, while the education lobby wants to eradicate high stakes testing all together. Testing opponents are successfully watering down accountability in schools; under the House bill, students can fail all of their end-of-course exams and still graduate.

For more than 20 years, Texas has had an exit exam requirement for graduation. Today, students must pass the math, science, English, and history sections of the 11th grade TAKS to graduate. These tests ensured that students did not leave high school without obtaining a certain level of basic knowledge and skills. And over time standards have been slowly raised in response to higher expectations from colleges and employers.

Over the years, high stakes tests stimulated significant gains in student learning. Today, Texas leads the nation in improving elementary and middle school math and reading. Now, just as Texas is beginning to make real progress in getting students to high school on grade level, House legislators destroyed one of the best tools we've used to do so. Only last week the Texas House eliminated high school exit exams as a condition for graduation destroying 20 years of progress and improvement in public education. And now that our tests are finally getting closer to measuring college and workplace readiness, this bill lessens their importance and reinstates "social graduation."

Unfortunately, this is not the only education back-pedaling for legislators this session. The House recently reversed the bipartisan agreement to end social promotion in Texas, replacing the currently generous loophole that allows students to avoid retention with a new loophole that makes social promotion almost inevitable.

Worse still, the House agreed to eliminate the school accountability system in 2011. It has taken Texas 15 years to build up one of the best systems in the country. It should be studied for needed changes, and there remains plenty of room for improvement, but it makes no sense to eliminate the entire system. Sunsetting the current system only makes it vulnerable to bad policy that could further erode the ability of Texans to hold schools accountable. Do legislators really think lowering expectations and academic standards will help more students become ready for the rigors of college and the real world?

Make no mistake; the House's version of the end-of-course exam bill hurts Texas students. Lowering standards and expectations does not help students. It only sets them up for failure in the real world, where results are more important than their self esteem. There's not much time left in the legislative session, but there's enough to make real improvements in public education. Legislators need to raise expectations for our future leaders.If those expectations are lowered, the hard work of education reformers over the last two decades will essentially go down the drain, leaving a horrible legacy for today's leaders and hurting the chances of young Texans to achieve their dreams.

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West Australia faces teacher crisis

The report below fails to mention that a major reason for teachers resigning or not starting in the first place is the postmodern garbage they have been asked to teach -- something that has been a major public controversy and which prospective teachers could be expected to be well aware of. It is only older teachers who are hanging on until retirement that is keeping the system afloat

EXTRAORDINARY mismanagement of teacher recruitment has put WA at risk of teacher shortages for years, an international recruiting agency has found. The Gerard Daniels agency accuses the state Education Department of "clearly failing" to develop a workforce strategy, and says officials should have foreseen the problems now being experienced, including some schools still being short of teachers halfway through the school year. Teacher recruitment processes were antiquated, and the department's recruitment website one of the worst the agency had seen.

The agency report, marked strictly private and confidential, was unexpectedly released yesterday by Education Minister Mark McGowan, who commissioned the investigation in January when schools were short more than 250 teachers statewide. Mr McGowan said the shortage had now been cut to 28 teachers but he admitted there was a serious problem in attracting more teachers, particularly for country areas. WA has the oldest teacher profile of any state or territory, ensuring major challenges ahead as the rate of retirements increases.

If immediate action were not taken, the Gerard Daniels report said, years of shortages would result. Graduates were dropping with "application fatigue" after being forced to fill in the same handwritten personal details on up to eight different forms. If they got through that hurdle, many rejected the offers made to them because they were so inadequate. The report said about $18million was needed to overcome the shortages, and recommended structural changes to the Education Department.

Promising to provide money to tackle the problem, but unable to say how much, Mr McGowan said the Government was trying to recruit teachers from Britain, and to encourage retired teachers to return to the workforce, particularly those interested in moving to a country location.

But Gerard Daniels said a survey of recently resigned teachers found widespread disillusionment, and 61 per cent said they would not recommend the department as an employer. The study found 44 per cent would contemplate returning under the right conditions, but the agency warned that the department's "employment brand" had been damaged. Despite being the state's largest employer, it was a matter of "grave concern" that the department did not attract recruits. The booming resources sector had provided much competition for staff.

"The department should be held out as an iconic employment brand," Gerard Daniels said. "It is one of the oldest continuous employers in WA. We recommend that the department re-engineer its brand, including its job offer to graduates."

State School Teachers Union secretary Dave Kelly said the report vindicated everything the union had been telling the Government for years. He said the starting salary of $45,000 for a graduate teacher who had done four years of study was ridiculous against the wages being offered to young unskilled workers in the resources sector. Mr Kelly said pay rates must be raised, and innovative incentives were essential to get teachers to move to country areas. Basic requirements such as housing must be addressed urgently. "We have teachers being forced to live in motel rooms for months because there's no housing provided - it's shameful," Mr Kelly said. "These problems are not suddenly appearing. We've warned about what was happening for years."

He said suggestions by Mr McGowan that he might reinstate a rule to force graduate teachers to work in country schools was not the answer. Mr McGowan said the teaching workforce was larger than the Australian army in an area bigger than Europe, and overall the department was doing a good job.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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