Dear Friends, Thousands of Texas educators are about to descend on the Texas Statehouse on Monday, March 11, in a Red for Ed Texas March to the Capitol. We follow the path worn by our colleagues across the nation from West Virginia to the West Coast, who have taken to the streets to protest the abuse of our public schools by negligent elected officials. Joining us in Austin will be the presidents of the nation’s two major teacher and school employee unions: Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and Lily Eskelsen García of the National Education Association (NEA). These national leaders rightly see our struggle with the Texas Legislature as part of the broader fight playing out all over America. They come to...
At two interim committee meetings this week in the Texas legislature, lawmakers rehearsed for debates to come in the 2011 session over bilingual education and school finance. Today’s Hotline will focus on the debate over bilingual education; an upcoming Hotline will consider the preview we obtained this week of lawmakers’...
A public forum sponsored by the Houston Federation of Teachers last week shed some needed light on the frailty of the value-added methodology in use in Houston ISD. But many issues raised at the forum pertain to all value-added methodologies...
A new research report from the Education Law Center ("Is School Funding Fair–A National Report Card") grades the 50 states on the fairness of their school-funding systems. Most notable findings: Texas rates a C for fairness of funding distribution (measured by extra funding for districts that have more students with...
Texas AFT has made a push all year long at interim state budget hearings for full funding of Texas community colleges. They already educate the clear majority of all students enrolled in public institutions of higher education in our state, and that percentage is headed higher and higher as costs...
Matthew di Carlo, a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute, couldn’t help but notice how often pundits and self-styled school reformers lately have been making unflattering comparisons between the U.S. public schools and the educational system of Finland. Students in Finland, we are told, consistently outperform American kids on...
Hundreds of educators and parents turned out for a forum sponsored by the Houston Federation of Teachers yesterday evening to consider the impact of Houston ISD’s test-driven, "value-added" methodology for teacher evaluation. They took part in a spirited discussion with a leading scholarly critic of the district’s chosen methodology and...
A badly flawed revision of the Texas educators’ code of ethics is on its way to the State Board of Education for review next year, probably in April. The proposed revision tilts excessively in the direction of expanded prosecutorial authority for the staff of the State Board for Educator Certification,...
Not much has changed since Texas AFT testified against an August draft revision of the Educators’ Code of Ethics before the State Board for Educator Certification. The SBEC staff tomorrow will bring a slightly tweaked version back to the board for adoption. Texas AFT will be there again to say...
The New Teacher Project is part of a chorus of national education-policy organizations that have sung the same tune on teacher appraisal, supporting a heavy stress on students’ achievement-test results in the evaluation of teachers. That orientation was much in evidence when a New Teacher Project leader testified recently before...
Policy-makers may be drawn to the simplicity of reducing teacher evaluation to a "value-added" score based on achievement tests, but they are neglecting an expanding body of educational research that shows this seeming simplicity comes at the expense of accuracy....
Last week a federal appeals court in California held that alternative-route teachers still in training are not "highly qualified" under the federal education law, the No Child Left Behind Act. The U.S. Department of Education has interpreted the "highly qualified" requirement to allow individuals who "demonstrate satisfactory progress" toward certification...
The American Federation of Teachers marked yesterday’s Child Health Day by unveiling a new Web page (www.aft.org/childhealth) that focuses on the vital link between children's health and their academic success. As teacher Ronnie Moshi says on the page, "When my students come to class with health, social or mental issues...
