(Photo: Chris Paul/Houston Public Media) Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath visits Aldine ISD on the day of the A-F ratings release. Yesterday, with much undue fanfare, the Texas Education Agency released its A-F accountability ratings, which for the first time officially include campuses as well as districts. Education Commissioner Mike Morath and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went on a tour of three districts in the state--San Antonio, Irving, and Aldine ISDs--to laud teachers and officials for their hard work. (You can look up individual campus scores here.) Hard work, however, is not the issue here. We already know that our school employees work tirelessly to educate our kids regardless of state-created efforts to test and punish our schools and teachers with a single letter grade....
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...
Tens of thousands of AFT members gathered in Washington, D.C., on October 2 to add their voices to the One Nation Working Together march at the Lincoln Memorial. Arriving by bus, car, train, and plane, AFTers came from coast to coast to attend. Here’s an account of the day’s events,...
Monday, October 4, is the last day to register to vote for the November 2 general election, when Texas voters will choose the next governor, lieutenant governor, other key statewide officials, and members of Congress and the state legislature. (As a bonus, some of you even get to elect your...
It is axiomatic in most discussions of post-secondary readiness that a bachelor’s degree is the ticket to a prosperous, successful career. But does that make it true for every student in every circumstance? Three articles in the new issue of American Educator, the professional journal of the American Federation of...
The Fall 2010 issue of American Educator, the professional journal of the American Federation of Teachers, includes an extraordinary essay by one of our own, new Texas AFT Secretary-Treasurer Louis Malfaro. His piece, entitled "The Professional Educator: Lessons on Organizing for Power and School Improvement," offers many insights into what...
At last week’s joint hearing of Texas House and Senate education committees, lawmakers kept coming back by one route or another to some key questions: How can the state get the benefit of information provided by standardized testing without continuing the excessive emphasis on testing at the expense of time...
The much-hyped movie “Waiting for Superman” has been the focus this week of a media campaign that scapegoats teachers and their unions for all the ills of the nation’s schools, while portraying the operators of select charter schools and self-designated “school reformers” as heroes. Read More
Some highly popular provisions of the new federal law on health care have taken effect. As of September 23, six months after passage of the new law, the following features are in force for all insurance plans: --Health-insurance providers are prohibited from discriminating against children under age 19 with pre-existing...
The delivery of $830 million earmarked for Texas school districts by Congress last month, as part of the new Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act, is still on hold. Gov. Rick Perry insists that Texas cannot under state law provide assurances required by Congress that the state won’t cut its...
AFT’s national office reports that the Coalition on the Academic Workforce (CAW)–of which AFT is a member–is kicking off a major survey to collect information about the working lives of contingent academics (non-tenure-track, full- and part-time instructors and researchers; graduate employees; and postdoctoral fellows). It is the first national survey...
In the 2007 and 2009 legislative sessions, Texas lawmakers enacted significant future changes in the state's test-focused accountability system. The changes include use of end-of-course exams instead of an exit-level exam as a high-school graduation requirement, along with tougher tests at all levels that are supposedly calibrated to show progress...
The hard-right faction of the State Board of Education took advantage of the absence of two Board members today to win a seven-to-six vote on a resolution condemning alleged "pro-Islamic, anti-Christian" bias in textbooks. The seven-member bloc, often self-described as the "social conservative" faction, first knocked down a substitute resolution,...
