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Legislative committees explore public education funding, hear financial health of pension and healthcare funds
Education Commissioner Mike Morath testifies before the Senate Finance Committee. Two key committees for the Texas state budget—the Senate Finance Committee and the House Appropriations Committee—met this week, and while lawmakers continued to express support for investment in public education and the gains made last session, many questions still remain unanswered for how far that support will go in meeting...
Read MoreTapping Into the Texas Share of the Federal Education Jobs Fund
First things first: Thanks are due to all of you who joined in our Texas AFT campaign of e-mail letters and phone calls urging Gov. Rick Perry to apply for $830 million in federal aid reserved for Texas school districts in the Education Jobs Fund enacted by Congress August 10....
Read MoreGov. Perry, Feeling the Heat, Applies for State Education-Jobs Funding
One day after Gov. Rick Perry issued a letter to Texas school administrators simultaneously denouncing the federal education-jobs funding bill and announcing that he would ask for the money, the Texas application for the funding was formally submitted to the U.S. Department of Education today by Texas Commissioner of Education...
Read MoreDeadline Nears for Governor to Accept Federal Education-Jobs Aid: Do It Already!
School boards, school administrators, rank-and-file education employees, and educator organizations across Texas continue to call on Gov. Rick Perry to accept $830 million earmarked for Texas school districts by the recently enacted federal emergency-aid bill to save education jobs. As a September 9 deadline for requesting the funds from the...
Read MoreState Senator Blasts TEA for Hitting the Brakes on Seat-Belt-Equipped School Buses
Sen. Eddie Lucio, Democrat of Brownsville, is more than a little displeased with the Texas Education Agency, which has decided that a law Lucio wrote requiring new school buses to be equipped with seat belts cannot be implemented immediately and will not be backed by the full $10 million the...
Read MoreShortsighted Cuts in Proposed State Education Budget Draw Fire From Texas AFT
Texas AFT Responds to Shortsighted Budget Cuts: Texas AFT President Linda Bridges put out a statement to the media today in response to the Texas Education Agency's just-released 2012-2013 budget request, which reflects instructions from Gov. Rick Perry and top legislative officials to cut 10 percent of all TEA spending...
Read MoreSchool-Community Partnerships Spotlighted on Dallas Visit by AFT’s Randi Weingarten
During visits to two Dallas schools by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten yesterday, the theme was school-community teamwork–the need to take shared responsibility for strengthening public schools and ensuring all children get a high-quality education. School, community, and business and labor leaders–including AFT President Randi Weingarten, Dallas ISD...
Read MoreTransitions: O’Sullivan Retires, Malfaro Comes Aboard as Texas AFT Secretary-Treasurer
Today marks the retirement of Texas AFT Secretary-Treasurer John O’Sullivan, who has helped Texas AFT grow to become the largest union in the state labor federation, the Texas AFL-CIO. O’Sullivan has effectively taught and exemplified the meaning of solidarity, knitting together diverse coalitions of school employees, community and parent activists,...
Read MoreAFT President Randi Weingarten Promotes School-Community Partnerships in Dallas Visit
AFT President Visits Dallas ISD With Community-Partnership Message: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is in Dallas today for meetings with community, business, union, and school leaders to stress the importance of taking shared responsibility to strengthen public schools and ensure all children get a quality education....
Read MoreTesting Experts Say It’s a Serious Mistake to Make Standardized Test Scores a Dominant Factor in Teacher Evaluation
Even as the craze for judging teachers by their students’ standardized test scores reaches new heights, now comes a sharply worded report from a distinguished group of testing experts who all agree that test-driven teacher evaluation is a really bad...
Read MoreWill $830 Million in Job-Saving Federal Aid Reach Texas? Help Make It Happen
Today state officials reportedly have been meeting in the nation’s capital with the U.S. Department of Education in a bid to secure $830 million earmarked for financially hard-pressed Texas school districts. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has until September 9 to apply for the aid under the Education Jobs Fund program...
Read MoreProgress on Education Aid? Keep Up the Pressure
News reports tell us that Texas education officials are en route to Washington, D.C., for discussions Friday with the U.S. Department of Education on how to secure $830 million in job-saving education aid for Texas school districts. The money is there for the asking, thanks to legislation passed by Congress...
Read MoreFederal Focus on Anti-Bullying Efforts
Earlier this month the U.S. Department of Education held the first-ever National Summit on Bullying to draw attention to this all-too-common discipline problem. Now the feds have followed up with the launch of a new Web site, www.bullyinginfo.org, intended as a one-stop site for federal resources on bullying. In announcing...
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