The State of Texas Education

Greater San Antonio Chamber of CommerceSeptember 10, 2010

Did you know…• that in the 2008-09 school year, there were 4.8 million

students enrolled in public schools?

• that the largest school district in Texas has 202,773 students (Houston ISD) and the smallest district has 20 students (Doss CISD)?

• that more than 138 languages are spoken in the homes of the public school children of Texas? (After English, the most common are Spanish, Vietnamese and Urdu.)

• that 445,000 students with disabilities are being served every year by Texas schools?

• that 772 million meals are served each year to disadvantaged Texas school children?

• that 2.8 million students enrolled in Texas public schools are economically disadvantaged?

• that 684,000 people are employed by Texas school districts – more people than the entire state of Wyoming!

• that Texas schools spent $1.2 billion on bus transportation in 2008-2009?

• that the transportation allotment hasn’t changed since 1984, when the average price of gas was $1.21 per gallon?

• that Texas school buses drive more than 262 million miles each year? (That’s 550 round trips to the moon!)

• that more than 48.5 million textbooks are distributed to students each school year?

• that the enrollment of the Texas Virtual School Network has increased from 23 students to 1486 students in just 1 year?

Did you know….

Curriculum Standards

Social Studies Standards

• Approximately 22,000 public comments

• Approximately 35 hours of public testimony from about 280 witnesses

• State Board of Education gave final approval on May 21

• Draft of social studies TEKS with all amendments incorporated will be posted to TEA website June 25

• Implemented in schools beginning in 2011-12 school year

Social Studies Standards

• James Armistead – Grade 8

• Wentworth Cheswill – Grade 8

• Benjamin Banneker – Grade 3

• José Antonio Navarro – Grades K, 4, and 7

• Ellen Ochoa – Grade 7

• Raul A. Gonzalez – Grades 4 and 7

Common Core National Standards

• Project of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO)

• Race to the Top federal grant program

• Following the initial round of feedback, the draft Common Core standards were opened for public comment and received nearly 10,000 responses

• Example from HS Math Modeling: In descriptive modeling, a model simply describes the phenomena or summarizes them in a compact form. Graphs of observations are a familiar descriptive model—for example, graphs of global temperature and atmospheric CO2 over time.

Graduation and Dropout Rates

Intercultural Development Research Association

Graduation Rates

• Class of 2009, Grades 9-12

80.6% - Graduated on time8.6% - Continued in school1.4% - Received a GED9.4% - Dropped out

Dropout and Completion

• 21 states report using the NGA compact graduation rate definition. Of the 16 that publicly reported their graduation rate for 2008, Texas ranked fourth behind only Iowa, Vermont and Virginia.

• Texas ranked ahead of states such as Michigan, Florida, Rhode Island, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, and New Mexico among others.

Four-Year Graduation Rates, by Ethnicity, Selected States Using the Compact Rate, 2007-08All Students African American Asian Hispanic Native American White

Iowa 88.8 72.6 88.5 68.1 72.6 90.8Vermont 85.7 79.4 86.2 81.0 79.8 85.8Virginia 82.2 74.1 93.4 71.3 75.4 85.9Texas 79.1 71.8 91.2 70.8 81.7 88.8Indiana 77.8 59.5 84.9 65.4 67.6 81.2Michigan 75.5 56.4 85.2 57.8 66.2 81.6Florida 75.4 62.5 84.2 69.1 80.3 83.6Rhode Island 74.0 64.0 74.0 62.0 63.0 78.0South Carolina 73.3 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/aNorth Dakota 73.1 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/aMinnesota 72.8 40.9 65.1 39.6 41.0 80.6Mississippi 72.0 66.5 88.3 71.0 64.4 77.4North Carolina 70.3 62.7 81.0 56.4 53.8 75.7Arkansas 68.2 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/aNew York 60.7 55.9 77.6 53.3 n/a 74.8New Mexico 60.3 60.9 80.1 56.2 49.8 71.3

n/a: Not available or not found

Campus Graduation Summary for Fox Technical HS in San Antonio ISD

• In 2005-06, you would have seen 541 brand new ninth graders

• Over the next three years, 124 students left for other Texas public schools.

• Over that same time, 56 students joined the school.

• Adjusting for students who left and who came in, you would expect 473 students to have graduated in May 2009. Did they?

• By May 2009, 297 students had graduated. What happened to the other 176 students?

What happened to the other 176 students at Fox Technical HS?

• 51 students were still in school, and the rest had left school.

• Where did the other 125 students go?

• 40 left the campus for other reasons; of these

14 enrolled in schools in other states Fewer than 5 began home schooling 15 returned to their home countries 6 enrolled in Texas private schools Fewer than 5 died

• 85 students either dropped out or were unable to be tracked in the system because of possible reporting errors.

• An additional 106 students were repeating Grade 9 and therefore belong with an earlier graduating class

List of Dropout Prevention and Recovery Programs

• 9th Grade Transition

• 21st Century Community Learning Centers

• Academic Innovation and Mentoring (AIM)

• Algebra Readiness

• Amachi Mentoring

• Collaborative Dropout Reduction Pilot Program

• Communities In Schools (CIS)

• Dropout Recovery

• Early College High Schools

• Grants for Students Clubs

• High Schools That Work

• Intensive Summer Programs

• Intensive Technology-Based Academic Intervention Pilot

• Investment Capital Fund

• Life Skills for Student Parents

• Limited English Proficient Student Success Initiative (LEP SSI)

• Mathematics Instructional Coaches Pilot Program

• Texas Migrant Interstate Program

• Migrant Student

Graduation Enhancement Program

• Optional Extended Year Program

• Secondary School Redesign and Restructuring

• Statewide Tools for Teaching Excellence

• Student Excellence and Readiness through Volunteers in Education (SERVE)

• T-STEM Academies

• Technology Based Supplemental Mathematics Pilot Programs

• Texas GEAR UP

* Programs in red have begun since 2001

Dropout Prevention and Recovery Funds

• $535 million in state and federal funding for targeted dropout prevention and recovery initiatives,

• $335 million in the High School Allotment

• $3 billion in Compensatory Education Allotment

• http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index3.aspx?id=3505.

Student Achievement

2009 NAEP Mathematics• Eighth-grade African-American students in Texas tied

Massachusetts for first place on the NAEP mathematics exam.

• Among white students, Texas’ eighth-grade students earned the fourth highest score on the NAEP math exam.

• Among Hispanic students, Texas’ eighth-graders had the fourth highest score on the NAEP math exam.

• Overall, Texas ranked 18th among 50 states on eighth-grade NAEP math exam.

• African-American fourth-grade students in Texas earned the third highest score on NAEP math.

• Texas’ white fourth-graders tied for fifth place with North Carolina on NAEP math.

• Hispanic students in Texas ranked eighth nationwide.

Katrina Student Study Findings

•In 2006, Katrina students performed lower than statewide testers.

•The performance of Katrina students educated in Texas from 2006 to 2009 was slightly better in the last three years of the study than was the performance of their matched peers in reading/English language arts and mathematics.

•By 2009, Katrina students performed:o similar to statewide testers in reading; ando lower than statewide testers in mathematics though the gap in

math passing percentages between Katrina students and statewide testers was reduced substantially

•The performance of the Katrina students relative to their matched peers likely reflects the recovery of these students, the increased stability in their schooling, and the commitment of the state to meeting the educational needs of these students.

2009 AP Exams• Both the number of Texas students taking the AP exams

and the number of tests taken increased (increase of 8 percent and 6.4 percent respectively over last year).

• The results show that the number of public school students scoring three or higher increased more than 9 percent over 2008.

• African-American students posted the highest gain, a 17.3 percent increase in the number of students attaining scores of 3, 4 or 5.

• Hispanic students had a 16 percent increase over the number of students scoring three or higher in 2008.

ACT Scores

• Texas ACT composite score stayed at an all-time high for the Class of 2010 even as the number of test takers rose by 12 percent .

• The percent of Texas students taking the ACT who met all four college readiness benchmarks has increased from 17 percent in 2005 to 24 percent in 2010.

Other Recognition• Jobs for the Future recently lauded Texas as one of only three states to

have made progress on all six model policy elements that frame a sound strategy for dropout prevention and recovery since 2002. These include:

1. Reinforce the right to a public education; 2. Count and account for dropouts; 3. Use graduation and on-track rates to trigger transformative reform; 4. Invent new models; 5. Accelerate preparation for postsecondary success; 6. And provide stable funding for systemic reform.

• Texas earned a grade of ‘A’ on standards, assessment and accountability, and ranked sixth in the country in Education Week’s Quality Counts report. The report gave Texas a “100” on curriculum standards and school accountability. Texas also ranked sixth and earned a grade of ‘B’ for a category called transitions and alignments, which examines early-childhood education, college readiness and economy and workforce.

• Three districts won Broad Prize for Urban Education (Aldine, Brownsville, and Houston), more than any other state in the history of the prize. The Broad Prize is given for demonstrating the strongest student achievement and improvement while narrowing achievement gaps between income and ethnic groups.

Current State Accountability System

• Measures districts and campuses on up to 35 indicators

– 5 Tested Subjects (Reading/English Language Arts, Writing, Social Studies, Math, and Science)

– Completion I Rate (4-year on-time graduates + 5th year continuers)

– Grade 7-8 Dropout Rate– 5 Student Groups (All Students, African

American, Hispanic, White, and Economically Disadvantaged) evaluated on each of the measures

• Ratings of Exemplary, Recognized, Academically Acceptable, and Academically Unacceptable

What should the rating be for this campus?

• Evaluated on 25 total measures

• Rated Exemplary on 22 measures

• Rated Recognized on 2 measures

• Rated Acceptable on 1 measure

Actual Rating

• Recognized

• Used the Texas Projection Measure for the one Academically Acceptable measure to move up one level to Recognized.

Finance, Operation and Efficiencies

Sunset of TEA Rules

• Statutory Process (Texas Gov. Code Chapter 2001.039) of four year review still in progress

• Sunset rules through an informal process to receive input from the field

• Goal: To reduce the number of unnecessary rules and to provide more freedom for districts to operate within the intent of the law

• Stakeholder meetings were held across state throughout June

Historic State vs. Local Funds

What’s ahead in Texas education?

Assessment and Accountability

• New assessments: State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) replace TAKS

• New accountability system: Evaluation of college-ready performance as well as student proficiency 

• Campus distinction designations: academic achievement, fine arts, physical education, 21st Century workforce development, second language acquisition

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