Roy Blake sells out again

My state representative, Roy Blake, has sold out his local school districts again. This time he voted again for HB2, which will allow property rich school districts (including the home districts of the bill's author) to raise massive amounts of money while property poor school districts go without. 41 of the 42 school districts in Blake's home district are considered property poor by the state.

He also voted against a Democractic sponsored amendment which would have fixed many of the financing problems with Texas schools. The actual vote was a tie, with the Speaker of the House Tom Craddick, no friend of public education, casting the tie breaker. I'm sure HB2 is also loaded with lots of other anti-public school provisions. The "increase" in funding for Texas schools will be $2.5 billion less per year than a state judge ruled the state needs to put into education. In fact, most critics agree the "increase" will not even keep pace with inflation and rising student enrollments.

His 9 years of homeschooling have made him a public education expert

I found this incredible op-ed piece linked from Education News. The author is 16 years old and takes offense to the fact the Governator has been booed during some speeches he has given recently. He also compared the protests to "the fascist squadrismo violence imposed on Italy during the early part of the 1920’s"

My favorite tidbit is this:

. . .teachers in California are so incompetent that they can’t get jobs in other fields or industries.

Where does his expertise on California public school teachers come from? Well, his 9 years of home schooling in Minnesota.

Other websites his views are posted on include NewsWithViews.com, MensNewsDaily.com, NationalLedger.com and SierraTimes.com. His article is proof that you need to know nothing as far as the anti-public school crowd is concerned; if you criticize public schools then you must be right.

How vouchers were killed in Texas, and some praise for Roy Blake

There is an excellant article in The Texas Observer about how vouchers were killed off in the last legislative session. It was only through a rebellion by rural Republicans including my own representative Roy Blake, who I have written about before. I am happy to say he stood up to the Republican leadership and voted what his constituents wanted, and that was no vouchers.
The article also describes a brilliant move by moderate Republican Charlie Geren of Ft. Worth.

He has an amendment to his amendment, one that voucher supporters have not seen yet, that he will substitute for his original amendment. It gives the House leadership a taste of its own medicine.

Geren’s amendment would remove the Dallas and Fort Worth school districts from the proposed voucher pilot program and replace them with Arlington and Irving. The choices aren’t random. Arlington is Education Chairman and chief voucher cheerleader Kent Grusendorf’s district. Irving is home to Republican Linda Harper-Brown, who also sponsored the voucher proposal.

Apparently, Grusendorf and Brown intended to stick it to other people's school districts and never intended to have vouchers enacted in their own school districts.

Since I have been so vocal about Roy Blake and the things he's done I didn't like I will have to send him an email thanking him for his vote against vouchers. He also took the time to personally email me on this issue and backed up his words with his actions.

Thanks to Education at the Brink, an Austin area teacher, for the link to the story.

Dr. Cookie is collecting teacher blogs

Jenny D. a.k.a Dr. Cookie is collecting teacher blogs and information about how teachers and students are using blogs. I have a softspot for Jenny as she was the first person to link to my blog on her site. Even though she and I disagree on many aspects of teaching she is always polite and respectful of other people's ideas.

After 15 years, charters in Milwaukee are pretty much like the public schools

Milwaukee's 15 year experience with charters and vouchers have produced pretty much what you get with the public school system. Some are good, some are bad. I found these quotes most interesting:

The principal effect of choice has been more to preserve the city's private schools, many of them Lutheran and Catholic ones, than to create schools that innovate or reform

Based on firsthand observations and other reporting, Journal Sentinel reporters concluded that at least 10 of the 106 schools they visited appeared to lack the ability, resources, knowledge or will to offer children even a mediocre education. Most of these were led by individuals who had little to no background in running schools and had no resources other than the state payments.

In other words, the money is doled out without much checking from the state, money that could have been going to improve the local public schools.

You can read the article here

Another court victory for education, and a blow to the "reform" movement

Another state, this time Kansas, has lost a court case over education funding. This time The Kansas Supreme Court has ordered the Republican led state legislature to fund an additional 285 million dollars, which for Kansas will be a 10% increase. The Court also threatened to require the state to add an additional 568 million dollars for the 2006-2007 school year if the legislature does not act to fix the problem.

The most telling statement was from spokesman Jan Lunsford of the Attorney General's office:

The general and his staff want the proper amount of time for a good and thorough look at it

I love the phrase "the general"

One interesting part of the ruling for those of us in Texas was this:

Mays and other Republican leaders also supported provisions of the new school funding law that would allow some districts to raise more money through local property taxes. The court struck those provisions down, saying they would increase disparities between wealthy and poor districts.

In Texas, this was the exact arguement schools were making against the school "reform" package the Republicans tried to ram through the legislature last session. Raising property taxes is the only way for school districts to get any new additional funds. However, the so called 'property rich" school districts can raise millions of more dollars this way than the "property poor" districts. This was one of the central arguements in the recent court ruling by Judge Dietz, as the state legislature had placed a property tax limit on schools. Judge Dietz ruled that such a cap creates an unconstitutional statewide property tax. He also ruled the 55% passing rule, used to determine how much money schools will get, (you'll need to go to pages 56 and 57 but it is very intersting reading) is also unconstitutional.

You can read the article from the Wichita Eagle here

Teachers begging for money

I came across this website via a posting at Joanne Jacobs and at first I thought it was great; teachers could reach out to their communities for financial help with special projects they want to do with their students. The more I think about it though the more I realize how sad it is teachers have to go begging for money to do such things.

In one poor example a teacher is begging for money to equip a class library .

All in all, it speaks wonders about the funding of public education.

Progressive Education?

Earl Hadley, of Campaign For America's Future/ has a great op-ed piece on NCLB. I especially liked this comment:

The Times ignores the possibility that it makes sense to listen to the concerns of those implementing the law in the classroom. It ignores the possibility that teachers may dislike teaching to a test for the same reasons as parents and are not just acting out of a fear of accountability.

At times I feel like I'm wallowing in a sea of teacher-hating reformers and its nice to see someone out there understands we are fighting for what's best for our children and we're not just lazy and incompetent.

How much does your school district spend?

Ever wonder exactly how much and how your school district spends its money? For Texas teachers there is a quick and easy way to check your district's finances out. Using PEIMS data (the state information reporting system for schools), the Texas Education Agency has created a website that will generate reports with breakdowns in various sub areas such as administrative costs and money spent on athletics.

For non-Texas teachers, if you would like to see how the website works you can type in "Nacogdoches" (my home county) for the county name and then select one of the 5 school districts.

The website can be found here.

An Excellent Read

I just finished reading Brendan Halpin's book Losing My Faculties: A Teacher's Story. It provides great description of the day to day work of being a teacher as well as a detailed chapter on working at a charter school, and what happens when the businessmen on the board of directors of the school decide to take over its day to day operations.

Brendan Halpin also has a book out called It Takes a Worried Man describing his wife's struggle with breast cancer and it how it effected the entire circle of family, friends and co-workers. I haven't read it but it has some great reviews on Amazon.com

Conneticut to begin the revolt

It looks like Conneticut is going to cut in line ahead of Utah to challenge the federal govt. and NCLB. According to this story posed at Newday.com. According to state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal the state is preparing a lawsuit that will contend "the law illegally and unconstitutionally requires states and communities to spend millions of dollars more than the federal government provides for test development and school reform programs.

"Lead on, Conneticut, lead on.

La Vida Robot

I've decided to quit bashing Roy Blake long enough to post this fantastic story I found via Joanne Jacobs

The story is about 4 illegal immigrants who compete in a design contest against kids from wealthy and well funded schools, including some college teams. The story can be found here

What Roy Blake did Updated*

Like the good little Republican soldier he is, Roy Blake voted for HB3, which will seriously underfund Texas schools, and Texas in general to the tune of $4 billion, so says State Comptroller Carolyn Strayhorn

Here are the sins of Roy Blake, as committed against Texas public schools and his home district:

- voted to kill a bill which would've have restored the $1000 insurance supplement to both teachers, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, basically all school personnel.

- voted against the Hochberge amendment which would have provided schools with an additional 5 billion dollars in funds as well as a $4000 pay raise to teachers.

-voted against an amendment which would have raised, over two years, teacher salaries to the current national level.

- voted to make it easier for the state to seize public schools and install private management to run them. After only two years of adequate progress, with failure to make federal adequate yearly progress standards (which gradually become more difficult until the year 2014 when they become impossible to meet) the principal is automatically fired and a private company is brought in.

- voted to allow anyone with management experience and a college degree to be qualified as a principal. It doesn't matter if their management experience is running the local burger joint and overseeing 5 employees, they can now run a school.

- voted to increase taxes for the majority of Texas and lower taxes for his rich Republican friends. The average Texas family will no pay approximately 3% more taxes while those making over $140, ooo a year will actually get a tax break.

- voted for a recapture limit on funds that will allow the property rich school districts to spend at least $1600 more per student than others. This move is especially galling in light of the fact every Nacogdoches county school district is considered property poor.

- voted for a bill that every educational organization in the state was against, a bill which the overwhelming majority of his constituents asked him to vote against.

I received this email from my supt. today regarding a conversation she had with Roy Blake:

I visited his office after the vote to ask why. I was told he voted for the children of his district. I asked which children, this bill only helped Chapter 41 (rich property districts). I was reminded that Evadale was property rich and in his district. I reminded his office that his district was comprised of other districts, what about them! This bill was devastating to the vast majority of his district and East Texas. That comment from me resulted in a silent response AND "a red face, a nod and a smile"!

Representative Blake voted the straight Republic agenda, with little regard as to how it would effect the people who voted him into office. I'm sure we can expect him to once again vote the straight rich Republican agenda again when HB3 comes up to vote.

His vote on HB2 can be found here courtesy of Joe Smith at Texas ISD.com

My state representative, Roy Blake, sold his district out

Despite a wealth of opposition from every education group in the state and despite overwheliming evidence it will be harmful to his home district, my state representative chose to be a good little Republican soldier and voted for CSHB2, whose primary purpose is the destruction of public schools. The voting record can be found here.

I will post more specifics when I have more time.

Texas Republicans are trying to destroy public education

Joining their national counterparts Texas Republicans are doing their best to ensure public educaton fails. I urge all Texas teachers to take action by calling their state representatives and voicing your opinion on the so called "new" money for Texas schools.

Visit Texas Legislature Online where you can look up phones numbers, websites and email addresses of your state reprentatives.

A teacher cannot use a book about her class in class

In the ultimate testing irony, a Florida teacher whose class was feautered in a book about the Florida Everglades cannot use that book with her class, as it does not relate to the state's mandated reading test, the FCAT. Brother Jeb is using his big brother's methods to destroy public education in Florida with a mindless test like Texas uses. The link to the story can be found here

Federal Reading Research is flawed says panel member

A member of the 1997 National Reading Panel says "The scientific research backing federal reading education guidelines has little science and even less research behind it,"

According to panel member Joanne Yatvin, "the payoff for pushing phonics programs goes to the publishers of expensive and disposable workbooks that underpin those programs"

I have been arguing this point on websites such as Joanne Jacobs for quite some time. In my humble opinion, the entire purpose of NCLB is to ensure the failure of every public school in the United States.

The article mentioned above can be found here

Utah begins the rebellion against NCLB

The Utah House of Representatives has fired the first shots in the rebellion against NCLB, voting the state's system should take precedence over the federal program. The story, via Susan Ohanian can be found
here Of course, the real rebellion will come when the feds start trying to seize million dollar schools and turn them over to their buddies in the private industry.

Texas education news

A good source for Texas Education news is TexasISD.com This page is primarily aimed at supts and principals but contains a good daily round up of education stories in Texas. Many link to the Dallas Morning News, Austin-American Statesman and San Antonio Daily.

Students against testing website

I found a great protest website from Students Against Testing. The site features lots of neat things in PDF format such as bumper stickers, flyers and famous quotes about education. My favorite quote comes from none other than Albert Einstein who said, "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." This site even sells "No more tests" T-shirts.

This should be mailed to every Texas state legislature who wants to expand testing in Texas and to Dubya.