Last September, a little movement began in Aledo, Texas – a town of 1,729 people about 20 miles west of Fort Worth. That was when Bobby Rigues, a Trustee of the Aledo Independent School District Board of Education decided it was time to put their concerns about possible drastic state budget cuts into writing –…
Charles Miller sent me the following editorial, published in yesterdays’ Dallas Morning News. It is a provocative and timely, considering the massive budget shortfalls Texas is facing, and some indications that the legislature will neglect its responsibility to pay its share of the costs of K12 public education, leaving either the costs, or cutbacks, on…
Would you like to be more effective at lobbying for the things you believe in? This introductory session was held January 27, 2011 at the Houston Independent School District, featured HISD’s director of government relations, Rebecca Flores, HISD’s external counsel David Thompson, and lobbyist and attorney Bill King. In this videotaped 75 minute session, you…
This week, Harriett Ball, the master Houston ISD teacher who used engaging original rap songs to teach children, died at the age of 65. Her songs, including of course the one that went “Knowledge is Power, Power is Money, and I Want It” were the inspiration for the chants that were a central part of…
This provocative editorial comes from Chester Finn of the Fordham Foundation. Think about it – how does tenure help children? Opinion: Nobody deserves tenure By Chester E. Finn, Jr. Nobody deserves tenure, with the possible exception of federal judges. University professors don’t deserve tenure; civil servants don’t deserve tenure; police and firefighters don’t deserve tenure;…
Today, the National Center for Educational Achievement (NCEA) named 75 HISD schools on its list of High Performing Schools. Not only is that more than any other school district in Texas, in fact it’s more than Dallas, Austin, San Antonio & El Paso combined. And when the very highest rated schools are considered – those…
This excellent article appeared in today’s New York Times. Only 2% of teachers in San Francisco are rated unsatisfactory, and not a single tenured teacher there has been terminated in the last 3 years. And yet only 37% of San Francisco’s fourth grade students are proficient in reading. Rethinking Evaluations When Almost Every Teacher Gets…
Texas’ first merit pay system, which was focused on paying teachers for teaching at low performing schools, was unsuccessful. The current merit-pay system, called DATE, is better – the study noted below found that the system increased retention rates and had a small positive impact on student achievement – with larger effects on retention and…
Governments have a nasty habit of providing their employees with huge pension packages that then tend to grow as successive elected legislatures add to those pensions without apparent regard for the effects on taxpayers. Government employee pensions are such that employees retire earlier than most private sector employees and live for decades on benefits of…
No matter your age, you remember some of the great teachers you had growing up. Those teachers made you who you are today – whether it was by encouraging you, challenging you, or a little of both. Teachers work hard, they don’t make as money as they should, and they know that ultimately they are…
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