Mary Lou Bruner was defeated in her race for state school board in Texas.
She gained about five minutes of fame after saying that President Obama may have been a “gay prostitute” in his youth.
She lost badly.
Given its current governor and legislature, Texas doesn’t need any more embarrassments.
Nearly two-thirds of the school districts in Texas filed a lawsuit against the state formula for funding public schools. A lower court judge ruled that the state’s funding formula was unconstitutional. Hopes were high that the lower court ruling would sustain that decision.
Unfortunately the state Supreme Court sustained the current methodology.
The legislature cut $5.4 Billion out of the schools’ budget in 2011. Many districts have never recovered from those draconian cuts.
“Houston lawyer Mark Trachtenberg, who represented 88 property-wealthy school districts in the case, said the ruling “represents a dark day for Texas school children, especially given the Legislature’s repeated failure to adequately fund our schools.”
“A recent study by the National Education Association found that Texas ranks 38th in the country in per-pupil public-education spending.”
Pastors for Texas Children issued the following statement:
“Pastors for Texas Children Executive Director Rev. Charles Foster Johnson on Today’s Supreme Court Decision
“The Texas Supreme Court’s ruled today that the Texas public school funding system technically meets “minimum constitutional requirements”—a ruling belied by the direct professional experience and expert witness of hundreds of thousands of Texas educators.
“The Court’s conclusion may be based on legal technicality, but the burden of this sophistry will be borne by our 5.3 million schoolchildren.
“We hover near the bottom nationally in monetary support for our schools. It is sinful for a society as rich as Texas—an economic “miracle,” as a recent governor put it—to make our schoolchildren eat the crumbs that fall from our state’s table of bounty.
Our Lord famously said, “To those whom much is given, much is required.” But, the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas State Legislature have perversely revised that moral dictum: “To those whom much is given, less is required.”
“Of particular moral offense is the arrogance shown by certain state leaders whose cynical tactics seek to divert our attention away from the grave injustice of inadequate school finance.
“Pastors for Texas Children will not fall for these ridiculous distractions.
80,000 new schoolchildren enter our public school system every year, in classes that are overfilled, with teachers that are underpaid, in schools that are underfunded. Over 60% of our Texas schoolchildren are poor. Our dedicated teachers work long hours at low pay to provide God’s gift of education for them while enduring demoralizing attacks from the very leaders constitutionally charged and Biblically sworn to support them. This is the moral outrage of our day.
“We recommit ourselves to holding our Governor, Lieutenant Governor, 31 State Senators and 150 State Representatives accountable for the “suitable provision of free public schools,” as our own Texas State Constitution mandates, as the American civil tradition establishes, and, most importantly, as the Biblical call to justice unambiguously announces.”
The San Antonio Express-News published a blistering editorial calling for a halt to state testing until all the errors and computer glitches were resolved. This may mean forever, given the track record of testing companies that produce online assessments.
Fifty superintendents from the Houston area wrote a letter to the new state superintendent Mike Morath outlining the problems their students and teachers had encountered.
As the editorial states:
There are inherent problems in any massive project, but this is no simple undertaking. The STAAR test — the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness — is high stakes. The scores impact schools, teachers and students. Failing grades can cause students in the fifth and eighth grades to be held back, and high school students who don’t pass three of the five end-of-course exams will not get a diploma. Teachers’ evaluations will be based in part on how well students perform on the STAAR test.
Until all the problems are resolved, school administrators are asking the Texas Education Agency to delay use of scores for the alternative test for students needing special accommodations due to a learning disability. They make a valid point.
It appears that the state’s new testing vendor, New Jersey-based Educational Testing Services, commonly referred to as ETS, was ill-equipped to take on the four-year $280-million contract. There is no excuse for the company to ask test takers not to answer a question because there was no correct answer or having to scramble at the last minute to certify personnel to grade the test.
School districts can ask that tests be re-evaluated, but that action comes at their own expense. Lewisville ISD appropriated $50,000 to have thousands of English tests retaken by their high school students after many high performers scored a zero on that portion of the test. School districts should not be forced to pay that expense because the state made a bad call when it awarded the testing contract.
There is something terribly amiss here, and it needs to be fully resolved before the test scores can be given much weight. Morath has said ETS will be held financially liable for the problems and could lose the state’s business if the issues are not adequately resolved. That is good news for Texas taxpayers but does not adequately resolve all the issues.
Too much is at stake to merely assure everyone it will be done better next time. The state should not go forward with a testing system few have confidence is working properly. There is no do-over for students who get held back, the high school seniors who won’t walk the graduation stage or teachers whose careers are damaged.
Texans Advocating for Meaningful State Assessments (TAMSA) is known in Texas as Moms Against Drunk Testing. In the past, they successfully lobbied the Legislature to drops plan to require students to pass 15 high school exit exams to graduate. The number remained five.
They issued this statement, called ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
“TAMSA Calls for Moratorium due to Testing Errors
“In his news release today, Thomas Ratliff, Vice Chairman of the State Board of Education, brings to light serious issues of misalignment between the STAAR US History EOC and the state mandated curriculum. Based on these and ongoing concerns with the validity of the test, Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA) calls for a moratorium on using the STAAR tests, and at the very least, the US History EOC, for high stakes purposes related to student graduation and school accountability.
“It is fundamentally unfair to hold students or schools accountable for questions that are not contained explicitly in the curriculum standards” said Dineen Majcher, President of the Board of Directors of TAMSA. Ratliff describes two questions on the US History EOC that asked for information about historical figures, but those specific historical figures were not included in the current TEKS. In one case, the figure, Shirley Chisholm, was removed from the TEKS in 2010.
“The logical conclusion is that 1) either the testing vendor was utilizing an outdated version of the TEKS on which to base questions, or 2) there is an underlying assumption that any historical figure fitting general criteria, whether or not they are mentioned in the TEKS, is fair game. “Neither conclusion is acceptable,” said Majcher. “If students are not given a full opportunity to learn what is tested, there are serious consequences for the system. It is completely unfair to students and teachers to have a high stakes test that is not based clearly and unequivocally on known material that is required to be taught, and instead on information not specified in the curriculum.” Already on shaky ground when legislators like Jimmie Don Aycock, Dan Patrick, Larry Taylor, and Kel Seliger have declared that the current STAAR system is broken, further proof has parents across the state declaring that “enough is enough.”
“Based on concerns over test alignment with curriculum standards, and fundamental fairness to students to learn what will be tested, TAMSA is requesting:
“1. An immediate moratorium on the stakes associated with STAAR tests.
“2. A complete review of the tests to ensure the vendor has utilized current TEKS and that the test questions are properly aligned with state curriculum.
“3. An exploration by the attorney general, or other appropriate state official, of whether the test questions not aligned with the curriculum should be the basis for action against the testing vendor, particularly if outdated standards were the basis for the faulty questions.
““We cannot continue to hold our students and schools accountable for performance on these tests when the State cannot guarantee that these tests are valid.” Putting a moratorium on the high-stakes means that the STAAR tests would still be administered and scores reported, but performance on the tests would not prevent students from being promoted to the next grade or from graduating. Also, schools’ ratings based on STAAR test scores would not be altered during the moratorium. “If we are to continue to administer state-designed assessments, we must have 100% certainty that the tests are aligned with the curriculum that the State has required” said Majcher. Without a guarantee that the tests are completely aligned with the curriculum, a moratorium on using those tests for high stakes purposes is essential.”
Go, TAMSA!
In your next action, dare the legislators to take the tests they mandate and publish their scores. Double-dare.
Texas Governor Greg Abbot selected Dallas school board member Mike Morath as State Commissioner of Education. Morath is one of the privatization advocates who wanted to turn Dallas into a so-called “home rule district, which was meant to clear the way for charters.
Now Morath is cleaning house, replacing experienced high-level staff with newcomers whose experience is strong in the charter industry.
Among others, Morath hired the former chairman of the Kansas City school board as deputy commissioner in charge of governance. In his former life, he was known as Airick West. Not only does he have a new job, he has renamed himself A.J. Crabill.
“The Dallas Morning News recently reported Morath had named AJ Crabill, a former chairman of the Kansas City (Mo.) School Board, to the position of deputy commissioner for governance. Crabill was known as Airick West during his time in Kansas City. He and the commissioner have declined several requests for interviews and questions about how Morath met Crabill and the circumstances surrounding his hiring in the last several weeks.”
This comment was posted a few days ago from a school principal in Texas who just earned his doctorate. He wonders what happened to the noble profession he entered.
I wanted to share some good news with you – I completed my dissertation in education and received my doctorate! It was the most stressful and rewarding experience of my life, and despite all the angst and anxiety, I survived intact!
However, the world of education has changed radically since I began my doctorate. Here in Texas, education is still not funded adequately or equitably. The school that I’m principal of just spent the last of our budget, and we know we don’t have enough supplies for the rest of the year. Costs went up, but the budget stayed the same. We’re still short 40 science books, because the district didn’t account for the growth our campus experienced this school year, but hey, science isn’t tested in the grade affected, so, and I’m not making this up, the book coordinator asked we could just photocopy 40 books. No wonder we don’t have enough paper to make the year!
More disturbing is the fact that state testing remains the gotcha that dooms teachers, administrators, schools and districts. Though some understanding the escalating standards are unsustainable, there are still enough pitfalls to trap educators. For instance, how special education students are assessed.
If you didn’t know, the state expects ALL students to test on grade level and meet the state expectations for students. In the past, testing for special needs students included accommodations and modifications to provide equity in the assessment for them. Now, they take the exact same test as all general education students, just online instead of accommodated.
I recognize the goal to measure every student the same, but it is unrealistic to expect special needs students to perform at the same level as general education students. Several of my colleagues and I liken this to expecting all students, both able bodies and differently-abled, to run the mile on the track at the high school. It’s not just or equitable to maintain a set standard for success in that case, but for the state assessment, we’re doing just that.
Of course, the ramifications of this expectation affects the schools and districts, not the students. In fact, the way the assessment rules have been amended, it is perfectly reasonable for a student to meet the required standards less than 50% of the time 3rd grade through high school, and still be promoted and even graduate. No, it’s how it impacts the schools and the districts. That is so demoralizing.
Since the state demands we get all students to grade level, if we don’t, we are considered Improvement Required (IR), or as I call your school sucks. The hoops you have to jump through are endless and pointless. And, since we are rated on an entirely new and unique population every year, it’s not like there’s a reasonable standard we can ever meet.
So, in four short weeks, the state will demand we test our students over standards that are constantly changing, on a test that has nothing to do with what we should be doing in our classrooms, to please bureaucrats who I believe are truly intent on destroying public education.
I once thought education was the most principled and noble profession, and I think it can be, and it should be. But, right now, I can only feel a target on my back.
The Texas legislature has a strange obsession. Its members think that the best and only way to improve education is to require standardized tests and to make them harder every few years. Those tests can never be too hard. A few years back, the legislature decided that all students had to pass 15 tests to graduate, and parents across the state rebelled, forcing the test-lovers to scale it back to five tests to graduate. But they still believe that harder tests=better schools.
The legislators of Texas should take the Great Testing Challenge: Take the tests you mandate and publish your scores. Any legislator who can’t pass the eighth grade math test should resign. How many do you think would dare to take the tests?
This year, for the first time, ETS wrote the tests, and surprise!, there were computer glitches. Open the link and you will see a picture of little children at an elementary school in Abilene cheering the bigger children who were on their way to take the tests that would determine their worth and put a number on it.
Veteran teacher Jennifer Rumsey writes here about the state’s mandates and how they affect her and her students.
She writes:
“It’s that time again. Time for STAAR testing in Texas. STAAR is the legislatively mandated series of high-stakes tests for public school children in Texas, and it is the most recent and most difficult of several testing program iterations that began in the 1980’s.
“I’ve seen them all. I have been a Texas public school teacher since 1999. I have experienced TAAS, TAAS prep, TAAS workbooks, TAAS-aligned textbooks, TAAS packets, and even a TAAS pep rally.
“Once students’ statewide overall TAAS scores became pretty high, the legislature made the costly move (paid to Pearson) to TAKS. The public schools adjusted: we adopted TAKS-aligned textbooks (published by Pearson), bought TAKS workbooks, held TAKS bootcamps and tutorials.
“And then came STAAR, or State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, which is the most ambitious testing program yet. The Texas legislature decided to gut public education funding that year, 2011. The cuts amounted to a loss of $5.4 billion, while they voted to create STAAR and pay Pearson $500,000,000. At first adoption, high school students were required to pass 15 end of course exams to graduate. Now, thanks to grassroots efforts to change excessive testing requirements, high school students only take five graduation exams. However, their future life success remains impacted by rules that they must pass these exams to graduate, even with their academic credits earned. [Note: Because of the deep cuts, Texas schools had larger classes and took cuts to librarians, school nurses, the arts, and physical education.]
“This week my freshmen students must take the 5-hour English I end of course exam. I will be one of the lucky test administrators. During one of my test administration trainings, I found out that I am now required to write down the name of each student who leaves the testing room to use the bathroom, the time the student leaves, and the time that they return. This information, along with a seating chart, will be turned in to the Texas Education Agency. I am not sure why. Is it an additional measure of control over the students? Is it an additional measure of control over myself and other education professionals? Is it a deliberate attempt at de-professionalization of educators? When I mentioned to my students that I had to keep track of their times in and out from the restroom, they were puzzled and irritated. One savvy freshman girl asked, “Do they want to know the stall I used also?”
“What I do know for sure is that these tests have become far too important. They are treated as top secret, national security-level documents. Why is the material in a standardized test treated as more confidential than the information in the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails? I have already signed my oath, and in my test administrator’s manual I am threatened with the loss of my hard-earned professional certification if I share information relating to what is on the test. I am cautioned to in no way purposely view the tests. Ironically, I am allowed to read the writing prompt to a student who requests it.
“Tuesday was a big day for my own family. My 10-year-old daughter is one of the unlucky guinea pig fifth graders in the state of Texas. She is one of the unlucky children affected by the State Board of Education decision in 2015 that “pushed down” developmentally inappropriate math objectives. Some of the newly required fifith grade material was, until 2015, not taught until the children were in the seventh grade.
“What does this “pushing down” of objectives do? It requires more material to be taught during the school year, stealing valuable time that math teachers need to teach the foundational material for that year. It makes math harder and more rushed for the children. It is wrong. The TEA suspended the math passing requirements for 5th graders last year. But not so this year. Nope. My child and her peers must pass this test or face retention in grade.
“And wait, the news just gets better. The outgoing Commissioner of Education announced near his departure that, “STAAR performance standards have been scheduled to move to the more rigorous phase-in 2 passing standard this school year. Each time the performance standard is increased, a student must achieve a higher score in order to pass a STAAR exam.” Thus, my daughter and all her 10- and 11-year old friends are being held accountable for inappropriate math standards and will be judged at a higher performance standard at the same time. Something is not right here. Something is very, very wrong. My child is not a subject to be experimented on.”
The New York Times introduces the public to Mary Lou Bruner, 68, a former kindergarten teacher who is running for the state school board.
I don’t like to insult individuals on this blog, but the views of Ms. Bruner make me embarrassed to be a native Texan.
She believes:
that President Obama had worked as a gay prostitute in his youth, that the United States should ban Islam, that the Democratic Party had John F. Kennedy killed and that the United Nations had hatched a plot to depopulate the world….
Ms. Bruner’s anti-Obama, anti-Islam, anti-evolution and anti-gay Facebook posts have generated national headlines and turned an obscure school board election into a glimpse of the outer limits of Texas politics. In a part of the state dominated by conservative Christians and Tea Party activists, Ms. Bruner’s candidacy has posed a question no one can answer with any certainty — how far to the fringe is too far for Texas Republicans?
Ms. Bruner was a relative political newcomer when she started her campaign to represent a 31-county section of northern East Texas on the 15-member board that sets curriculum standards, reviews and adopts textbooks, and establishes graduation requirements in Texas public schools. Because of the board’s clout in selecting textbooks for all of the state’s schools, it can influence the content of textbooks produced nationwide.
Here in Ms. Bruner’s hometown, Mineola, and elsewhere in intensely conservative East Texas, her views fit a widely accepted anti-Obama and conspiracy friendly antigovernment mind-set. Inside Kitchens Hardware and Deli, the combination hardware store and diner where Mr. Clark was eating, a sign on a shelf read, “Hillary for Prison 2016.” A woman in a nearby store who declined to give her name said she would not hold Ms. Bruner’s Facebook posts against her, and spoke at length about her belief that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was a government-staged hoax.
Tammy Blair, the chairwoman of the Republican Party in nearby Cherokee County, said there were differing definitions of extreme, adding that she was sympathetic to the movement to have Texas secede from the United States.
If Ms. Bruner wins election to the state board, then perhaps Texas should give serious thought to seceding from the U.S. It will get to be an independent nation again. Bring back the great days of the Republic of Texas (1836-1845), when Texas had its own flag and all the trappings of independence. Lord knows it won’t unite with Mexico.
A civic leader in Texas asked on the blog whether there was any impartial information about charters and their effects. I forwarded her request to Sue Legg of the League of Women Voters in Florida.
Sue wrote the following response:
We have been studying charter and other choice systems for several years. See: http://lwveducation.com
In Florida, we have non-profit and for profit management companies. The biggest concern with for-profits are their associated real estate firms that build/purchase facilities and then charge the school excessive amounts for leases. Since the charter schools are privately owned and managed, the facilities are paid for by public tax dollars but revert to private owners if closed. We have relatively few charters located in publically owned buildings.
There are issues with charter boards. Most are not independent from the management company. Thus, the business model often depends on high staff turnover and low salaries. There are many regulation problems including conflict of interest and nepotism. Big charter firms create umbrella non profits that receive the charter. Their boards often have overlapping board members. Academica, for example, the largest Florida charter chain created Mater charters, Somerset charters, Doral, and Ben Gamla charters among others.
Many small independent charters have inexperienced or profit seeking people who start and then close charters, thus keeping substantial start up money awarded by the state. Some legislation has tried to curb this.
Charters in Florida tend to duplicate public school programs. Some do focus on children who need a different approach and many of these are successful. The school grade policies complicate their existence, however. For example, schools that focus on children with dyslexia are chronically called ‘F’ schools because those children struggle to learn even though they do make significant progress.
Florida has 650+ charters. The evidence of resegregation is clear. The high closure rate has received legislative attention. The practice of selective admission/retention is evident even though the admission process is supposed to be random. Achievement based on test scores does not differentiate charter and traditional public schools if well matched samples are used.
We have annual audits of each charter. There are also data on racial and economic demographic characteristics as well as school grades.
This legislative session has centered on charter authorization systems that would take even more control away from local school boards. Thus far, these proposals look like they will fail.
A Citizens for Strong Schools lawsuit over the failure of the state to support public education begins on March 14th.
Let me know if I can help.
Sue M. Legg Ph.D.
President, Alachua County LWV
Chair, School Choice Project Florida LWV
Mary Ann Whiteker, superintendent of the Hudson Independent School District and Texas Superintendent of the Year, told the State Board of Education that she has given up on the “testing and accountability game.” A veteran administrator, she is now trying to shape the curriculum to meet the needs of the students. This is a video that is well worth watching.
Texas has the good fortune to have a significant group of superintendents who realize that the longstanding regime of testing and accountability has not helped their students. In 2006, thirty-five of these creative superintendents got together and started meeting regularly to plan a new “vision statement” to describe what they wanted to do. They produced their document, meant to lead the way to a new approach to children across the state, and you will see Mary Ann Whiteker holding it up as she speaks. If you go to this link, you can learn about the process of writing the document. It is supported by the Texas Association of School Administrators. Open this link to find the document that changed her views of what children need.
The Vision statement has a number of important principled statements. Here is one:
We envision schools where all children succeed, feel safe and their curiosity is cultivated. We see schools that foster a sense of belonging and community and that inspire collaboration. We see learning standards that challenge, and intentionally designed experiences that delight students, develop their con dence and competence, and cause every child to value tasks that result in learning. Ultimately, we see schools and related venues that prepare all children for many choices anWed that give them the tools and attitudes to contribute to our democratic way of life and live successfully in a rapidly changing world.
Here is another:
The schools we need are community-owned institutions. They are designed and established as learning organizations, treating employees as knowledge workers and students as the primary customers of knowledge work. They are free of bureaucratic structures that inhibit multiple paths to reaching goals. Reliance on compliance is minimized, and generating engagement through commitment is the primary means to achieving excellence. Leadership at all levels is honored and developed. All operating systems have well-defined processes that are constantly being improved. Attention of leaders is focused on the dominant social systems that govern behavior, beginning with those that clarify beliefs and direction, develop and transmit knowledge, and that provide for recruitment and induction of all employees and students into the values and vision. The evaluation, boundary, and authority systems are submissive to the directional system, allowing for major innovations to ourish, new capacities to emerge, missions to be accomplished, and the vision to be realized in an increasingly unpredictable world.
Whether you agree with every statement in the document, you must give credit to these visionary superintendents for taking the steps to steer Texas away from its expensive and useless obsession with standards and accountability.
Diane Ravitch's blog 