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SBOE Caves under Weight of Its Own Partisanship Over 20 hours of testimony, deliberation, discussion, argument, hurt feelings, and misinformation have come to this one agreement: “Let’s save this for March.” First reading of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies will take place in March, not January. Now the final adoption is scheduled for May. Today’s meeting began with a resolution from Board Chair Gail Lowe and SBOE Secretary Teri Leo extolling Governor Perry’s refusal to take federal money through the Race to the Top fund. Commissioner Scott was also commended, and he took the podium to explain that he had many friends who were making this mistake and that he needed to talk to them. Part of the yet-developed standards may have required Texas to adhere to 85% of them. Scott gave this example: That would mean if you had 10 math standards you could only change one and a half of them. As TSTA wrote earlier, the board finally gave up on TEKS work at about 10:15 last night. Thus, they began by meeting as a regular board, but then they broke back into deliberation on the TEKS. Things remained as crazy as they were last night. McLeroy’s amendments alone took well over an hour to discuss. At one point, Lowe called on the Parliamentarian to restore order. He chastised them like children, saying that a teacher would never put up with such behavior. He spoke to the issue of process, a problem familiar to this board. As of this moment, the only Supreme Court case meriting inclusion in the TEKS is Brown v. Board of Education. All others (Plessy v. Ferguson, Tinker v. Des Moines, etc.) will be listed in a “Such As” column. Mary Helen Berlanga attempted to include Delgado vs. Bastrop ISD because it integrated Hispanics into public schools much the way that Brown integrated African-Americans. Dunbar spoke for the social conservatives who didn’t want to add this, as it would make the inclusion list too voluminous. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor was not placed into the TEKS because she had not proven her leadership at this point. Some members felt she was important as the first Hispanic justice; however, Dunbar cited Justice Benjamin Cardozo, a Portuguese man, who served during the Hoover Administration. Neither Webster nor the U.S. Census, nor the Associated Press would consider Cardozo a Hispanic, but the point muddied things just enough for social conservatives to keep her off of the list. The level of interest will only increase as the board makes a final push to complete an initial set of TEKS in two months. OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST Physical Education—TSTA members expressed concern regarding Physical Education options in the new graduation requirements. The board was looking to restrict the number of course offerings and options for students. TSTA staff worked with friendly board members, as well as physical education groups, to ensure the end result was a good one. The actual language can be found here. The wording includes two very important caveats. First, it removes an injustice to special needs students. As physical education was required on the Recommended and Advanced graduation programs, students with physical disabilities were only able to graduate on the Minimum plan. The new wording gives districts flexibility to resolve this issue. The second important effect of this new wording is that it gives closure to a two-year process started by a father and coach from Brenham, who approached the Committee on Instruction asking that athletics be offered for up to four credits toward graduation, similar to the status of ROTC and Dance I-IV. This language brings to fruition the work and TENACITY of a very brave man determined to make a positive change for his kid and the 4.7 million Texas public school students. Integrated Physics and Chemistry—Integrated Physics and Chemistry (IPC) was scheduled to be removed from course offerings, altogether. Today, IPC fits into the science 4 x 4 curriculum, as long as it is taken before Chemistry and Physics. A student four-course set for Science could now be Biology, IPC, Chemistry, and Physics. The original options remain, but the board has now given students IPC as an option to complete the 4 x 4. Jan. 14, 2010 SBOE Meeting Part 2: Names to Know in Social Studies? The State Board of Education's Thursday meeting began with Commissioner Robert Scott's take on Governor Perry’s decision to quit the state’s Race to the Top (RTTT) efforts. While the money would only last two years, Scott said, the implications would be permanent. All comments on Perry's move were positive, as the RTTT guidelines would eventually remove some of the board’s powers. The board then heard a large quantity of testimony related to Career and Technical Education and Physical Education graduation requirements. Legislative action has required the board to take quick action, creating courses available to those students needing to fulfill the fourth course of the required 4 x 4 curriculum. The board has been using CTE courses as opportunities to meet these requirements, but testimony pushed to bring back Integrated Physics and Chemistry as a possibility. Craig moved to reinstate Integrated Physics and Chemistry (IPC) as a course. IPC would have to be taken in either the 9th or 10th grade. It will even act as an offering in the Science 4 x 4 curriculum. In effect, IPC could act as a capstone course a student takes early. Physical education requirements were adjusted to the point where they remain essentially the same. Teachers will continue to teach the courses they were teaching previously. The one change is that physical education will only be given credit once per year and once per course. The specific wording will be posted on tsta.org as soon as the vote is finalized later today. After dispensing with these two items, the board took up the issue of textbooks. While law holds that every student be provided a textbook, parents have been complaining that their children are not allowed to bring textbooks home. Hardy posited that teachers thought it was too much work, and that it was illegal, but you have to count on the schools to do the right thing. This was agreed on, though Leo questioned whether that happened. Commissioner Scott told the board that TEA will bring the state-owned texts to the board and the public before adopting them. This gives them “the bully pulpit to beat me up before I make a decision.” At this point, the SBOE took to the task of shaping the new Social Studies TEKS. The board spent hour after hour deliberating specific names to be included in the Social Studies TEKS. Further, there is another list, the “Such As” list. Names were moved from one list to another, as well as removed from both. Further amendments sent the board on a course to hot debate and questionable decisions. Two of the most curious are those that make six year olds learn they need to hold their elected leaders accountable, and the altogether disappearance of Henry Cisneros from the history textbooks. At one point, Agosto attempted to reinsert the former San Antonio mayor and Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This action, too, was rebuffed by the board. The one official reason the conservative board members used was that in the past decade, Cisneros has not accomplished much. At about 10:15 p.m., the 8th grade TEKS were finished. The board, exhausted, gave up. They will tackle the onerous High School TEKS Friday morning. Thus, the Friday meeting looks to last well into the afternoon, if not the evening. TEA staff spent last night trying to compile a document that inserts hundreds of names while removing hundreds more — a document that almost ignores the work of standards work groups, as well as a significant amount of public input. Friday there likely will be a few hundred more amendments. Perhaps this entire exercise provides a lesson in civics, showing how poorly elected officials in Texas treat the state’s schoolchildren.
Jan. 13, 2010 For more information about these grants, to apply online, or to watch the video -- visit www.neafoundation.org/grants.htm. Questions? Contact Edith B. Wooten, NEA Foundation Director of Communications 202.822.7834 ewooten@nea.org. Are You a First
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Brain Research—MRI’s Some of the behavioral data validate trends seen in other studies; for example, they show that family income has an impact on a child's IQ and social behaviors. But the lack of evidence for dramatic cognitive growth during adolescence was a surprise. Children from low income families performed somewhat more poorly on IQ and achievement tests and displayed more behavioral problems compared to children from middle and higher income families. They did not differ, however, on many other measures of basic cognitive functions, like memory and verbal fluency, or on most measures of social adjustment. A relatively larger percentage of low income children were excluded by the study's rigorous selection criteria, but the healthy low income children who did participate performed above published norms for their demographic. This suggests that in previous studies, general health disparities might have inflated the cognitive gap between low and high income children, Dr. Waber said. There were hints of much-cited differences in verbal and spatial ability between boys and girls, but these differences were not as sharp as those described in previous reports. In fact, there were no sex differences in verbal fluency. There were also no differences in calculation ability, suggesting that boys and girls have an equal aptitude for math. Regardless of income or sex, children appeared to improve rapidly on many tasks between ages 6 and 10, with much less dramatic cognitive growth in adolescence. This result fits with previous research suggesting that in adolescence, there is a shift toward integrating what one knows rather than learning new basic skills. Dr. Waber cautions, however, that these data provide "snapshots" of development in different children at different time points, rather than following each child over a series of time points.
Tips for Students with ADHD During the school day, ask the teacher if your child can be responsible for handing out supplies for lessons or delivering messages to the office. Some fidgeting, when done discreetly, can sharpen attention and enhance performance. Have your child try wiggling his toes inside his shoes when he's reading in class -- or let him listen to music, when he does homework after school. -- from the creative fidget strategies from ADDitude's new Back to School issue
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H-E-B Chair: 'Public Schools Have an Incredible
Challenge' Q: What do you think about the accountability movement and standardized testing? A: There are some areas in which there are analogies between business and education and there are many areas when there are not analogies. In this case, I do think that there is an analogy. Years ago, decades ago in business, accounting was something that was just a record of the past and it really wasn't a guide to the future. And then new techniques developed -- new metrics, new approaches to measuring progress and so forth of every kind in every aspect of business activity. Many companies used that brilliantly and some companies that didn't use it fell aside. But some companies overused it and they got tangled up in their socks because they got so tied up in measurement and accounting that they forgot to serve the customer, and they took up so much of their people's time in filling out reports and measuring how Team X did against Team Y or Jim did against John, that they didn't do a good job for anybody. We need to back up, rethink it, and get a system that is right for the parents, right for the students, right for the school, right for the government entities involved, right for the public -- that everybody can understand and that helps the student, that's not in business to penalize the student or to make the schools look bad, which some people like to use it for. So, yes I am for accountability and testing, but I think we've gone overboard and need to rethink the whole thing. Read the whole San Antonio Express-News interview at http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stories/MYSA050507.excprohebutt.en.782c2cf8.html.
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