Texas PolicyCast: Capped out of charter schools

In August, the Texas Public Policy Foundation published a report that found that tens of thousands of school children were on waiting lists to attend Texas charter schools. Last month, the State Board of Education granted the final charters it is allowed under current law. What does the future hold for charter schools and these children? For that, we talk with Brooke Terry, education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

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Foundation: Don’t lock children out of charter schools

AUSTIN – Tens of thousands of Texas school children will be locked out of the school that can best meet their needs once the State Board of Education hits the Texas Legislature’s cap on charter schools later this week.

“The State Board of Education has done what it can to promote competition and innovation in Texas public schools,” said Brooke Dollens Terry, education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “But restrictions imposed by the Texas Legislature will deny tens of thousands of students the opportunity to enroll in their preferred public school.”

The Texas Legislature has capped the number of open-enrollment charters at 215, of which the State Board of Education has issued 209. The State Board of Education’s Committee on School Initiatives is expected to recommend the final six charters at its 1 p.m. meeting today, with the full board expected to approve those charters at its 9 a.m. meeting tomorrow. Both meetings will take place at the Texas Education Agency headquarters, located at 1701 N. Congress Avenue in Austin.

In August, the Foundation released a report, “Calculating the Demand for Charter Schools,” which compiled the first-ever, Texas-specific waiting list for charter school enrollment. The report concluded that while 89,156 students attended 355 open-enrollment charter school campuses during the 2007-08 academic year, at least 16,810 children were on waiting lists to attend a charter school – including 7,415 in the Houston area; 5,896 in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex; and 2,110 in the Rio Grande Valley.

“If this cap is not lifted, the waiting list will grow, preventing even more students from attending a public charter school,” Terry said.

Terry noted that charter schools are public schools that predominantly serve low-income and minority students who are behind academically upon entering the charter school.

“Many charter schools focus on students who have fallen through the cracks of the public school system,” she said. “Rather than writing these students off, we should increase the range of educational settings and options available to them so that they can receive the education they’ll need to be productive citizens.”

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

Brooke Dollens Terry is an education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

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Texas PolicyCast: Paying for results

Teacher incentive pay programs in Texas school districts have produced higher test scores, higher state accountability rankings, improved teacher morale, and less teacher turnover. This according to a new report released this week by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, with generous support from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. On this edition of Texas PolicyCast, we talk with the report's author, Texas Public Policy Foundation education policy analyst Brooke Terry, about the history and role of incentive pay in Texas public schools.

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TPPF COMMENTARY: Texans demand accountability for education dollars

A Hoover Institution scholar, Roger A. Freeman, in bygone times observed wryly that popular support for dumping more and more public dollars into public education called to mind the alchemists of yore, who never managed to turn base metals into gold, but, say, what did that prove? Only – so far as the alchemists themselves were concerned – that the experiment hadn't been tried long enough.

The emotional linkage of alchemy and the more-money-for-public-schools movement is an unhappy one – a reminder that baseless and unwarranted faiths can be as stubborn as, well, education lobbyists, making their umpteenth pitch for another financial transfusion.

What's heartening, at last, is that the public may be catching on to the emptiness of the lobbyists' arguments.

Consider a brand new poll by the University of Texas-Austin's government department and Texas Politics Project. The poll – which shows opinion evenly divided on the quality of the public schools – indicates that just 37 percent of Texans see increased funding as the remedy for the schools' record of stagnant or declining achievement.

By contrast, 56 percent see more accountability as the answer. There we go at last. At a minimum, we're pointing in the right direction – away from money as plasma for laggard schools, toward insistence on performance in exchange for such money as the schools receive.

No one capable of correctly adding one and one suggests that money – for teachers, for books, for scientific equipment, for buildings – bears no relationship to educational attainment. Many teachers, as if we didn't all acknowledge it, deserve a lot more money than they make. The point is that education unions, egged on frequently by school officials and editorial writers, more than suggest such a connection. They demand the taxpayers acknowledge it.

Higher public school funding, of course, isn't merely burdensome for taxpayers. It's diversionary. It deflects attention from – as Texans seem to suspect – our cultural and political reluctance to hold accountable those schools and teachers and principals who just plain don't get the job done.

Not that "accountability" doesn't present issues of its own. Texas, by calculation of the Brookings Institution, has relatively strong accountability standards (unlike, according to Brookings, "irresponsible" states like Minnesota, Maine, and Tennessee). There's a difference, all the same, between merely setting standards and actually using them as prods to steady improvement. The Texas Education Agency reported Aug. 1 that 66.6 percent of school districts and 43 percent of campuses received the "academically acceptable" rating – a grade, in effect, of C. Thirty-seven districts and 217 campuses came in as flatly "unacceptable."

No less a public figure than Bill Hammond of the Texas Association of Business – whose members depend on a predictable flow of competent recruits to the workplace – complained this summer about enforcement of the standards.

Hammond accused the Texas Education Agency of disingenuousness in setting standards with so many escape clauses that not to attain a particular benchmark requires some craft. Or some plain old-fashioned incompetence.

"For too long," Hammond said at an Austin press conference, "the TEA has fostered an environment where number games and bureaucracy cast a shadow over public education. A third of our high school students cannot graduate high school in four years.

"Instead of focusing on the root causes of poor performance, TEA is lowering standards and manipulating statistics, which ultimately victimizes our children from receiving the type of education they richly deserve."

It all suggests how much more there is to real improvement of the schools than simple recognition of their problems. And yet, when a clear majority of Texans profess to see accountability as the likeliest remedy for improvement, as contrasted with perhaps the least likely remedy, that of turning on the money spigots – well! Even an alchemist or two might be moved by the sight.

"Texas taxpayers, families, and – most importantly – students," Hammond said, "deserve an education system that ensures our children are prepared to meet the challenges of college and the job market."

A 24-karat appraisal, you might say. No alchemists needed or wanted.

William Murchison is a Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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Foundation praises new English/Language Arts curriculum

AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation applauds the State Board of Education for its vote today to raise the rigor of the state’s academic standards in English and language arts.

“It is obvious that too many Texas public school students aren’t learning the basics with our current curriculum,” said Foundation education policy analyst Brooke Terry, who testified before the SBOE in favor of the curriculum changes. “We are glad the new curriculum will emphasize grammar and writing skills.”

According to Terry, Texas public schools fail to adequately prepare many students for college or the workplace. A 2006 survey by the Conference Board found that 81 percent of employers viewed recent high school graduates as “deficient in written communications” needed for letters, memos, formal reports, and technical reports.

During the fall of 2006, 38 percent of students at two-year public colleges and 24 percent of students at four-year public college needed remedial education to be able to do college-level work. The Commission for a College Ready Texas reports as many as 50 percent of Texas college freshman are enrolled in remedial education compared to 28 percent across the United States.

“Passing an English/Language Arts curriculum that clearly outlines expectations should help schools better prepare students with their reading and writing skills,” Terry wrote to the SBOE earlier this month. “We support higher standards and believe the proposed English/Language Arts standards will help our students succeed.”

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas. The Foundation’s research on education policy is available on the Foundation’s website, www.TexasPolicy.com.

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Foundation applauds Georgia school choice law

AUSTIN – The signing of a universal school choice law in Georgia should encourage Texas lawmakers to provide parents and students with more educational choices here, according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Yesterday, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed legislation that creates both individual and corporate tax credits for contributions to “Student Scholarship Organizations,” which are privately-run, non-profit organizations that award private school scholarships to children enrolled in Georgia public schools.

“There are nearly two dozen school choice programs operating across the country, with Georgia’s and Louisiana’s being open to all students,” said Foundation education policy analyst Brooke Dollens Terry. “They are observing what we did in the Edgewood ISD pilot here – school choice benefits both the children who exercise their school choice, and the children who remain in the public schools.”

Taxpayers are eligible for dollar-for-dollar income tax credits up to $1,000 for individuals; $2,500 for married couples filing jointly; and 75 percent of a corporation’s tax liability. Taxpayer contributions may not be earmarked to a particular child. There are no demographic restrictions on which students may be awarded scholarships, but the tax credits are capped at $50 million per year.

“Georgia is the latest state to embrace the idea that parents are better equipped than the public education lobby or government bureaucrats to select the best educational environment for their children,” Terry concluded. “Texas owes it to its families and its future to follow suit.”

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas. Additional research on school choice is available on the Foundation’s website, www.TexasPolicy.com.

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TPPF COMMENTARY: One Salary Doesn’t Fit All

Good morning.

Last month, the Texas Public Policy Foundation released the report, "Bringing Teacher Compensation into the 21st Century," which is available online at www.TexasPolicy.com. In this commentary, Foundation education policy analyst Brooke Terry lists the flaws in the single salary schedule used by the vast majority of school districts and makes the case for replacing it with a compensation system that recognizes and rewards outstanding classroom achievement.

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One Salary Doesn’t Fit All

By Brooke Dollens Terry

As the cost of food, fuel, and electricity continues to increase, school officials inevitably face trying to do more with less. Rising costs and the current pay structure prevents many school districts from giving great teachers a much deserved raise.

The solution is easy; school officials can give their star teachers considerably more money, without raising taxes, by modernizing their teacher pay system.

Salaries and benefits consume between 80 and 85 percent of Texas school district budgets, according to a 2006 Moak Casey and Associates report. Yet many school districts restrict their own flexibility to reward great teachers by paying according to an antiquated single salary structure.

Nationwide, 93 percent of public school districts pay teachers based on a single salary schedule, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Texas has a statewide minimum single salary schedule, and many Texas school districts use their own salary schedule. Designed more than 85 years ago, the single salary schedule is rigid, archaic, and unnecessary.

The salary schedule is a chart that specifies the amount a teacher will be paid for each year of experience in the classroom, with small step increases for each additional year of experience or advanced degree. Those two components reward teachers for longevity and advanced degrees – neither of which has been shown to improve teacher quality or increase student learning.

The research is clear. Teacher performance does not improve with each additional year in the classroom after the first couple of years. Eric Hanushek, a well-respected education researcher with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, finds that a teacher with 15 years of experience is no more effective than a teacher with five years of experience.

Secondly, research finds that an advanced degree does not contribute to increased learning in the classroom. Research by Hanushek and Steven Rivkin finds that possession of a master’s degree or doctorate degree has no impact on teacher effectiveness. Nonetheless, many salary schedules and school districts reward teachers for additional degrees with an extra $1,000 or more each year as though it led to higher student achievement.

Another flaw of the salary schedule is that it pays all teachers the same salary at each step on the schedule without regard for subject matter or classroom effectiveness. All teachers are not the same.

One teacher may be an extremely passionate and challenging teacher who works hard to engage and teach her students, while another teacher down the hall might be burned out and put forth as little effort as possible. Should these teachers be paid the same? Under the salary schedule, if they both taught for the same number of years, they would be paid the same salary regardless of their impact on student learning.

Performance and results are commonly rewarded in the private sector via bonuses and raises tied to positive performance reviews. The same should hold true for education. Outstanding teachers add incredible value to student achievement and deserve to make more money.

Anyone associated with a school -- students, parents, teachers, and principals -- can identify the good teachers. While this sounds like common sense, education associations argue that it is impossible to measure teacher effectiveness fairly, and therefore all teachers, regardless of skill, should get paid the same.

With research clearly demonstrating that paying teachers off a salary schedule does not improve student learning or reward effectiveness, policymakers and school officials may want to rethink their teacher pay structures to ensure they are rewarding and recognizing excellent teachers.

The best way for state lawmakers to increase local control and flexibility over school budgets is by getting rid of the statewide minimum salary schedule.

School officials and publicly elected school board members can use their resources more wisely and effectively and give outstanding teachers a raise by restructuring their teacher compensation systems and not paying teachers off of a single salary schedule. School officials need to do everything they can to keep outstanding teachers in the classroom and giving them a much deserved raise is one way to reward and keep them in the classroom.

Brooke Dollens Terry is an education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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What America can learn from Finland

Teenagers in Finland recently earned the distinction as being the smartest students in the world. Finnish 15-year-olds outpaced 56 other countries, including the United States, on the PISA tests in math, science, and reading.

Naturally, researchers, policymakers, and parents want to know why. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal examines Finland’s school system and reveals some surprising findings:

• Children don’t start school until age seven. There is no school pre-k or kindergarten. This is in strong contrast to the United States, where most states have a publicly funded and growing pre-k and kindergarten program for children ages four and five.

• They spend $1,200 less per student than the U.S. Finnish schools spent $7,500 per student per year compared to the U.S. average of $8,700. Somehow, they manage to do more with less.

• High teacher quality and no teacher shortages. While the U.S. struggles to find enough math and science teachers to fill its classrooms, Finland has more than 40 applicants for each teaching job. All Finnish teachers have master’s degrees. Teachers compete to teach in Finland. Yet, higher teacher salaries doesn’t account for the higher quality because Finland has similar teacher salaries to the United States.

• No sports teams, marching band, or prom. Finland schools focus on teaching, not extracurricular activities. In contrast, many American schools (and parents) get carried away with the success of their athletic or extracurricular programs at the expense of learning.

The American education establishment continually lectures us that the way to improve student learning is by hiring more teachers, paying them larger salaries, and starting children in public school at earlier ages. Finland establishes that everything they tell us is wrong.

- Brooke Terry

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TPPF COMMENTARY: Texas’ School Accountability System Fails Students

As Texas homeowners write their checks for property taxes this month, most assume that the local public schools they fund are doing a good job educating students. After all, parents looking to the state accountability system for answers on the quality of their local school find that only 3.4 percent of public schools were rated “Unacceptable” last year.

What parents and taxpayers don’t realize is that the academic standards used to rate schools are ridiculously low.

In 2007, a school could be rated “Academically Acceptable” with only 40 percent of students passing science and 45 percent of students passing math. Surely, parents and taxpayers would not consider more than half of Texas school children failing core subjects like math and science as “acceptable.”

Yet, more than half of Texas public schools and three fourths of Texas school districts were rated “Academically Acceptable,” according to the Texas Education Agency.

Residents across the state may be shocked to discover that many of their local schools are not doing a good job teaching the basics, especially in math and science. For example, in Arlington, a mere 53 percent of Morton Elementary School students passed science; 45 percent of Roquemore Elementary students passed science while 56 percent passed math; and only 49 percent of Sam Houston High School students passed science while 57 percent passed math.

In the Austin area, only 47 percent of students passed science at Manor ISD’s Decker Elementary, while 57 percent of students passed math. In nearby Del Valle, only 61 percent of high school students passed science and 52 percent of students passed math.

Residents in Houston’s Alief school district might be surprised to learn that bare majorities of Elsik High School students passed science and math, while only 57 percent of Hastings High School students passed science and a scant 54 percent passed math.

Astonishingly, the state deemed all of these schools “Academically Acceptable.”

Texas cannot afford to have large numbers of students ignorant in core subject areas, and taxpayers should not tolerate it. State lawmakers must make significant changes to the state accountability system, including raising the rigor and academic expectations for both schools and students.

The conventional grading scale for students sets a score of 70 percent as the bottom end of the acceptable range. Schools should be held to a similar standard, with at least 70 percent of students passing reading, writing, history, math and science to be rated as “Acceptable.”

Another way to raise the rigor of the system is to reduce the large numbers of students exempted from testing. Last year, almost 70,000 students were exempted from the TAKS or other state tests. The accountability system needs to hold teachers and schools responsible for every child’s performance by closing these loopholes.

The system also needs to be simplified. Schools and districts must track and report performance on as many as 36 measures. Today’s accountability system focuses too much on inputs and not enough on outcomes and results. To move in this direction, state lawmakers should decrease the overall number of indicators used to evaluate schools and districts and make sure the system gives schools and districts credit for student improvement and growth over the year.

Other helpful changes to the state accountability system include aligning the state and federal systems by using common definitions where possible and making the system more transparent to parents and the community.

The purpose of a state accountability system is to evaluate school performance and provide that information to parents and the public so they can determine the quality of a particular school or district. The current accountability system fails in this regard and needs to be redesigned.

With tens of billions of dollars spent on public schools, Texas taxpayers deserve a better and more accurate accountability system; one that is easy to understand, useful, and actually holds schools accountable.

Brooke Dollens Terry is an education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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Houston students benefit from district’s embrace of competition

Despite its overwhelming track record of success, competition is becoming a dirty word in America -- especially in the field of education. Grade inflation, the dilution of extracurricular activities, and the over-the-top attacks against supporters of school choice all reflect a hostility to the notion that competition is healthy.

However, Jamie Story shows in this week's commentary how the state's largest school district has embraced the challenge of competition and how their students are better off for it.

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Houston students benefit from district’s embrace of competition

By Jamie Story

While the public school lobby has traditionally opposed any introduction of competition into the education system, the state’s largest school district seems to have embraced it.

\In Houston, 80 state-authorized charter schools enroll approximately 20,000 students. That’s one charter student for every 10 students in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). Few school districts in the country face this degree of competition—and even fewer have risen to the challenge like HISD.

At a recent forum hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, HISD Chief Academic Officer Dr. Karen Soehnge emphasized that “we fundamentally, as an organization, embrace choice.” That’s not something you typically hear from a public school administrator. But HISD has responded to competition by maximizing choice within the public school system.

In HISD, students can choose to attend any school where space is available. Campus funding is based on enrollment – if a school doesn’t compete to keep students, it loses the dollars that go with them. And students have a wide variety of learning environments from which to choose, since HISD has created specialized magnet schools and virtual courses that maximize student flexibility.

HISD has also responded by establishing a network of district-authorized charter schools. Today, 29 district charters enroll approximately 11,000 students. By comparison, the state as a whole only contains 54 district charters, meaning more than half of the state’s district charters are in HISD.

What are the results of this movement toward choice? In 2005, HISD had 31 campuses rated unacceptable, and only six rated exemplary. In 2007, the district had 15 of each. For its size, Houston has half as many unacceptable schools as either Fort Worth or Dallas, and fewer even than Austin, a property-rich district.

A study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation found that traditional public schools facing competition from charters outperform those public schools that do not face competition. HISD provides concrete proof to support this unsurprising finding.

It is no coincidence that HISD, with its significant charter competition, is one of the most innovative urban districts in the country. If charter schools were allowed to expand more freely throughout the state, other Texas districts might be motivated to undertake similar reforms in response to competition from charters. Unfortunately, a legislative limit on the number of state-authorized charters has hampered the effects of competition.

But despite this limitation, school districts are still within their power to increase student choice. Charters authorized by school districts and universities do not fall under the state mandated cap, so district charters can proliferate elsewhere like they have in Houston.

Even more importantly, parents have the power to demand choice within their children’s districts. According to a little-known portion of the education code, the majority of parents and teachers of an existing public school may petition their school board to grant a charter to the campus. While the school board is not required to honor the petition, they are not allowed to arbitrarily deny the request either. To date, this authorization option has not been utilized by parents and teachers, but it holds great promise for increasing parental choice within the public school system.

“We are not threatened at all by competition,” Dr. Soehnge said at the TPPF forum. When more Texas school districts adopt that same attitude and embrace choice, parent satisfaction and student performance will soar.

Jamie Story is an education policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin.

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