Education

Education Record

The Perry Record
Truth in Education Spending
Incentives Work

Facts and Figures

Governor Perry greets students at Fox Tech School

Education reform has been a top priority for Governor Perry during his 20 years of public service. He has worked to increase state spending on education by nearly $9 billion in the last six years; has focused on improving learning in core subject areas like math, reading and science; and has proposed targeted incentives tied to achievement in the classroom.

Governor Perry believes school finance reform is first and foremost about improving the quality of education in Texas classrooms. He wants to reward our best and brightest teachers that succeed in the hardest learning environments, focus dollars on improving performance among students that speak English as a second language, and encourage more students to take our hardest course of study so they are better prepared for college.

Under Governor Perry, Texas is the first state in the nation to make a college-prep curriculum the standard coursework in Texas high schools, starting with the class of 2008. We are leading the way in innovative reforms to raise performance, such as providing personalized study guides for students that fail state assessments, and individualized graduation plans for students at-risk of failure.

By raising the bar, strengthening the curriculum, focusing resources on schools that need the most help, we can ensure more students learn, grow and succeed.

Teacher Compensation

Gov. Perry believes our hardworking teachers should be rewarded for the excellent work they do in educating Texas children. He has proposed raising teacher pay by an average of $1,500 and an additional $500 for healthcare expenses. As Lt. Governor, Perry helped pass the largest teacher pay increase in Texas history, and he has helped provide $6 million in new funding to reimburse teachers who pay for classroom supplies out of their own pocket. Perry also supports the creation of a new merit-based bonus system that rewards those who are making the greatest difference in the classroom.

High School Reform

Over the last decade, state leaders, in cooperation with educators, local trustees, and a broad range of education stakeholders, have pursued a number of strategies that have helped raise achievement levels in our high schools. These strategies include instituting an exit-level assessment that measures progress in the four core curriculum areas, strengthening high school graduation requirements, instituting ninth-grade support programs, and investing in dropout prevention programs. As a result, while still not at acceptable levels for all student groups, graduation rates in Texas have risen steadily over the last five years from 79.5 percent of high school students graduating within four years of entering ninth grade in 1999 to 84.2 percent of students graduating within four years of entering ninth grade in 2003. Statewide passing rates on the Grade 11 exit-level Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) have increased from 49 percent in 2003 to 72 percent in 2004. Over the past seventeen years, growth in Advanced Placement participation among Texas high school students has outpaced growth in AP participation in the nation as a whole, with ten times as many examinees in Texas in 2003 as in 1987, while nationally there were only four times as many examinees in 2003 as in 1987. Greater percentages of students are also matriculating to higher education. According to a Texas High Education Coordinating Board study, more than half of all public school graduates from 1999-2000 enrolled in Texas public higher education.

Math and Science Initiatives

The Texas Math and Science Initiatives are multi-million dollar efforts to improve student performance in Mathematics and Science through research-based teaching and intervention strategies. The initiatives include: Master Teacher Certification Programs, which provide $5,000 stipends to qualified teachers teaching at high need schools; online diagnostic instruments to assist teachers with assessing student needs; intensive after school and summer programs for struggling students and the creation of professional development modules emphasizing effective strategies for teaching Mathematics and Science.

Early Childhood Education

The future economic strength and power of Texas will be largely dependent on the educational attainment of the state's population. A child's academic advancement depends on the development of a strong and high-quality educational system beginning with a solid Pre-K start and the completion of a post-secondary education. The need to create, develop and implement a seamless system of education is critical to achieving our goals for "Closing the Gaps."

State Center for Early Childhood Education

Governor Perry has designated The Center for Improving the Readiness of Children for Learning and Education (CIRCLE) at The University of Texas-Houston Health Science Center as the State Center of Early Childhood Education. The State Center is responsible for administering the Texas Statewide Early Childhood Initiative. CIRCLE is working closely with the Texas Education Agency on activities that enhance the quality and coordination of preschool education in Texas. These activities include: 1) Providing expert assistance to the Texas Center for Reading and Language Arts at the University of Texas at Austin in development of professional development modules for Early Childhood Education, 2) Delivering training to targeted early childhood programs, 3) Developing evaluation tools to assess the effectiveness of Head Start programs in language enrichment and pre-literacy skills and 4) Establishing a clearinghouse for quality program development, related scientific data, and resource material for early childhood programs.

School Safety

The Texas School Safety Center serves as an ongoing interdisciplinary resource, providing training and technical assistance statewide to reduce youth violence and promote safety. The center is a collaborative effort of the Governor's Office, the Attorney General's School Violence Prevention Task Force, and Texas State University. The center also serves as a clearing house for best practices and research related to school violence prevention. Educators receive training through workshops that focus on anger management, gangs, suicide prevention, gender respect, diversity and crisis response.

Higher Education Accountability System

In January of 2004 Governor Perry, through Executive Order RP-31, called on the public technical colleges, state colleges, universities, and health-related institutions to work with the Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop a statewide higher education accountability system to evaluate the institutions' performance toward achieving statewide goals, identify steps which may be taken to improve higher education, and provide families with the means to determine which institutions meet the educational goals of their students.

Higher Education Participation

The strategic plan for higher education adopted by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board calls for increasing the participation rate of Texans in our higher education system from the current rate of 5 percent of the population to 5.7 percent by the year 2015. That is the average participation rate of the highest participation states. But to achieve this goal, Texas would need to add 600,000 more students to its system by the year 2015 - a more than 50 percent increase. This challenge is heightened by the changing demographics of the state where the fastest growing populations are those that have had the lowest participation rates. The Higher Education Coordinating Board in coordination with the state's community, technical, and state colleges, as well as the universities and medical schools are working to attain this goal through a variety of ongoing and dynamic programs.

Work Study

More than 30,000 college students in Texas benefit from the federal and state college work study programs that provide part-time job opportunities. Enhancement of the state work study program has the potential to provide additional financial aid and assist in retaining and graduating students in post-secondary institutions.