THE EDUCATION FRONT

The Bush Institute holds its first education seminar today. The subject is educational leadership. Here is an interview I did for our Sunday Points section with James Guthrie, who is the institute's senior fellow for education studies.

I'm particularly interested in the question of whether good teachers are naturally that way, or whether they are the product of years of training. What's your thought?

Also, I'm interested in whether it's possible for a superintendent to be good at both finances and academics. What's your thought?

Most of us in Texas are concentrated on the governor's race, which certainly is the most crucial contest in the primary both parties are holding tomorrow. But not far behind in importance is a race for the State Board of Education seat, Place 9. Incumbent board member Don McLeroy, a Bryan Republican, is being challenged by Thomas Ratliff, a Mount Pleasant Republican.

As readers of this blog know, the board is very crucial. Among other responsibilities, it shapes the standards the state uses to assess students, determines what goes in our textbooks and oversees the state fund that finances public schools. All three areas also have been in the papers lately.

The board's debates over standards for reading, social studies and science have been hotly contested. Its decisions about what goes in textbooks, like the teaching of evolution, have drawn plenty of attention. And its calls about what outside companies land contracts to manage the school fund have sparked controversy. Morning News reporter and Education Front blogger Terry Stutz did a good job describing those controversies in this piece.

The board's actions also have gotten attention nationally. Most recently, the New York Times Magazine wrote about McLeroy and the board. He's been a leader of the eight or so social and cultural conservatives, whose doubts about evolution, approaches to reading comprehension, inclusion of conservatives in textbooks and exclusion of liberals have been part of the brouhaha surrounding the 15-member panel.

For the record, I had no problem with the McLeroy faction wanting more conservatives included in the social studies standards. Nor did I think they were out of bounds in asking that students have a better idea about the religious influences on the country's evolution.

But the board's socially conservative wing has deserved most of the critique and attention it has received. Their questioning of what teachers suggested about reading comprehension, their skepticism of evolution, their exclusion of liberals in social studies standards and their decisions surrounding the hiring of school fund managers has caused even Republican members of the board to say enough.

Ratliff hopes to join the enough-is-enough faction, which includes Republicans TIncy Miller, Pat Hardy and Bob Craig. This race involves North Texas, by the way. Parts of Collin County are in the district that McLeroy holds.

I'd suggest paying attention to the contest tomorrow night because a McLeroy victory would continue business as usual. A Ratliff upset would mean that more pragmatic members gain the upper hand. Whichever way it goes, the outcome sure will affect a lot of Texans.

I noticed in today's paper that Bill White was down in the Rio Grande Valley talking about Rick Perry's failures. Among other things, the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful criticized Gov. Perry for agreeing to deregulate tuition policies at state universities. In other words, White doesn't think universities should be able to set their own rates.

I wish they didn't have to set their own rates, that's for sure. I wish the Legislature would make good on its responsibility and adequately fund our colleges.

But that hasn't happened and it is not going to happen, plain and simple. That's why the Legislature, back in 2003, broke with tradition and gave universities the right to set their rates.

Tuition shot up for a few years, but then stabilized after the public pushed back. Some schools even started granting free admission to families up to a certain income level.

That's kind of where we are now. And I understand the politics here: White thinks he can tap into public anger about tuition.

But if he's going to do that, what is his plan for making sure the Legislature adequately funds UT, A&M, etc.? If he doesn't have one, then what are schools to do?

You can look for his answer to tuition rates on our Voter Guide here. He doesn't really give a clear answer about making up for the funding difference.

President Obama made education news yesterday when he told the National Governors' Association that future federal grants to states for schools that serve largely low-income students will be contingent upon states developing benchmarks for reading and math that show whether a student is ready for college or a livable-wage post-secondary job.

Under the president's plan, states can go after this in one of two ways. They can come up with their own reading and math standards, which their local universities must attest are preparing students for college or a career. Or, states can join with the group of governors that are trying to come up with a core group of common standards in those subjects for all their states.

This proposal sounds good for two reasons, but with a caveat.

The DMN's Holly Hacker and Bob Garrett reported this week on the budget cuts that state agencies are being asked to make to help correct the state's budget shortfall of anywhere between $10 billion to $15 billion. Universities naturally were on the list, including about $26.6 million in reductions for UT-Austin, $7.2 million for UT-Dallas and $8.3 million for UT-Arlington.

We're in a hole, so everyone's going to have to live with less than ideal situations. University of Texas System Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa acknowledged that point in an editorial board interview Wednesday.

But he also pointed out something that surprised me. While the UT-System got about a 6.7 percent increase in legislative appropriations during last year's session, UT-Austin got only about a 1.9 percent hike.

That's because the state uses formulas based upon enrollment to help fund campuses. And UT-Austin has pretty much maxed out on its enrollment capacity. (UT-Dallas, on the other hand, is in a growth phase so it received a greater percentage increase in legislative appropriations.)

Cigarroa said he was exploring ways the Legislature could fund schools other than through enrollment figures. He didn't have any specific suggestions, but that seems like a plausible path to go down. Perhaps the Legislature could reward things like cutting-edge research projects.

Whatever the answer, we all have a vested interest in UT-Austin, as well as Texas A&M, climbing higher in the rankings of public universities. Students would benefit from top faculty and better student-teacher ratios. And the state would gain from the innovation that comes out of top public universities.

I pressed Cigarroa some about expanding the amount that the UT System spends each year from its endowment, which puts UT in the top five or so of university endowments nationwide. I have no desire to see UT draw it down in a way that harms future generations. Hey, I have kids that I would like to go there someday!

But UT should at least look at easing up on its yearly drawdown, which regents recently moved from 4.75 of the fund's value to 5 percent. That changed ended up flowing a few million more into UT-Austin.

So, here's my question: How much could UT-Austin get if regents voted to start drawing down some more each year, eventually reaching, say, 5.5 percent or even 6 percent? (My understanding is that Yale spends 6 percent.) And what impact would that have on the multi-billion dollar endowment over time?

I don't know the answers, but maybe a little more liberal use of the endowment could help UT get enough extra revenues without having to worry about those funding formulas.

Is Ken Starr a good pr bad pick to lead Baylor? We had a discussion about this on the Opinion blog yesterday.

Here is my take:

We don't know yet. It depends upon how good of an administrator and fundraiser he turns out to be.

The bigger issue is whether or not he will be a good educator. He led Pepperdine Law School for a few years, so he has some track record. But I don't think we will know the answer for a while.

What's your view?

By agreeing last week to put more money in Juarez's schools, Mexican President Felipe Calderon placed a bet on his country's future. He may not have many good wagers to make given the violence along the border, but this was a smart one. The money won't turn Juarez around tomorrow, but it could later if students have an alternative to the lucrative but deadly life of a drug cartel member.

Mexico's schools have notoriously been behind others internationally, despite some recent reforms to increase standards. The unions remain strong. But the fact Calderon diverted some money from the immediate need of reining in the drug violence shows that he gets the long-term picture. Mexico can't move beyond Third World status without a better education system.

The U.S. could help with the situation, too. Thomas Friedman wrote recently in the New York Times that for every buck we spend on drones in Yemen we should spend an equal amount on building schools there. Well, the same principle applies to Mexico. For every buck we apply to fighting the narcos through military or policing means, we should give Mexico an equivalent amount in educational aid. As in Yemen, we will benefit in the long-run if Mexican students opt for a life in the global economy.

By the way, our aid doesn't have to be entirely in dollars. We could get folks involved in turning around our urban schools to share during summer trips or through video-conferences the best ways to reach students. (Numerous Americans already provide scholarship aid to young Mexican students through churches and civic organizations.)

An idea like this may sound naive, but look at it this way: Our security along the border depends upon fewer young Mexicans drifting into gang violence. Calderon's placing a strategic bet on schools being part of the answer. Why don't we do the same?

Bill White said something interesting and different in Monday night's gubernatorial debate. Different for most Democrats, that is.

When asked about the state's school funding situation, he said that parents should be free to put what they want into their children's school after the state has met its funding obligations. At the same time, the state must make sure that kids from all backgrounds have access to quality schools.

To make sure I heard that correctly, I followed up with the White campaign. Here is their post-debate statement:

"In addressing the question posed by the Dallas schoolteacher, Bill was recognizing the basic tensions that school districts and the legislature face. In trying to create a funding system that is fair and meets everyone's needs, there are competing principles. First, that all students, regardless of their economic situation and where in the state they live, have equal access to a quality education. Second, that local communities are able to make decisions about how much money they put towards education."

This approach may sound like a no-brainer, but Democrats usually haven't been so forthcoming about letting parents put what they want into their child's school. They often focus on equalizing funding. What White is saying allows for the fact that some schools could end up with more money beyond what the state puts in through its funding formulas.

That was a clear --and politically smart -- nod to surbuban voters, who often are passionate about building up their children's schools. White, a Democrat, knows he needs some suburbanites to win in the fall.

More than the politics of his position, the state shouldn't shoo away parents who want to improve upon the state's investment, as long as they don't run afoul of school finance laws.

Make no mistake: White also is signaling that the state has a clear responsibility to adequately fund all schools. That's his way of saying to urban and rural Texans that the state can't shortchange them. (As a Dallas resident, I'm glad to hear that.)

These funding issues get quite technical, but basically the state has a legal responsibility to give all schools access to an equal amount of wealth. After that is where things can get tricky. Some don't like to think about schools being free to access other buckets after the state has done its job. But White is giving them some wiggle room.

This is both good policy and good politics.

Here's what I want to hear more about tonight in the Democratic gubernatorial debate:

Bill White, the former Houston mayor who is the frontrunner, says that he wants to "take aggressive action against diploma mills that offer a high school diploma with little education."

What does that mean?

If it means that he is taking an Obama-like line and will shut down failing schools, which is not a popular position with some educators, then that' s a great idea. He's showing a willingness to take on teachers, a traditional Democratic bloc. More than that, he's not giving schools repeated chances to fail students if the campuses don't meet the standards of the state.

But if he means something other than shutting down schools or redesigning them, two actions that have caused a stir when it comes to campuses like Dallas Spruce High School and Austin's Johnston High, then this is not good. It's easy to talk tough, but it's much harder to intervene on behalf of kids. There are all sorts of folks, from principals to teachers to parents to students, who prefer the status quo.

Which does White mean?

I hope we find out tonight.

You could see this move coming a long time ago.

A few years back, as states started getting nervous about No Child Left Behind holding them responsible for their students meeting the educational standards of their own states, their officials started fiddling with their collars and asking for more breathing room, even weakening their standards. Now comes the Obama administration, and its education secretary Arne Duncan is floating the idea of giving up on No Child's goal of seeing how many students in each school are making significant progress each year. He's also suggesting Congress give up on the goal of children being proficient in their subjects by 2014, calling that part of No Child "utopian."

If the administration has its way with these two changes, let's just be honest: We as a nation will be giving up on kids, especially the many poor and minority children who are stuck in failing schools. We as a nation will be saying, we don't think you can learn at grade level. And we don't think we should ask you to achieve at an academic rate that will prepare you for a complicated world. That's the hard, cold reality, so if we decide to go down that road, let's just be realistic about what we are doing.

Now, with that said, there are certainly ways and places to improve upon No Child Left Behind, which was passed nine years ago with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both houses. No law is sacred, and there are ways to improve upon this bill.

Here are a few:

1. Allow states to show progress with their students, even if not all are proficient. In short, let them distinguish between the improving ones and the terrible ones.

That's called "differentiated consequences," and it's a concept that Bush Education Secretary Margaret Spellings used to let states show they are making some progress, just not enough progress. The idea allows schools to keep working with struggling students without being put on a black list.

2. Make sure the standards of each state prepare kids to graduate from high school with the skills for either a good trade job or college. Duncan talks about college/career readiness being a new goal, so pursue it, much like Texas did in adopting a new school accountability system in 2009.

But let's be specific about what these terms mean and what we expect kids to do to earn that recognition. Fuzziness will not help them compete in a world where others are rushing to become the next global economic powers.

3. Give states more money to improve low-performing campuses. This is a no-brainer, as long as the concept is more money-and-strong standards. If it is more money and less accountability, then this reform will make no sense at all.

4. Extend the date that states must have their students learning at grade level. I liked the 2014 goal because that let states take their entering kindergarteners in 2002, when the law kicked in, and get them at grade level by the time they walked across the stage and collected their high school diploma in 2014.

If Duncan and Congress think that's too hard, kick it back a few years. Just don't give up on it.

Duncan talked about some of these changes in a recent New York Times article. But he really didn't give many details. Evidently, he thinks that's something he and Congress will work on over the next few months.

What we need to hear next are precise details. This isn't about No Child per se, but the concepts in the landmark bill. If there's a way to build upon the idea of measuring students annually and seeing whether they are being left behind, then let's do it. But if that's not what's going on here, let's be honest with the students in Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago and everyplace else.

(Editor's Note: Charles Miller, the Houston businessman who once headed the University of Texas board of regents, put out an email last week to a list of contacts around the nation about the effort by the Obama administration and numerous governors to create a common core of national standards for schools. The Education Front received his comments, which we are posting today. The email provoked an exchange among some of the nation's leading education experts.)

Recent events have put a spotlight on a national debate and movement about setting curriculum standards for our K-12 public schools, that is, determining what it is we want our children to learn and who should decide that. Historically that has been a state function but recently there has been more than a lot of chatter about "national curriculum standards". An Obama administration challenge grant program---Race to The Top--- has elevated the issue and the Texas position has been especially noticeable and unique.

There are only two states, Texas and Alaska which have not been participating in a voluntary effort to construct national (not federal) curriculum standards for K-12. The leadership effort for this national common standards movement included the National Governors Association, state higher education officers and a non-profit group which includes some business and community leaders.

This national effort to produce a set of standards has resulted in some early outlines of standards for English and math. However some serious questions are beginning to be raised: Who are the people assigned to actually write these "voluntary" standards and are they really representative of any consensus or are they cherry picked by elite educrats and politicians for predetermined outcomes? The specifics to date are not promising.

Last week, Education Week gave Texas a D for its school funding policies, This week, the National Council on Teacher Quality has given us a C- for the quality of our teachers.

It seems to me these issues -- school finance and teacher quality -- would make for an excellent line of questioning in Friday night's gubernatorial debate between Kay Hutchison and Rick Perry.

As background, here are the grades the National Council on Teacher Quality, which is supported by a number of foundations, including the Gates Foundation and the Houston Foundation, gave to particular elements of our teacher corps:

Delivering well-prepared teachers: C
Expanding the teaching pool: B-
Identifying effective new teachers: D
Retaining effective new teaches : C-
Existing ineffective new teachers: D

The report also made these findings:

*Texas makes evidence of student learning the preponderant criterion in teacher evaluations, but it does not require annual evaluations for all teachers.

*Texas's tenure policies do not consider what should count the most about teacher performance: classroom effectiveness. The state does not require that districts collect or consider evidence of teacher effectiveness as part of tenure decisions.

*Texas makes it too difficult for districts to attempt to dismiss poor performers by failing to articulate a policy for dismissing teachers for poor performance separate from dismissal policies for criminal and morality violations. Texas also allows multiple appeals of dismissals.

*Texas's requirements for the preparation of elementary teachers do not ensure that these teachers are well prepared to teach mathematics. While the state's policies do address the science of reading instruction, Texas fails to ensure that its elementary teachers are well prepared to teach reading through an appropriate test.

*Texas does more than most states to exercise oversight of its teacher preparation programs.

*Although Texas claims to offer an alternative route to certification, its route is not selective and does not provide preparation that meets the immediate needs of new teachers.

*Texas sets low expectations for what special education teachers should know, despite state and federal expectations that special education students should meet the same high standards as other students.

I'm particularly struck by how hard it is for the state to get rid of bad teachers. This has been a problem for at least 15 years and it is really frustrating. Sure, teachers deserve due process. But if they aren't effective, they don't deserve a job that comes at the expense of a child's education.

I sure hope we hear about these issues in the governor's race.

Arne Duncan just did a conference call with reporters and the headlines are:

*Obama's cutting the domestic budget elsewhere, but not in education, at least not in aggregate. Overall, education spending would go up six percent if the president's 2011 budget is adopted.

*The budget will focus on a "massive investment" in making college more accessible.

*Obama considers education the civil rights issue of our day and the way out of poverty.

*Duncan wants to see the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reuathorized this year. He cited bipartisan support for the renewal, although he acknowledged it needs to get done by August or mid-term elections will take over. (ESEA is the law that governs No Child Left Behind.)

I agree education is the civil rights issue of our day. And while money isn't always the answer to our problems, and I'm a deficit hawk who wants to see entitlements overhauled, I'm glad to see him pushing forward with investments here, especially in trying to get more students into college. We can't let up on this front.

I don't know whether President Obama's spending freeze will affect his new plans for Race to the Top awards. If so, then what I'm saying here is moot.

But if the next round of Race to the Top spending is still in play, something like $1.35 billion for the 2011 fiscal year, then here are some thoughts:

I like that Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are proposing a new wrinkle in RTP funding by allowing school districts to apply directly to Washington for funds. Local districts wouldn't have to go through their states for funding in the next round of awards.

Sure, this new approach is in effect a political dig at Rick Perry for refusing Race to the Top funds for Texas this year. But the real emphasis should be on whether this change could help local districts. And I think it could.

I mean, the money could help them as they try to "repurpose" failing schools, gauge teachers for their effectiveness and reward school districts that are raising the achievement bar. I don't see what's so wrong with that.

The goal should be to improve student progress and those bucks could help here in Dallas or in any other local district.

The person I'm most interested in watching tonight in the GOP gubernatorial debate is Debra Medina. If she's articulate and informed, she could be the Ross Perot of this race. The tea-party Republican could make this race very uncomfortable for both Rick Perry and Kay Hutchison, both of whom have been trying to win Medina's supporters.

I also will be listening for what Hutchison says about broadening the GOP tent. That was one of her early themes, but it seems like she has been trying to out-border, out anti-tax, out-conservative Perry since then. If she really believes in a big tent, she's got to give moderates a reason to come into it. So far, she hasn't.

See you at 7.

I'll give Rick Perry credit that he just doesn't think the country should have a uniform set of school standards, which is one of the aims the Obama administration is pursuing with its Race to the Top program. But what I don't get is why he turned down all of Texas' share of the Race to the Top fund. We're talking about possibly $700 million left for other states to use, when Texas should have been able to qualify for that money.

There are plenty of places on the application for Texas to show its strengths. In fact, when you read the guide to the Race to the Top form, it is clear that the administration is looking at several criteria in doling out money.

For example, a state can earn points for how well it uses data to inform principals and teachers about helping students progress. A state can earn points for showing how it is improving the effectiveness of its teachers. A state can earn points for turning around failing schools. And a state can earn points for good charter schools.

There are other categories, but it is pretty clear that Texas could have racked up points in areas other than the national standards one, which Perry is hinging his decision upon.

Here's another important factor:

A U.S. Education Department spokesman told me today that there is no quid-pro-quo when it comes to national standards. In other words, a state's Race to the Top application is not contingent upon it agreeing to national standards that some governors are now drafting. The only deal-killer, I'm told, is in the area of how schools use data and Texas is not at risk of being disqualified on that point.

The bottom line is that Perry is creating a smoke-screen. Texas likely could qualify for this money without getting into the national standards debate. He may be opposed to such standards, and indeed there is reason to doubt whether we could ever adopt a good set of national benchmarks. But Texas didn't have to pull down its application.

Here's the new reality for public schools in the South: For the first time most of their students are poor and come from a minority family. Soon, the rest of America will catch up with Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and the other Old South states.

A report released by the Southern Education Foundation recently reached those conclusions. The findings present an immediate challenge for states like Texas. And they quickly will test all parts of the country. By 2020, the rest of America's schools will face the same demographic challenge.

What a twisted irony, when you think of how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life to lifting people out of poverty. Here we are, 81 years after his birth, and his home region is challenged by schools where students from economically disadvantaged homes are the norm.

True, the South has changed immensely since Dr. King led civil rights marches. African-Americans especially hold many positions of leadership in politics, commerce and culture.

But exams like the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that poor, minority students are at risk of being left behind their affluent Anglo peers. That's the point former Education Secretary Rod Paige, who once led Houston's school district, and his sister, educator Elaine Witty, make in their forthcoming book, "The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of our Time."

Indeed, education is the central civil rights issue of our time. But ensuring that poor, minority students are achieving academically is complicated. Educators like Raymund Paredes, Texas' higher education commissioner, spend much of their time determining how to close the "achievement gap."

Here are proven strategies for school districts to pursue:

1. Develop strong middle schools so struggling students don't drop out once they reach high school. Latino dropout rates especially are worrisome.

2. Create quality early reading programs so all children can start reading at grade level at a young age.

3. Train principals to become strong leaders. Students are lost without principals who press their students to achieve, use data to figure out how to improve student progress and stay abreast of the best research.

But educators aren't the only ones who can help close this gap. Parents bear a big part of the responsibility.

This year, as part of the Morning News' project to close the social and economic gap between Dallas' northern and southern halves, our editorial board will highlight how parents can help their children by being involved in their education. They're particularly needed in the crucial middle and high school years, where students can steer off course.

Fortunately, there are ways to meet this demographic challenge. But we all have a stake in the result. As Dr. King warned, so go the least of us, so goes America.

(Editor's note: Today, we launch the first installment of our series on how to spread progress across big urban districts. Jim Nelson, a regular reader of this blog and the former head of the Texas Education Agency and the former Richardson ISD superintendent, takes the first crack. Others will follow in the weeks ahead.)

Bill, I appreciate your education focus for 2010. All of us continue to struggle with the subjects you raise, particularly urban schools and the achievement gap.

While I clearly do not have all the answers, my experiences the last eleven years as commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, superintendent in Richardson, and now executive director of AVID have provided a perch for me to see several elements that are critical to effectively address these and other problems.

I won't even begin to comment on some of the other issues you raised, like the importance of the state's finance system. Texas is again approaching the point where it will have to be addressed. I've been involved in these battles since being elected to the school board in Odessa in 1984. It's just something we have to go through every five years or so. I don't see that changing. As I've traveled around the country for AVID these last four years, I can only opine that Texas is better off than most states. At least we're willing to address it every now and then (through court action generally).

But on how to spread progress across big urban districts, here are some of my thoughts:

What was encouraging about President Obama's speech Wednesday about producing more math and science teachers is that, in the midst of terror threats, a consuming health care debate and a troubled economy, he was signaling the equal importance of getting American students ahead of their peers internationally in math and science.

We're behind by many measures, and, as Obama made a great point:

"Whether it's improving our health or harnessing clean energy, protecting our security or succeeding in the global economy, our future depends on reaffirming America's role as the world's engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And that leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today, especially in math, science, technology, and engineering."

The president also drew heavily upon the work of the Dallas-based National Math and Science Initiative in explaining his campaign to produce more math and science teachers. Education Front readers may recall that we had NMSI head Tom Luce as a guest blogger back in August.

Luce explained how the organization is expanding its UTeach program so more universities can attract students into teaching math and science. The president talked about that same program in his speech, describing the expansion of UTeach to 20 universities as the type of work he wants his $250 million public/private effort to emulate.

UTeach offers a variety of incentives to get college students to consider teaching math and science. Among them, students can stay in their math, science or engineering majors and simultaneously earn a teaching degree. The goal is to get students who really know math and science into the classroom.

As we talked about earlier this week, Obama's on target with the principles in his Race to the Top effort. So, too, is he with this math and science campaign. He's stepping out of the tyranny of the moment and taking a look several years down the road. We all will benefit from that.

Education Week reports that the Obama administration's Race to the Top program may shape the rewriting of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. If that's the case, we could do much worse.

Race to the Top is based on several important principles: creating high standards, turning around failing schools, rewarding states for providing better teachers, offering students alternatives and using data to inform teachers about how to help students progress. There are other parts to this effort, but these are the big ideas.

I like these principles because they build upon the ones captured in No Child Left Behind. In their own ways, Race to the Top and No Child are about ratcheting up school standards, focusing on student progress and giving students the means to get ahead. They are part of the revolution that began in schools a couple of decades ago, when reformers started putting a new focus on school results. To back away from that revolution would shortchange students, in my estimation.

To be sure, there are differences between Race to the Top and No Child. For example, the Obama administration wants to create national standards for schools, while the Bush administration left it up to states to create their standards. While that's a substantial point of divergence, both efforts are still on the same side of the fence when it comes to embracing demanding standards. And that separates them from those in both parties who complain about too much emphasis on meeting benchmarks.

The rewriting of the ESEA will be a big education issue this year, if Congress gets going. I hope the Obama administration pushes for these goals to shape the act. There are plenty of folks on Capitol Hill and in the education world who would like to go in a different direction, so the White House is going to have to stand its ground.

Welcome to a new year on The Education Front.

Over the next few months, I'm going to spend some time here exploring what it takes to spread success around a big urban district. We've talked about this topic in the past, and, among other things, I'm going to line up some people with experience in urban districts to share their ideas.

There will be no quick fix, but we have no choice to continue finding the right answers. Urban school districts are where you find large numbers of poor, minority students. If we don't do right by them and create more than pockets of excellence, they will fail us by dropping out or ending up in dead-end jobs. No one benefits from that scenario.

Along these lines, I plan on concentrating on the gap between Latino students and their Anglo peers. We've talked considerably about this challenge the last few months, but we can't let up. This gap too affects the larger society.

Finally, I will try to keep the issue of school finance alive in this blog this year. Texas is looking at a funding shortfall in next year's session. And I hope to continue exploring how the Texas Legislature can solve this problem. This won't require a major overhaul, like the Legislature tried to do in 2006. But it will require action, and perhaps The Education Front can help show the way.

I look forward to our discussions this year, a big part of which are the ideas you provide. As always, let's keep the exchanges civil and show that a blog can be both informative and interesting.

After reading Time's Person of the Year cover story on Ben Bernanke last night, it reminded me why economics ought to be part of the collegiate core curriculum. Perhaps it is in some schools. I haven't checked lately. But I have thought for a long time that economics is one of the few courses that help explain the world in which we live.
For that reason, it should be part of a core curriculum, alongside languages, math and science and history.

I mean, look at the issues that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke has faced over the last year: He's been trying to keep the worldwide economy from melting down, correct a sub-prime mortgage crisis and deal with failing banks. And the tools he's been using are front page news: pumping trillions into the economy through easing up on the money supply, taking interest rates down to zero, loaning money to failing companies, including foreign banks. And he's been trying to do this while trying to avoid both deflation and inflation.

I'm not here to debate his policies, but I do think it's hard for us to follow these moves without some knowledge of economics. And we have a self-interest in understanding them. They affect us directly, just as decisions made by Fed chiefs in the future will impact us.

I really struggled with finance courses at the University of Texas, often because they were dry and pertained to a smaller universe of issues. But economics courses brought the world alive to me.

This was back in the middle 1970s and stagflation was this godawful- sounding term that hung over everything. Before my economics courses, I had no idea what it meant. But, thanks to my economics teachers, I felt like I could pick up the paper and have a better idea what was going on.

Later, I took some graduate courses in economics and felt the same thing. Not only did they explain what was happening in our country, but they offered a chance to understand how our system compared to those of other nations.

Of course, much has changed since then. The global economy has compressed the world. In my book, that has made an understanding of economics more crucial.

What are your thoughts? Should economics be part of a college's core curriculum?

Editor's Update: SMU president Gerald Turner filed his response today, so it is now part of our post.

We asked, and they answered. Here are several responses from university presidents across North Texas about how colleges can help students graduate on time. As more replies come in from other local university presidents, I will post them.

The popular image of college-bound students is that they are sweating blood to get into that all-coveted college of choice. And the more blue-ribbon the school, the more enthusiastically they seek that credential.

But a new study by Public Agenda, which the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded, shows something different. Students are more concerned about getting into a college they can afford.

The study also found that more than half the students surveyed took six years to get out of college, if they graduated at all. Not because all of them are lazy no-goods piling up beer cans as they flip the remote around from their couches. But because many are going a semester or two to college, dropping out to earn enough money for the next couple of semesters, and then repeating the pattern until they graduate or dropout.

Texas legislators certainly have heard this story. Before this year's session began, a special committee looking at how to keep kids in college heard compelling stories about serious students dropping in and out of college.

The squeeze in the economy is likely to extend this trend for some time. And it is hastening the need for universities to come up with a new business model, just like many industries, including those of us in journalism, are having to rethink how they do their work.

Austin College President Marjorie Hass commented on this in a recent editorial board interview, when she noted how schools are trying to think strategically about their missions.

Some of the new approaches include students going to two years to community colleges, then two years at a four-year institution. Some schools are even considering getting students a degree in three years.

I'm going to query several local university presidents to see what they have to say about this challenge. As soon as I get answers, I will post them. (It could take a couple of days, so stay tuned.)

Meanwhile, is this phenomenon real to you or your family? If so, what solutions would you recommend to make it easier for students to graduate on time?

The Dallas school board had a big election this week, resulting in two new trustees: Bernadette Nutall and Bruce Parrott. More trustees will be up for election in May, meaning we could have even more new faces.

Nothing wrong with new faces. Institutions need change to keep growing.

But there seems to be this sense that things would be better if Dallas Achieves, Michael Hinojosa, the business community and trustee Jack Lowe, the former school board chairman, weren't around. I can't prove that, but that's my gut feeling after interviewing some of the candidates and reading about them. This newspaper's Diane Rado characterized the election this way in yesterday's paper:

"In what some call a watershed victory, Tuesday's Dallas school board runoff produced a new five-member majority that's expected to be less malleable and more inclined to challenge the administration and the status quo."

If that indeed is the result of the election, I worry that the district's attempt to create higher expectations in every school gets lost in the attack on the status quo. The big push by Dallas Achieves, Hinojosa and some business leaders to create more demanding schools will become targets, perhaps accidentally, in the revolt.

What a shame that would be. DISD actually is producing strong magnets, growing better principals, seeing more schools earning the state's exemplary or recognized ranking and starting to use data systems to improve schools. Most of those are the result of a sense of urgency that the "status quo" crowd has tried to engender. If we start chipping away at this new culture, heaven help us.

Of course, no one would come right out and say, let's dumb things down. Everyone wants progress. But we could see it retarded if the reform push of the last several years, which Hinojosa, Dallas Achieves, the business community and reformers like Lowe have led, becomes caught in the crossfire.

I may be over-reading things. I hope I am. But if I'm not, I hope the very good things that have gone on here over the last decade, including when Mike Moses led the district, don't get burned down amidst populist anger. A lot of kids would lose out if that happened.

There is a great exchange in the current issue of "Education Next" between two different camps of Democratic education reformers. It's really worth reading to understand the tension within education circles as the Obama administration formulates its policies. In fact, the article starts out talking about how President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan must negotiate this split between Democratic school reformers.

One camp, represented by Pedro Noguera of A Broader, Bolder Approach in Education (BBA), believes that better schools are more likely to result from dealing with the poverty that afflicts many kids, whether that means creating universal pre-K, expanding health care or teaching parents how to participate in their child's education.

The other, represented by Joe Williams of the Education Equality Project (EEP), believes that we're more likely to get better schools by focusing on what can be controlled within the walls of the school or within the boundaries of the district, such as measuring school progress, paying teachers for excellence and giving students choices of where they want to attend school.

I'm not just trying to be a squishy moderate here, but there's truth to both sides. Teachers do deal with many social factors that kids bring into their classrooms. That speaks to the BBA approach of dealing with the poverty that surrounds many schools.

On the other hand, there are only so many resources and so much time that Capitol Hill, state legislatures, school districts and individual campuses have at their disposal when it comes to setting education policy. Deploying them as precisely as possible seems a much better way to use limited resources and time.

If I had to pick one camp, I would go with the Education Equality Project. Measuring progress, rewarding quality teachers and expanding charter schools can be done fairly quickly, while the worthy goal of beating back poverty can take decades. Meanwhile, we risk losing another generation of kids.

What do you think? Where do you fall on this continuum? This is an important issue to consider because it gets at what's going on in Washington.

This is good news:

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus put in his interim charges for the House Ways and Means Committee that he wants the tax committee to both monitor the business tax that supplies money for schools and look at the tax exemptions that some businesses enjoy. That's code for his way of saying the 2011 Legislature is headed into trouble financially, and he wants some ways to deal with it before the next Legislature starts in January 2011.

We discussed here last month that the Legislature is looking at a serious hole, partly because the school finance solution that legislators put together in 2006 is not supplying sufficient dollars. The business school tax is part of the problem because it is not raising enough money to offset the local property tax cuts that were part of the school finance fix.

The Morning News' Bob Garrett touches upon other reasons for the coming shortfall in his good explanatory piece in this morning's paper. They include lower sales tax receipts and stimulus money that probably won't be around in 2011.

There are several ways to get out of our hole, which could reach $8 billion to $10 billion. One way is we luck out and the economy roars back. Another way is we control spending. I wouldn't count on either of those supplying enough cash but we certainly can hope for them.

More likely, legislators will need to tinker with the school business tax. That could mean a one-time hike in the tax, matched with spending cuts. It also could mean doing away with some business tax exemptions.

Education Front readers may recall that the Center for Public Policy Priorities' Dick Lavine suggested on this blog a couple of weeks ago that Austin should review all tax exemptions. He told Garrett in today's story that these exemptions may have been rooted in a legitimate reason long ago, but this is a different day.

Of course, touching exemptions will set off a firestorm, as Garrett explains.
That's why I admire Straus for putting them on the table. He's showing guts.

Now, the Ways and Means Committee should show its own courage and offer up some exemptions that the state could end. We're going to need all the help we can get to climb out of this hole.

Kay Hutchison finally got into education issues in her gubernatorial campaign last week, and, for the most part, I thought she laid out some good ideas. Rick Perry has been all over her for copying some of his ideas. But, you know, I don't care where ideas come from as long as they can benefit kids in school.

Here are a couple of areas where I think her proposals stand out:

First, she wants to focus on middle schoolers with strategies that will keep them from dropping out once they get to high school. I doubt anyone's been elected governor because of their middle school policies, but she is really on the mark here. As many educators know, kids tend to make progress in elementary school, then fall off once they hit middle school. In some cases, they fall so far behind, they give up and dropout by the time they reach ninth or tenth grade.

What Hutchison proposes is an "accelerated middle school initiative." Here's what her press release says:

"Hutchison will propose an Accelerated Middle Schools initiative to help middle school students who are behind grade level "catch up" by covering core academic curriculum at an accelerated pace. With individualized e-Learning, and a focus on core subjects necessary for graduation, students one or two years behind grade level will be able to catch up to their peers and stay on track."

Now, I don't exactly what all that means. But she is at least throwing out some serious ideas, which is not something you can say about her so far in this campaign.

Second, I like her emphasis on using data to identify struggling learners. We've talked here many times about the importance of using information so teachers, parents and principals can intervene to keep a student from going off track. (Or to supplement their progress.)

Hutchison gets into the data revolution in her middle school proposal when she talks about

"The latest technology permits much more effective longitudinal tracking of individual students, making it easier to identify those most at risk of dropping out of school. Most future dropouts can be identified years beforehand on the basis of statistical factors. We will explore different predictive tools and design intervention strategies so we start to help at-risk students as soon as they start to fall behind - or even before."

Again, there's more to spell out. But this is part of the conversation we need. I think she has run a very uninspiring campaign, but she's put some serious education ideas out there.

Thoughts about these and other of her proposals, which you can read here.

UT-Brownsville president Juliet Garcia got a big plug over the weekend. Time Magazine included her in its list of the top 10 university presidents in America.

One of the reasons is that Garcia heads a school that is 93 percent Latino, mostly bilingual and 91 percent first-generation students. In other words, the campus is what a big part of America will look like in the future. "We are a preview of what the rest of Texas and the rest of the U.S. is going to morph into," she told Time.

The U.S. won't get to 93 percent Latino, but we certainly are becoming more Hispanic. And the nation, like Texas, needs to develop the intellectual capital of such a large part of its population.

Here's how Garcia puts it:

"We're trying to send a very clear signal that the Latino human capital in this country simply needs access to the same opportunities that have been present for other people."

Way to go to Time for spotlighting this issue. We all have a lot riding on UT-Brownsville coming up with a successful model.

George W. Bush announced yesterday that education will be one of the main missions at his new policy institute. Before the former president's announcement, there had been speculation about education being one of his top priorities, so the news wasn't a total shock. But it seems like a natural fit. Both as president and governor, Bush spent a lot of time trying to improve schools, especially those that serve low-income students.

According to his remarks yesterday at SMU, he is going to focus at first on education leadership. This ties into what we have been talking about here in terms of moving urban districts beyond pockets of excellence. One of the keys is a corps of strong principals and top-tier teachers. ( Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa has put a special focus on building up strong principals. One of them, Lucy Hakemack of Spruce High School, has an op-ed piece in our paper today.)

Bush announced two fellows to start the education program. The first was Jim Guthrie of Vanderbilt, an education professor who has spent a lot of time working on teacher quality efforts. He will be both teaching at SMU and working at the policy institute.

The second was one that Education Front readers and Dallas residents will recognize: Sandy Kress. Sandy will be working on policy development, including putting together a conference on education leadership in March.

This work will be a boon for Dallas and SMU, but, much more important, it stands to help students in classrooms. The quality of their principals and teachers has a direct impact on their chances at success.

Or, let me put it this way: Without quality leadership, you can be assured kids will have little chance of making it and urban districts will never move beyond pockets of excellence.

A couple of weeks ago we started a conversation about how to move big urban districts beyond pockets of excellence. As part of that discussion, let me throw out this question:

What would it take to attract some of our top college students into teaching?

I'm not saying all of the top students have the ability to teach, nor am I saying we only attract crummy students into teaching. But let's be honest: We don't have the same level of competition in college for future teachers that we have for doctor wannabes, up-and-coming business entrepreneurs or prospective engineering candidates.

I'm interested in hearing what it would take to change that equation, to get more leading students into teaching. Surely, one thing would be to help them learn how to teach. Beyond that, what else? A strong career plan? Promises of quality professional development? Better pay or economic incentives for classroom success?

I'd like to hear your ideas, especially from teachers. I don't want this to become a diatribe against young whippersnappers coming into teaching or a rant against the teaching profession. I'm looking for constructive ideas about improving the pipeline of teachers.

To me, a steady supply of quality teachers seems like one of the first essentials a district needs to move beyond pockets of excellence.

We better get ready now. The 2011 Legislature is likely to be dominated by -- yes, once again -- school finance.

This subject never goes away, does it?

It's popping up again because legislators failed to put aside enough money to pay for the school finance fix they passed in a 2006 special session. They had some good fundamentals in their plan, such as a new business tax that they created to help the state pick up a larger share of school spending.

With the new business tax in play, locals were freed to drop their school property taxes by about a third. On the surface, the idea made sense: The state provides more money through the business tax and the locals get tax relief.

But there was a catch: The business tax, along with an increase in the cigarette tax, was not set at a rate to bring in enough money for the state to sufficiently ramp up its spending. It certainly wasn't set at a rate high enough for local property taxes to go down 30 percent and to maintain spending on the state's other priorities.

Some in Austin knew this from the beginning. They warned that the state eventually would have to figure out a way to pay for all of that property tax cut.

Well, that day is arriving. The state budget limps along, year to year, with a built-in annual deficit of about $3 billion to $5 billion. And it's getting bigger, not smaller, thanks to the slowdown in the economy. As a result, the longer we wait, the worse the problem will get.

The Rainy Day Fund could help out, but should we use all of it to pay for this deficit when other needs are equally compelling? We shouldn't rule out either some spending cuts in areas that are not essential or maybe some kind of hike in the business tax, even if it's only a one-time hike.

Whatever the answer, we should get ready. That includes asking all our gubernatorial candidates how they would deal with this problem. It's coming.

New Jersey's Governor-elect Christopher Christie told the New York Times today that "other than taxing and funding issues, the most important issue to me is fixing the urban education problem."

For political reasons, I about jumped out of my chair. Here's a Republican doing more than opposing President Obama. He's actually interested in taking on big problems. As we have discussed here before, there is no domestic problem bigger than the one of urban education.

But then I read that Christie went after his election to a charter school, decried teacher's unions and promoted vouchers. And, I thought, oh, boy.

I agree with him that charters are very important, that unions, particularly in the East, can obstruct positive reforms and that vouchers have a place in a reform agenda. But those issues are what you usually hear from candidates who don't know much about public education.

The fact is, there are so many other fundamentals that states and districts need to fix this problem. Here are a few:

How well does a district train its principals?
How long is the district's school day?
How strong are its preschool programs?
Where are schools attracting most of their teachers from?
What kind of programs do they have for students who can't speak English?
How demanding are the state's standards?
How well is an urban district's curriculum aligned to the state's standards?
What kind of reading programs do they use?
How does the district involve parents?
How many opportunities do students get for AP classes?

I'm sure you all have some of your own must-haves. And, truthfully, I haven't had time to read any of Christie's speeches. Maybe he is talking about these and other fundamentals.

I sure hope he is, because embracing charters and vouchers while decrying unions won't take him or Jersey very far.

No matter who wins the Dallas school elections today, the board has two primary responsibilities ahead of it.

The first -- and most important -- one is to reassure the public that it is paying very close attention to the district's financial, management and administrative issues. Without stronger oversight, the public's not going to pay attention to any academic achievements. We don't need to recount the horror stories here; we've all read them plenty of times. What the board must do is get into overdrive on the oversight front.

The second big responsibility involves the academic side. The board must build upon recent DISD classroom successes and start focusing on strategies that help children do more than simply pass the TAKS test. Instead, we need more students passing the TAKS exam at the "commended" level, which shows they are on a path that is getting them ready for college.

Here, too, we don't have to recount all the reasons. We've read plenty of stories about how students are not really proficient in key subjects, even if they are passing the TAKS.

But we shouldn't give up. The district has a wonderful new data system that allows educators and parents to drill down into how well each school is performing, beyond passing the TAKS. And Dr. Hinojosa has said that he wants students going way beyond passing the TAKS.

So, here's an idea for the trustees: Set goals for the percentage of students it expects each school to pass the TAKS test at the commended level. Since some schools have 30 percent or less of their kids passing the TAKS at that more demanding level, the district will need to stair-step in the requirements. But we need goals.

There are plenty of public and charter schools where kids do really well, so it isn't a matter of putting too much pressure on kids. It instead is insisting that they get the best education that can give them the most opportunities in life.

In my book, these are the two most important tasks for the new board. The first is needed to build credibility, but the second is needed to help the students.

This morning I toured Mi Escuelita's preschool in Oak Lawn, not far from Scottish Rite Hospital. The campus there, along with Mi Escuelita's four other schools, serve preschoolers only. And most of their students come from families where Spanish is the dominant language.

Mi Escuelita uses an immersion approach to get the children learning in English by the time they go to kindergarten. In some circles, immersion is controversial. But something must be working.

Mi Escuelita's Jan Zeigler said this morning that 95 percent of the school's students qualify for English-language kindergarten. What's more, SMU has done a study that shows Mi Escuelita students score in the top quartile of their classes through the third grade.

What I'm interested in hearing about from readers is not so much a debate about Mi Escuelita's techniques, but an issue I've been thinking about: How do we create more than pockets of excellence in big urban districts?

Recently, I wrote about touring some successful charter schools in Dallas. And before that, we've talked here about some progress being made in Oak Cliff schools like Felix Botello Elementary School and Sunset High School.

I'm thrilled about what these schools are doing. But is it possible to think about spreading success across most of a city?

I'm really interested in constructive ideas here, as this is a big question for cities like Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Denver and New York. This is a broad subject, I know, but what fundamentals must be in place?

A final thought: Perhaps I'm wrong in approaching the subject this way. Maybe it's better to think in small "d" democratic terms, where many different ideas arise without some sort of master plan.

I don't know the answers, but I am interested in hearing your thoughts. How can we spread success?

(CorrectIon: An earlier version referred to UT-Dallas conducting a study that included Mi Escuelita students. SMU actually did the study. I made the change.)

The fact that the U.S. Department of Education has informed the Texas Education Agency that first-year elementary school teachers must pass a broad exam to be considered "highly qualified" will not go down easily with some teachers. But this is a good move by Washington, if you think kids, especially in poor inner city schools, deserve decent teachers.

The DMN's Terry Stutz reported this story last week. The TEA said then, and recounted to me yesterday, that the agency was surprised by the ruling. Evidently, the feds had never seen a problem with Texas' teaching corps in the past.

But the No Child Left Behind Law requires teachers to be certified as highly qualified. And hallelujah for that. Improving the teacher corps is one way to make sure that every child can learn at grade level. Meeting that goal will never be easy, but we can be assured of this: Students will not get there without good teachers.

To his credit, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been making a huge deal out of improving the quality of teachers. He talked about this once again in a speech last week at Columbia University, where he challenged schools of education to turn out better teachers. That takes guts given the power of teacher unions in some parts of the country. But he and President Obama show no signs of backing down.

As far as the Texas situation goes, TEA spokesperson Debbie Ratcliffe told me yesterday that the agency is drafting a response. It has about 30 days to get one in, and the agency is considering asking for a compromise: Let first year teachers off the hook this year for passing the "generalist" exam that would show whether they are qualified to teach in more than one subject. In return, the agency will require all first year teachers in the 2010-2011 school year to pass the exam.

That sounds reasonable. The state's not off the hook, but it wouldn't have to administer the test at least one-third of the way through the school year. We're now in late October, it will take the TEA some time to file its response and then for the feds to consider it. We could be talking mid-December. And, Ratcliffe says, districts will start canceling contracts for low-performing teachers in March. The bottom line is there may not be much utility in administering the test this school year.

(As far as Dallas goes, DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander told me late yesterday that the district has about 75 teachers who would be eligible for this test. DISD's preparing to offer them training for the test and the exam itself, if they must this school year.)

I hope Washington accepts the TEA's compromise. But I also hope the feds keep the pressure on.

Teachers and administrators may hate having to deal with this certification exam, but they aren't the ones who should be our first concern. Students sitting in classrooms where teachers aren't qualified enough to teach deserve first ranking.

The DMN's Diane Rado's report today on DISD fifth graders not being ready for middle school buttresses an earlier report by Holly Hacker that too many high school students aren't ready for college or a good post-high school job. According to Rado's report, about half of DISD's fifth graders are not on track for the more demanding middle school years.

Before we go any further looking at the fifth grade data, this information is a perfect example of how data can inform educators what's really going on with their students. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Dell Foundation and others are pressing for more sophisticated data systems in schools so parents, teachers and principals can have a precise snapshot.

Now, the data itself. The DISD scorecards that Rado based her reporting upon are pretty illuminating. Some of the info is a bit hard to fathom, but, basically, the district considers a fifth grader "on track" if he or she passes the TAKS in reading, math and science and has not failed more than one core class.

That's probably a fair assessment, but here's what I worry about. Passing the TAKS test is not the same as passing it at the commended level. We've talked about commended scores here before, and they are really important. They tell whether a child is on track as early as elementary school for college or a good post-high school job.

I don't want to take away from the hard work educators engage in to get kids to simply pass the TAKS test. They have to stick to the curriculum, intervene with strugglers and think creatively to get kids to that point.

But what the Texas Education Agency and districts like our own in Dallas need to really zero in on are the commended scores. They tell us more about the student's chances for economic and social mobility than the basic passing score. We raised this issue with several DISD school board candidates and I hope parents take up this cause, too.

In fact, when you look at some of the schools that are showing 60 percent or more of their fifth graders being "on track," they show even fewer kids passing the TAKS at the commended level.

I'm not bringing up this higher standard to demonize the district or teachers. It is really hard to get a large number of kids to meet a tougher standard. But that's what they -- and we as parents and taxpayers -- need to keep shooting for. As Rado's report shows, we are far from there.

Well, what do you know? A real, live idea has emerged in our governor's race. Instead of the hourly whack-the-opponent press releases that come from each side, Gov. Rick Perry announced Thursday his plan to increase the number of T-Stem academies in Texas.

T-Stem is a program aimed at getting more students interested in technology, science, engineering and math. And since we often discuss the importance of those subjects here, I won't go into great detail about why that matters. Rather, here's why the governor is right:

There is a growing body of evidence that shows these academies, which can operate as schools within a school, are producing desirable results. Here in North Texas, we have at least four examples.

Berkner High School in Richardson has a T-Stem academy, and, among other things, the school touts one of its students as having won a prestigious statewide math contest. At least part of that success is due to the project focus that Berkner uses in getting students to have a hands-on feel for science, math, technology and engineering. And the teaching at Berkner is drawing notice. Texas Instruments recently inducted a Berkner T-Stem teacher into its academy for recognized math and science teachers.

R.L. Turner High School also has a T-Stem academy. Like Berkner, the METSA program there uses project-based learning. And it draws heavily from first-year teachers, who come to these subjects fresh.

That's probably one reason Gov. Perry also is proposing more money be invested in recruiting young science and math teachers, including through the U-Teach program. UT started that as a way to get college students into math and science teaching.

Conrad High School in Dallas has an academy, too. What caught my eye with it is the fact that 97 percent of Conrad's students are Latino or African-American. And the academy is showing impressive results, including having 95 percent of its 9th graders pass Algebra I.

Williams Prep in northwest Dallas serves a similar population. And the charter school's T-Stem academy is working with nearby UT-Southwestern to engage its students in these subjects.

To me, Williams' collaboration is a perfect example of how T-Stem academies are trying to open students to the possibilities of these fields. And, as the governor noted in his proposal for putting $160 million into them in the next Legislature, they are succeeding. The state has given about 90 percent of T-Stem schools either an exemplary or recognized rating, which are the top two ratings the state awards.

Score one for the governor for introducing a serious idea into the campaign. And score an even bigger one for T-Stem academies. They deserve this boost.

The American Prospect took a look at charter schools recently, citing some who see them as doing better than expected and others who, naturally, don't see it that way. That's usually the way it is with charters, although the magazine reported on the charter analysis done by two heavyweights. The article is worth reading to see how each approaches the subject of charters. The surprising part is that both scholars support President Obama's goal of creating more charters.

As I read it, I thought of two Dallas charters I toured last month. The first was the Pegasus School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, which is located in the downtown Y near the Dallas Museum of Art. Except for the fact the school had very few windows, creating the feel of being in a bunker, Pegasus offers a unique education opportunity: attending a 4th through 12th grade campus in the middle of a major city.

The school located downtown on purpose, and the teachers use the arts district, City Hall, the downtown library and other facilities as part of their campus. Classes walk to those destinations for lessons, even taking PE walking classes across town. High schoolers also can use nearby El Centro College for dual credits.

Among other innovations, the school requires community service of every student. The service element starts with 40 hours of volunteer work for fourth graders and goes up to 100 hours for 12th graders.

The teachers also break the schedule into minutes, not hours. And students' schedules change every day. This is part of Pegasus' effort to rethink the school day.

Something must be working. The school, whose population is 63 percent Latino, 35 percent black and 2 percent Anglo, reports no dropouts in its high school class. And U.S. News listed it as one of the nation's best high schools in 2007-2008.

The second school I visited was Peak Preparatory not too far from Baylor Hospital. The school is part of Uplift, which runs charters in other parts of North Texas. Uplift is not yet up to the KIPP Academy level of a system of charters, but it is getting there.

Peak's first senior class is this year, and the 29 students are all expected to graduate and go to college. Get this: In order to graduate, you have to be accepted into a two-year or four-year college.

Expectations are a big part of the culture at Peak. When you walk into the building and see the pictures of this year's graduating class, the students are listed as the class of 2014. I couldn't figure that out until someone said that meant the year of their college graduating class.

Like Pegasus, the vast majority of Peak's students come from low-income homes, mostly Latino. 78 percent of their students come from homes where Spanish is the primary language. By fourth grade, however, they have all of their students taking the TAKS test in English.

The school touts interventions with students, after-school tutorials and Saturday schools to help students meet their objectives. And parents must sign plans with their children and the school at the beginning of each year. If the child falls off track, the parent and students meet with the teacher to review the plan. This is part of the school's culture of expectation.

Here, too, something must be working. Peak, which has about 900 students, reports that 100 percent of its 11th graders met all of their TAKS requirements. And the K-5 campus director, Teresa Khirallah, claims that the school adds one-and-a-half year of growth in their student's grasp of their subjects each year.

There is no one model that will work in every school. And charters like these certainly have issues to work on. Peak had too few minority teachers, if you ask me. And Pegasus has that cramped feeling.

But charters like Pegasus and Peak are worth studying to see what they are doing right. And they are further proof why Obama is right to keep the charter school movement alive. There are problems to point out, as scholars do, but not enough to pull the plug on the experiment.

Here's what's exciting about Texas' most recent scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam, the best benchmarking of student achievement in any subject:

Texas minority students outpaced their peers nationwide. Blacks in fourth and eighth grade finished third and first, respectively, on the math exam. Latinos finished eighth and fourth, respectively. In both cases, their average scores beat the national average for African-American and Hispanic students.

Anglo students in fourth and eighth grades also beat their peers nationally. Whites in the fourth and eighth grades finished fifth and fourth, respectively, on the math exam. Their average scores also trumped the national average for Anglo students.

In a populous, diverse state like Texas, those scores are not something to wave off. They show that peer group-to-peer group, our students are holding their own.

Here, though, is the troubling part, which Terry Stutz reports on in today's story about the NAEP results:

Texas still has a significant "achievement gap" between Anglo and minority students. Among fourth graders, Anglos in Texas scored 23 points higher than blacks in Texas and 21 points higher than Latinos in Texas. Among Texas eighth graders, Anglos scored 29 points higher than African-Americans and 24 points higher than Hispanics..

That gap is particularly depressing when you consider what UT education expert Edward Fuller told Terry: Scores for black and Latino fourth-grade students in Texas are now where Anglo students in Texas were in 1992. And Texas scores for black and Latino eighth-graders are where whites were in 1990.

We've talked here before about the achievement gap and why it's especially important to see more progress among Latino students, who make up about half the Texas public school student body. We'll keep talking about the best strategies, including getting more parents involved in their child's education.

For the moment, though, let's both cheer and gulp. Texas still has a lot of work to do with its schools.

What's wrong with the State Board of Education?

Last week, board members were in the news for the way in which they prematurely ended a contract with an investment firm. They went for a firm that one board member had been trying to do business with as a private investment marketer.

This week, two board members were in the news for accepting thousands of dollars of gifts from a company seeking a contract with the board. The pair didn't declare the gifts, which became known after the company filed a report showing it had given them 53 gifts that totaled more than $5,000 in dinners, football tickets, rounds of golf and other niceties.

I shudder to think what' s coming next week.

Really. I'm not being snarky. What is going on?

Some board members I've interviewed the last couple of weeks are very concerned. They think conflicts of interest run deep into the panel's culture.

Others don't see it that way. Rick Agosto, the only board member mentioned in last week's story and this week's report, repeatedly told me over the phone last week that he has done nothing wrong.

And, technically, accepting some gifts wasn't wrong. State ethics rules requires disclosures of gifts over $250. On the other hand, neither Agosto nor fellow board member Rick Nunez reported gifts over $250. Incredibly, Nunez told freelance reporter Jeff Horwitz that he thought the gifts were given to him as a private marketing consultant and not as a state board member.

The House and Senate members should look into these patterns over their interim work session. I'm not suggesting Haldeman/Ehrlichman-type corruption, but something's going on.

Enough so that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus should put House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler and Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro in charge of either separate or combined investigations into the ethical practices and culture of this board.

One reform that would really help is giving either the Legislature, the Texas Education Agency or the Texas Ethics Commission the power to enforce penalties if a state board member violates state code. According to the story, there is no way for the chair of the state board or any other figure to enforce ethics rules.

Talk about crazy.

Let me be clear here: There are some really capable State Board of Education members. But this panel has a habit of landing in the front pages, including way before these stories hit. We need some changes.

We ran an interesting story Saturday about where school boundary lines should be drawn in Plano. I haven't had a chance to talk to any Plano sources about this, but the difficulty in drawing school boundaries is not peculiar to Plano, especially when it gets to whether lower-performing students should be put in one area and higher-performing ones in another.

In fact, I had lunch last week with a friend who taught many years ago in a parochial school outside of Dallas. He said that low-performers were clearly segregated into their own classes, which he happened to teach since he was the newcomer instructor. And the high-performers were given their own classes. He said he took great pride in his low-performers beating the high-performers in a campus contest that required them to think through problems, not just memorize answers.

I recognize there are other circumstances in the Plano situation, such as how far children should have to travel each day. Still, there is an issue that is central in this discussion and others like it: To what extent should children of different abilities be matched together in the same classes and schools?

I favor the mixing for a number of reasons, but mostly because I think it's easy to stick low-performers in a district or school and forget about them.

But clearly there has to be some way for the advanced learners to live up to their potential. In some ways, we do that through magnet schools and TAG classes. Maybe not perfectly, but there is some attempt to give students a chance to learn at their own pace.

This sensitive debate goes to the heart of the struggle within public education: How do you create opportunities for low- and high-performing students?

Thoughts? How do you approach this quandary?

(I'm looking more for a discussion about mixing up kids, not so much what's right or wrong in Plano's situation. That debate is taking place on Matthew Haag's Plano blog that I linked to above.)

Here's my confession: I want to find that one cure that will fix schools.

The other day I was touring some charter schools in Dallas and saw how one of them used a plan that parents, teachers and students had to sign off on before the school year starts. I thought, aha, if only every school had a plan for each student. Then, I had to catch myself because I know that there's a trap in thinking if only every school did X.

Karin Chenoweth of the Education Trust points this out in her new book "How It's Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools." I'm reading it now, and she makes the point high up in her book that:

"Anyone looking for simple answers will not find them here....There is no single program, policy or practices that will ensure all schools and all students will be successful. Educating children is a complex task, and when children live in poverty or isolation, the task is even more complex."

That said, there are fundamentals you find in many succeeding schools. They almost always start with a strong principal.

And Chenoweth gets into some of those best practices in her book. Among the ones she spotlights is Lockhart Junior High School's emphasis on having a strong curriculum and sticking to it.

The Central Texas school has results to tout: Most all students pass the TAKS and about a third pass at the "commended" level, which reflects they are on a path that would get them ready for college. (One-third may not sound like much, but that figure beats the heck out of a lot of schools.)

The bottom line is that there are different ways for schools to succeed. I need to remember that point.

Dallas Morning News reporter Katherine Leal Unmuth just returned from a Pew Hispanic Center session on Latinos and education. She's blogged about this at her Irving community blog. I'm taking her post and putting it up here for discussion since The Education Front spends a good bit of time discussing this subject.

What are your thoughts about how to deal with the issues she raises?

We had an editorial board meeting yesterday with Jim Wallis of Sojourners Fellowship and representatives from Justice Revival, which is hosting a news conference today in Dallas to announce a November "revival" that its supporters want to deal with poverty issues without getting sidetracked by partisan divides.

Wallis is a liberal evangelical minister in Washington, D.C. who has long edited Sojourners Magazine and, most recently authored books like "God's Politics." Justice Revival is a movement he and others have helped spawn to encourage people of faith to revitalize their communities. The concept is similar to a parish taking responsibility for the surrounding neighborhood.

After a year of work in Dallas with Christians from about 1,000 evangelical, Catholic, Pentecostal and Protestant churches, Wallis and the movement's local leaders will announce a campaign to improve Dallas schools and grow more affordable housing for the homeless.

Both parts are important, but let's talk about the school element.

A fascinating set of allies took to the stage in Philadelphia Tuesday to talk education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Rev. Al Sharpton and former Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared together to promote the goals of raising school standards, providing the best teachers possible and rescuing or closing chronically underperforming schools.

That's right. A former school superintendent, a civil rights activist and a conservative Republican on the same page.

In truth, this is not so unusual. The dirty little secret about the standards movement is that civil rights groups and business leaders long have formed a bulwark against a retreat from high standards and quality teachers. Back in the Bush years, you saw the National Council of La Raza and the Business Roundtable equally in support of No Child's insistence upon classroom rigor.

Now, those allies may quarrel from time to time about exactly where you set the bar for each grade. But they are not the ones you see railing against standards, closing down poor schools or moving aside poor teachers.

Instead, you find another odd alliance of education unions and hard-line conservatives doing much of the carping. They either don't like the feds sticking their hands into schools or they think reformers are putting too much pressure on teachers. (I was encouraged yesterday that NEA president Dennis Van Roekel testified before the House's education committee that he would work with local affiliates to get more high quality teachers into poor schools. This evidently will take some changes in collective bargaining agreements.)

We're probably going to hear more about these alliances in the next few months. The administration is about to start handing out Race to the Top funds to states that raise their standards. And Congress could soon start rewriting the No Child Left Behind Act.

Both will generate controversy, but I feel reassured when I see an odd alliance like Duncan, Sharpton and Gingrich appear together. Maybe we won't see a rapid retreat on standards and getting kids out of poor schools.

Arne Duncan, the education secretary, spoke yesterday to a group of elected Latino officials about the college-going rates of Hispanics. I'm really glad he's bringing attention to this challenge.

The New York Times reported recently that only 16 percent of Latinos ages 25-29 have college degrees. Closer to home, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board warned earlier this year that only five percent of Latinos in Texas are in college. And in our recent report about the gaps between the northern and southern halves of Dallas, we found that only nine percent of residents over 25 in the heart of Oak Cliff, which is overwhelmingly Hispanic, have college degrees.

The most controversial part of this subject involves illegal immigrants. An estimated 2.8 million of them are children. And each year, about 60,000 of them get ready to graduate from high school.
But there's a huge disincentive to go further. If they shoot for college and a degree, they can't get a job because of their immigration status. So, they are stuck.

As my column today explains, the Dream Act is one way to take care of the dead-end phenomenon. The bill was the subject of rallies last week, including one in Austin. I like the proposal for a few reasons:

1. It would let students who came here when they were 15 or younger, and who have been here five years or more, earn a conditional legal status if they have graduated from high school, earned a GED or been accepted into college.

2. They would have six years to either complete two years of a four-year degree, graduate from a community college or vocational school or serve at least two years in the military. If they meet one of those benchmarks, they could start the process of becoming a permanent legal resident.

3. The U.S. would get to keep the talents of those students in our own economy. It would be a shame to send them back home, which many probably lost a connection to long ago.

The bill is unquestionably controversial. But it's one part of the larger answer needed to improve the college-going rates of Latinos.

An AP report over the weekend highlighted that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan would like to see school days extended.

I like this idea. One of the reforms that successful charter schools like KIPP Academy tout is that their students go to school longer each day. KIPP argues that the extended day gives teachers more time to work in-depth with students on a subject.

Longer days, whether at KIPP or elsewhere, also give students more time for electives. You hear people complain about the lack of art, music and even PE because of the focus on math and science and standardized tests. Well, here's a chance to include them in a day that starts at 7:45 and runs until 5.

Now, there is a natural limit to how much students can comprehend in a day. I would hope that a longer day would allow them more time to do homework at school.

And I don't think Washington has any business telling local districts or states that they must have longer days. The locals must make the call, not D.C.

But I hope Obama and Duncan use their pulpits to continue explaining why a longer school day could help students, particularly those from disadvantaged homes where they may not get enough parental support.

I'm also interested to hear from our readers, especially teachers, what they think about a longer day. What do you see as the pros and cons of this reform?

Rick Perry and Kay Hutchison on the same stage? At the same time? And not for their showdown debate before the GOP gubernatorial primary?

Yes, it could happen, if both momentarily put aside their differences to campaign together for the constitutional amendment that would help Texas grow more nationally recognized research universities. They're known as Tier One schools, and Texas now only has three of them: UT, A&M and Rice.

But the Legislature decided this spring to invest in a fund that would help finance more Tier One schools over time. This amendment basically would codify that goal in the state constitution.

Several universities are eager to reach that rank, and we had an impressive array of talent in our editorial offices this week to back the amendment. The presidents or chancellors of Texas Tech, the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of North Texas and the University of Texas at Arlington came in together to urge passage of it.

The fact they were all there highlights how they've overcome their differences to support a common pool of Tier One dollars, instead of trying to get the Legislature to just fund their university's research aspirations. In the past, quibbling over who should get the money has stopped the Legislature from putting more into the Tier One effort.

Along with the university chiefs were James Huffines, head of the UT board of regents, and Bill Hobby, the former lieutenant governor. Huffines had a good line at the end: " I bet you haven't seen so many university presidents in one room at the same time."

He was right, and each of those schools are already working on matching any funds they get from the state to become research powerhouses. The advantage to the state is that "jobs follow brains," as UT-Dallas president David Daniel put it succintly.

Since this amendment is good for the schools and good for the state, here's my thought: Wouldn't it be great if Perry and Hutchison appeared together at an event to support its passage?

They both are strong advocates for education. And Perry already has held one event to spotlight this proposal.

Appearing together, however, would show the rest of the state just how important this proposition is to the state's future. There would be great symbolism to see them put aside their barbs and unite behind Texas.

What do you say Governor Perry and Senator Hutchison? You both love Texas. What about coming together for its good?

We've talked here regularly about how data on students and their classrooms is part of the next big revolution in education. Well, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation has weighed in once again with serious bucks to push along this revolution. (I don't think we should cede support for education to the private sector, but, wow, where would we be without the backing of the Dells and Gateses in public education?)

Specifically, the foundation announced yesterday that it is investing $10 million in a pilot program that will help Texas streamline the collection of data about students and their schools and put it in the same format for all schools to eventually use. Data is often hard to file, says Dell spokesperson Lori Fey, so this will make the collection easier and put it all on a desktop for teachers and principals to access.

There are privacy issues to work out, but I hope they don't get in the way of making detailed data available to educators and parents so they can have instant access to how someone's child is doing in the classroom. The DMN's Tawnell Hobbs and I did a telephone briefing with Fey and others last week, and they walked us through the type of information a school could have on a hypothetical student.

As a parent of schoolchildren, I would love to have access to the level of detail they are proposing, including reporting on the rigor of courses and how much growth students are showing in them. It would help my wife and I know so much more what's going on in the classroom, and what we could do to help our children get past tough spots.

To be sure, big districts like Dallas' and Houston's already have some advanced data systems. But this grant could help take them and the rest of the state to the next level. According to Fey, TEA will get the grant money and districts around the state could use the program for free. In smaller districts, including rural ones, this could be a godsend.

It isn't all up to Dell to get this done. The state needs to cough up $50-$60 million to spread this new data system around the state.

Unfortunately, the Legislature hasn't been too keen on investing in data systems, perhaps because the concept is so foreign-sounding. In this year's session, they ponied up about $4 million to help develop data systems for our schools.

I'm glad for that, but Texas needs to step up. New York and Chicago, for example, are further along in using data about individual students to help teachers.

Now, some stimulus money could be available through the Education Department. I have very serious reservations about the $100 billion the Obama administration is devoting to schools as a way to stimulate the economy. I don't see how that directly stimulates an economy that was brought to it knees by a housing crisis. But the money's there, so I'm glad to hear the Texas Education Agency is going after some of it to develop our data systems.

The mission here is figuring out ways to use technologies to get information to teachers, principals and, let's hope, parents. They then can turn around and use it to take children up to the next level of learning.

Whether it's in math, social studies, English or whatever, following a student's progress could really benefit them. What's so wrong with that?

We spend a lot of time on this blog and in our editorial pages talking about why educating Texas children in science is so important to them getting a good job and to the state's economy keeping up with the ideas-driven global economy.

Today, guest blogger Vikram Savkar will provide a different take on why science matters. He is senior vice president and publishing director for Nature Education. He makes a good point that editorialists like yours truly are guilty of overlooking: Learning about science is good in and of itself.

Here's further proof of the pockets of excellence within the Dallas school district: Dealey Montessori, Peabody Elementary, Hexter Elementary and Townview's School of Health Professions just won the coveted Blue Ribbon award from the U.S. Department of Education. The prize rewards schools that succeed despite big challenges, like facing high levels of poverty.

The Dallas winners were four out of 26 in the state, and four out of 314 across the country. And they won for the progress they showed on meeting the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act.

As with DISD's nationally-recognized high schools, such as Townview's School of Science and Engineering, these Blue Ribbon winners show students can get a good education within the Dallas school district. They have to know how to navigate their way to the better schools, but opportunities are there.

The next huge step is ensuring all neighborhood schools deliver a quality education. That way, students don't have to hope they can find their way into a good school.

I think DISD's taking some steps to get there, such as trying to improve its principal corps. But a big urban school district is a hard beast to tame. I go back and forth, thinking it may be more realistic to think DISD can only achieve pockets of excellence. But then, I think of all those kids who get stuck in poor schools, and how unfair that is to them.

That's when I go back to thinking we in Dallas have no choice. We have to keep pushing for quality schools in every neighborhood. It's cruel to the kids if we don't.

So, hats off to the Blue Ribbon schools. May they inspire others, but we can't afford to stop with pockets of excellence.

Continuing with the theme of Latinos and education, here's a great bit of news: The Aldine school district around Houston just won this year's Broad Prize. That's the award Los Angeles businessman Eli Broad set up to reward the most improved urban school district in America with $1 million in scholarships for its high school seniors who go onto college.

Like Brownsville ISD, which won the award last year, a large percentage of Aldine's students are Latinos. According to reports, Latinos make up 64 percent of Aldine's student body. And they, along with low income kids from other backgrounds, did well in some key areas. For example, Latinos and low-income students beat their peers statewide in 2008 in reading and math.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the judges for the prize liked Aldine's insistence upon classroom rigor, hiring quality teachers and the freedom principals have in their budgeting. You often hear those in the same sentence when experts describe strong school districts. And, of course, the involvement of parents, which one Aldine supporter cited as a reason for the district's progress.

Now, we shouldn't over-interpret these results. The prize is given for most improved urban district. That doesn't mean highest-performing district.

Like Brownsville last year, the state only recognized Aldine as an "acceptable" district, not a "recognized" or "exemplary" one. That could be for several reasons, but the best way to look at the difference between the state's ranking and Aldine's Broad Prize is that Aldine is showing substantial progress but still has a high mountain to climb before it's on a par with suburban districts that do reach the exemplary level.

To some extent, this is like what we have talked here before measuring growth in a student's work versus the student actually mastering a subject. We should be happy with the former, but we really need the latter.

Trust me, I'm not trying to dismiss Aldine's achievement. I think it's great. Next year, I hope Dallas wins that award.

You can read in this column some of what Education Department aide Juan Sepuvelda talked about concerning Latinos in education. He was in Dallas last week as part of the White House's initiative on educational progress for Latinos, which you can read even more about in these reports by Katherine Leal Unmuth and Mercedes Olivera.

I attended one session and the part that really hit me was how movingly some students talked about being the first in their family to take education seriously. They had to make it through high school and onto college without much support at home.

I'm all for tackling the nuts and bolts of education, but, really, until we get parents involved we are going to have a hard time seeing substantial student progress among all students, including Latino students.

Teacher training. Math and science. Longer days. Those all make a difference, but getting parents involved like Tony Tovar has at Sunset has got to be at the top of the list.

As I write this, I feel like I'm embracing mom and apple pie. But the truth is, getting parents involved is hard in many cases. I'm interested in hearing from any educators about how they have been best able to involve parents.

Thoughts?

Juan Sepulveda, who's leading the White House initiative on educational excellence for Latinos, is speaking today in Dallas. I'm going this afternoon to hear him, so I will report next week about what he said.

As readers of the Education Front know, Latinos and education is a theme we've repeatedly discussed here. Last month, we had Dallas principals Tony Tovar and Rawly Sanchez blog about what they thought worked in their largely Latino schools, Adamson and Sunset high schools.

Adamson and Sunset indeed have shown progress. But here's what I worry about: even in schools showing progress, many students are far from being ready for college.

I've spent some time recently crunching numbers about how many students in the southern half of our city actually pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills at the "commended level." That's the bar that tells educators whether their students are on a track that will lead to college.

Sadly, the numbers are atrocious. In some schools, you will see as few as 7-10 percent of the students hitting the commended level in math, writing or reading. Other times, you will see only about 25 percent of them hitting that bar. Almost always, fewer than half meet it.

This really worries me, because no matter how hard some of our principals, teachers and students are trying, many schools that serve largely Latino students are far from getting kids ready for college.

I love, though, that the Obama administration is focusing on this problem. To me, closing the achievement gap between Latinos and Anglos is the biggest domestic challenge the country faces.

Editor's Note: After Ted Kennedy's death, The Education Front asked former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to share her recollections about working with the late senator on No Child Left Behind and other issues. Below is her response:

When I moved to Washington D.C. in late 2000 to become President Bush's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, my first assignment was to work with Congress to enact the No Child Left Behind Act that the President had championed on the campaign trail. This law was unique in that it represented an approach far different from most Republicans in Washington who had called repeatedly for the abolition of the US Department of Education. Bush had worked with tenacity on education in Texas and focused especially on the needs of poor and minority students.

In that work he and Ted Kennedy found common cause. They both believed passionately in the opportunity that education can and must provide to all our children and they worked together to finally fulfill that promise through the accountability approach embodied in No Child Left Behind.

During the development of this law I had the wonderful opportunity to work with and get to know Senator Ted Kennedy. I arrived in Washington with all sorts of ideas about what Ted Kennedy must be like, but what I found was just the opposite. As has been said by so many, Kennedy was kind, smart, knowledgeable, and respectful. He was a master teacher to all those lucky enough to work around him.

I'll concede the conservatives' argument, that we don't know what speech President Obama planned on giving to school students before the furor over the speech broke last week. But I also would challenge conservatives to explain what was wrong about his address.

From my perspective, it was a marvelous talk about doing your part in the classroom, identifying your strengths, raising your expectations, not quitting on your country and yourself and writing your own destiny.

He made it clear that parents and teachers can do their part, that governments and school boards can try to create good schools and that classroom standards can be raised. But all those only go so far, because it is ultimately up to each student to determine whether they receive a good education.

And, as he issued that challenge, he tried to inspire students by citing his own example of getting up at 4:30 in the morning with his mom to learn his lessons better. He noted his own failures as a teenager and those of others who didn't succeed at first. But he then pressed them to keep working on developing their own gifts, that he expected as much from them.

Personal responsibility. Identify your talents. Don't quit.

What's so wrong with those? I wouldn't mind him giving that speech every day to students.

Join us here later this morning for a discussion about President Obama's much-noted speech to students. He delivers it at 11 am. CST on C-Span, I believe.

The AP reported last week that the University of Texas at Austin was pulling out of a program that gives National Merit Scholars money to attend the state's flagship university. This naturally looks bizarre, given that the state's economy increasingly depends upon ramping up the state's universities and their intellectual capital.

I got on the phone Friday with UT and talked with Tom Melecki, the school's director of student financial services. My takeaway is that this is bad because it could lead to a brain-drain away from UT. But it is not as bad as it looks. It depends upon how much UT tries to get National Merit Scholars other scholarship dollars.

Here's what I'm talking about:

1. The school indeed is shifting money away from National Merit Scholars and putting the same bucks into aid for needy students. That won't start until the 2009-2010 entering class, so no existing scholar will be affected. Still, UT, which has as many National Merit Scholars as any university except Harvard, risks driving away top-rung students.

2. National Merit Scholars still can get scholarship aid in the future. They will compete against other students, whether in a need-based pool or through some other public or private scholarship that UT candidates can tap into. Melecki said they would likely be a strong candidate for money from one of those funds.

3. UT is not alone. Melecki reports that Berkeley, Michigan, the University of Virginia and UCLA do not give National Merit Scholars automatic money. (A&M, Tech, OU, SMU and TCU do.)

4. The shift away from National Merit Scholars is a function of the bad economy. Melecki stressed that the demand for need-based aid is increasing. And the economy is playing a role in the growing need.

Once the economy improves, who knows? Maybe UT reinstitutes the program. I'm not saying that absolutely will happen, but it could.

5. If the state continues to pick up its funding of the needs-based TEXAS Grant program, and the feds keep putting more dough into Pell Grants, UT would have more money available for need-based scholarship. That could help the school return to automatically funding National Merit Scholars.

Don't get me wrong. I hate this, but it's also a function of the world in which we live. The economy's bad, more people need help and there isn't enough public aid to go around. Whether this turns into a calamity for UT and even the state depends upon how hard UT officials work to get National Merit Scholars help from other pools of financial aid.

I don't get this resistance to President Obama speaking to students across the country on Tuesday. And I don't get it for several reasons:

1. He is the president of the United States. I would hope that we as parents would think it's important to teach children to respect our leader, even if we didn't vote for him, which I did not. For parents to want to yank their kids out of class because he is speaking makes me think back to when Dick Armey hinted that he didn't think Bill Clinton was his president. Do we want to extend the red state/blue state divide into the classroom?

2. This is a chance for students to form a unique connection with their president and the presidency. Who knows how many of them will remember this when they are grown-ups, recalling this moment as one of their first impressions of the president of the United States? This will sound ancient, but I vividly remember JFK in the pages of the Weekly Reader. That isn't why I got interested in politics, but his presence in the pages of my newspaper made the president seem more human.

3. If I understand it correctly, Obama will speak about the need for kids to stay in school. What's so wrong with that? It isn't like he's going to deliver some stealth message about voting Democratic. He's going to challenge kids to stick with their classes and benefit from what a good education can provide.

4. Being an African-American, Obama can speak directly to black youths about those benefits. Black and Latino dropout rates are disturbingly high, so a minority leader can deliver a message about education that an Anglo leader perhaps cannot. Again, I didn't vote for him because of fiscal reasons, but I think this is one of the real advantages of having Obama as president. John McCain could never have connected with minority students the way Obama should be able to on Tuesday.

The Texas Education Agency announced last week that significantly more Texas students earned higher scores on their Advanced Placement tests in the 2008-2009 school year than over the previous year. Citing College Board data, TEA says that scores of 3 or higher on the tests went up by nine percent for Texas' public school students. (Three, four and five are the top scores on AP exams.)

The data also was good for minority students in Texas' public schools. The percentage of African-Americans scoring three or higher went up 17.3 percent. The percentage of Latinos hitting that mark went up 16 percent.

Educators also look at how many students take AP tests and how many AP tests actually are given. (Students can take AP classes in more than one subject.) That data is one more sign of a school's focus on college readiness, or the lack thereof.

Here, too, there were encouraging signs. According to the TEA, the number of Texas students taking AP tests went up 8 percent and the number of exams given went up 6.4 percent.

AP courses are supposed to be more rigorous and designed to get students ready for college, so this data is one more indication that at least some Texas kids are both aiming for and preparing for college.

I say "at least" because we've talked here before how the state has plenty to worry about when it comes to getting kids ready for college. Either too many kids need remedial work when they get to college, or too few high schoolers are scoring high enough on the annual TAKS test to show they have mastered their subjects.

TEA chief Robert Scott was very candid about this duality in a telephone interview last week. I touch upon what so much conflicting data means in this column about keeping our eyes on the big picture.

The way I see it, Texas schools are both advancing and stalling at the same time. That may be like life, but that can't become our excuse. We need to keep getting more kids ready for college or community college, so they have a shot at good jobs.

I'll stop here and not start sermonizing. Let's celebrate the AP results -- and push for more next year.

There's probably not a better example of Ted Kennedy's skills as a legislator than his work on No Child Left Behind, the law that Sen. Kennedy, Democratic Rep. George Miller, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg and GOP Rep. John Boehner worked on with the Bush administration in 2001.

Recall the context of those times. President Bush had won reelection after the nightmarish Florida recount and Supreme Court decision and many Democrats wanted nothing to do with him. The president nevertheless extended his right hand to Democrats, and one who took it was the biggest Democrat of all, Ted Kennedy. He came to dinner with the Bushes, watched a movie at the White House and generally started to work with Bush on reforming federal education law.

Throughout 2001, while Bush was getting hammered by many Democrats for pursuing tax cuts, Kennedy kept working on a center-out strategy with the White House and the Hill on education reform. Through painstaking negotiations, the foursome worked with Bush domestic advisers Margaret Spellings and Sandy Kress on the legislation.

What I loved was the political approach of that bill: It didn't start as conservatives trying to get liberals to sign on, or liberals trying to get conservatives to sign on. It instead started with both sides meeting in the middle and figuring out a way to produce a bill they both could support.

And they had to ignore critics in their own parties to get it done. The education unions didn't like it on the Democratic side, and numerous conservative Republicans thought the feds had no business pressing local schools.

In the end, the bipartisan work set in statute this very important goal: We as a nation believe all children are capable of learning at grade level, we will give them resources to do that and we will measure them to make sure they are moving toward that learning at grade level.

Sure, No Child still draws ample criticism. And even Sen. Kennedy later sharply criticized the administration for not putting enough money into No Child. But he never backed off the fundamental principle that all children can learn and that we should hold schools accountable for seeing that they do.

What's more, he was talking with Spellings late into the second Bush term about rewriting No Child. For a number of reasons, that didn't happen. But Kennedy kept to his beliefs that this law was important for schools.

As I said at the outset, his work on No Child particularly reflected his skills as a legislator. He had his principles, took heat for them and fought for them. But he also was a tactician, so he negotiated for the best means to achieve his goals.

We can only hope enough senators recall that lesson the next time talks start getting serious about rewriting No Child.

Tomorrow, our new guest blogger Tom Luce will post an entry about math and science education. Tom's passion for education goes back at least to the mid-1980s, when he was involved in getting the Legislature to improve Texas schools. Along with Ross Perot, the Dallas attorney worked with Austin to lower class sizes and pass the famous no pass/no play rule concerning athletics.

Tom also has been involved in Texas' school finance discussions for the last 20 years. And he served as assistant secretary of education under Education Secretary Margaret Spellings in George W. Bush's administration.

He now leads the National Math and Science Initiative, the aim of which is to improve math and science education across the country. He will present some findings on that front, so read and chime in. I'm particularly interested in hearing from educators about how they think Texas and the nation can make math and science interesting to students.

In the last few weeks, we've seen informative, but worrisome stories about how many Texas students require remedial classes at college and how few Dallas students actually master their subjects. At the same time, there have been reports about Texas showing sustained improvement in getting kids ready for college.

Conflicting data like this can be quite bewildering. But think of it this way:

Imagine you are taking off on an airplane flight. Your plane is going up, but you are hitting some air pockets along the way. You're glad to be going in the right direction, but things are choppy.

Let's deal with the climbing part first.

With school starting next week, I'm going to take a step back from a heavy-duty policy discussion and talk about the common sense things that make a difference in a school's life. We spend a lot of time here debating such topics as schools using data to improve student learning, but something as simple as a parent or parents being involved in their child's education can make the biggest difference.

That was one of the points Sunset High principal Tony Tovar made in his guest blog entries about his North Oak Cliff school's progress. And he's right: Sunset has a huge parent buy-in, in part because Sunset has a dynamite community liaison.

Certainly many other schools have active community liaisons. They call parents, knock on their doors and all but chase them down in the parking lot.

But parents need to take the first step.

Kay Bailey Hutchison is off and running for governor, and one of the priorities the Republican ticked off yesterday in her announcement speech was Texas' sky-high tuition costs.

That line clearly resonates with parents and students who are heading back to college this month. Financing the bill each semester can be -- and often is --- tricky. (By contrast, when I attended the University of Texas in the middle 1970s, tuition for a 15-hour semester was about $225. What a steal that was.)

As much as complaining about tuition rates is a sure-fire applause generator, finding the right answer is much harder. The Legislature tried this year. Some wanted to take away the ability of universities to set their own rates. Others wanted to limit rate hikes to inflation. Basically, not a lot passed.

I think we're better off letting campuses set their own rates, and then putting some restrictions around that right. Here are a few reasons:

It has been a privilege to be the principal at Sunset High School for the last three years. This year I begin my 32nd year with the DISD.

I actually have been with this district for 44 years if you count my years as a student. I am a 1974 Graduate of Samuell High School. I spent the first 22 years as a coach and teacher. Three yeas at Wilson, three at White, and 16 at Skyline.

Becoming a principal was something I wanted to do, ever since I was in the 5th grade at John Ireland Elementary School. I also spent three years as an assistant principal at Adamson, three at Molina, and now entering my fourth year as principal at Sunset High School.

The question I am asked to answer is: why and how did Sunset move up from an Academically Acceptable school, to one that is Recognized?

Holly Hacker's story Sunday about Texas high schoolers not being ready for college once they're admitted was certainly a depressing tale. But it is not a new one to college deans, professors and parents. Remedial education has become commonplace. And it's something that goes on across all sorts of demographic profiles, as Holly's story indicates.

This week, we are introducing a new set of guest bloggers. I have asked Rawly Sanchez, DISD's deputy chief of staff and former principal at Adamson High School in Dallas, and Tony Tovar, the principal of Sunset High School in Dallas, to participate. Due to their school duties, they can't blog the entire month. They instead will post entries this week and perhaps next.

I selected them because their North Oak Cliff high schools have moved up significantly in the state's annual high school rankings. Adamson jumped from being ranked "unacceptable" two years ago to earning a "recognized" ranking this year.

That's a remarkable step given the challenges Adamson faces in educating many students who are not proficient in English. You may recall the series we did in June 2008 on Adamson and the reality it represents for many Texas schools.

Likewise, Sunset moved up this year. It went from "acceptable" to "recognized." Also like Adamson, Sunset's student body is largely Latino, and its progress has been cited in many places, including in this column and a cover story in the Observer.

I've asked each of these educators to comment about the approaches that have worked in their schools. My thinking is that perhaps their strategies can be used elsewhere, especially at campuses with numerous Latino students.

As I've written here before, I think the state's greatest challenge is creating better educational opportunities for Hispanic students, who make up about half the Texas student body. Along with the state doing its share, parents and educators need to work together to get more Hispanic students graduating from high school and college. The state's progress is increasingly linked to its growing Hispanic population, so I'm excited about hearing from these two educators.

Before they debut, a reminder about this blog's policies: We debate ideas, policies and strategies, but we don't attack people. If comments turn personal, they will come down.

Of course, I hope we don't have to get to that point. This topic is big enough for discussion without it having to turn personal. So, chime in and let's have a robust, respectful exchange.

Last week, we talked about how to get more Latinos into college. Well, here's one more thought: Enroll more high school grads in summer school programs that prepare them for college.

Dallas Democratic State Rep. Helen Giddings is a big champion of this concept, which would apply to more than Latinos. It would apply to any Texas students who come from a background where college was not part of the equation.

Here's one more conundrum for Texas: More Hispanics are going to college than ever before, but the increase in the numbers doesn't keep pace with the larger growth in Texas' Latino population.

That's the conclusion of a report by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. And I talked yesterday to Raymund Paredes, the commissioner of the board, about the situation. Here are the highlights:

Robert Scott has gotten beat up since he suggested last week that employers shouldn't hire Texas dropouts. Texas' education commissioner wasn't asking for a state law to ban the practice, but rather for businesses to voluntarily stop the hirings.

Texas Association of Business president Bill Hammond, in so many words, told Scott to stay out of business's business. And others have gone after him for proposing an unenforceable system. (Our story on his proposal has already drawn more than 140 comments.)

Scott says he was merely trying to uphold the law. In a telephone conversation I had with him yesterday, he cited a federal law that says businesses can't hire someone under age 14 and a state law that says teens must be in school at ages 16 and 17.

On the technicalities, it's hard to argue against him. But, as much as I hate seeing kids drop out, there's a larger point here. And that is teens who drop out and who aren't under 14 deserve a chance to put food on their table. In reality, they could be putting food on their families' table. They couldn't do that if no one hires them. There's also this reality: A job could keep them off the street and the dole.

Scott, however, says he has another point to make, and this one makes sense.

He wants businesses to work with dropout employees to enroll them in a flex-time school. That could be done through either the school district or a charter school. And it could entail businesses developing a serious partnership with the local charters and district to employers simply putting information about school options at the time clock or somewhere that young dropouts can see the material.

According to Scott, Houston already has a program that educates employers about helping dropouts. Why don't chambers of commerce across the state start doing something like this? It sounds like a better option than trying to get employers to stop hiring dropouts.

Here's the most important decision facing Texas that you've never heard of:

The call that Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott must make to determine how much a student must "grow" each year in a subject like reading or math. The state's employing a new way of measuring students, one that looks at how much value a school adds to a student's knowledge of a subject over a year's time. That growth will factor into the state's annual ranking of a school.

You already may have read about this new method, known as the Texas Projection Measure. The state used it this year, along with student scores on the annual TAKS test, to determine a school's ranking. As Holly Hacker reported earlier this week, quite a few schools saw a boost in their standing because of the growth they've added to a student's learning even though the student didn't pass the exam.

And there's the conundrum. It's a challenge for teachers to take some students each year who have little parental support, don't understand English or have minimal pre-school education. Factors like those can put any child behind at the start of a year. There's a certain logic to judging a teacher and his or her school by how far they get a child to progress over the next nine months.

But how much progress? That's the key issue. And that's the decision Scott has to get right.

Encouragingly, he said last week about the new projection measure:

" I know there has been some concern, and I share that concern. It is going to help schools in their ratings. But I don't want it to help too much, and I don't want to create a false impression of excellence when the performance is not there."

Amen.

We don't need fuzzy math, as has been said in the past about less-than-accurate federal deficit projections. The state needs a standard that judges considerable growth, not minimal growth. At some point, students need to pass the state's achievement exam. They won't be able to do that if they are only growing slightly each year. And if they can't pass the achievement exam, they can't make it out of high school. And if they can't make it out of high school, oh, well, you know the rest of that story, the one that ends up in kids being sunk -- and the state along with them.

Most of us haven't heard about Scott's impending decision because determining the right way to measure growth is complicated. But this part isn't complicated: Measuring growth can't become a substitute for kids becoming proficient in a subject.

Holly Hacker, Tawnell Hobbs, Terry Stutz and our education team reported last week how the state is using a new standard for counting dropouts. For example, students who enroll in GED classes but who don't have a GED degree now count as dropouts. Before, they were not included in dropout data.

Texas' tougher definition of dropouts stems in part from the nation's governors deciding a few years ago to create a common definition of a dropout. Then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings put her weight behind the effort and it led to a more reliable way of seeing how many students actually exit without a degree.

The National Governors Association reported last week that most states are on the path to using this standard by 2011. That's good. We won't be using funny numbers any more.

Of course, this tougher standard will cost schools. As Hacker and others reported, Texas saw the number of lower-performing high schools increase.

The low-performing ranking will deflate spirits in some schools and districts, but I'd rather have that than a rosy scenario, any day.

In Arne Duncan's speech this week to the National Council of La Raza, the education secretary did a good job highlighting the need to improve high school and college graduation rates for Latinos.

I think this is the second greatest challenge facing the country, behind getting the international religion-and-politics equation right so we don't blow each other up. I was glad to see Duncan take this issue on directly, and he raised a point at the end of his speech that I hadn't thought about: The nation needs more Latino teachers.

Here's the latest in the data revolution, which we've been talking about here the last few weeks as the next Big Thing in education. This proposal isn't something officials at the Texas Education Agency should turn their nose up at either.

Since we're on the subject this week of educational innovation, like looking at Denver's data reforms, I'd love to get readers' impression of New York's School of One summer school experiment. I particularly would like to hear what educators say.

I like that New York is trying a new model, this one based on computers/problem-solving/competition. I also appreciate what NYC Superintendent Joel Klein says:

The model we are using throughout the United States in kindergarten to 12th-grade education is fundamentally the same as it was 100 years ago.

I confess, though, that I have a bias towards books and, yes, some kind of lecturing. But I'm not in the classroom, so I don't know what teaching methods work best.

What's your take about this experiment? Is this the way to go? If not, why not?

Data, as we have been discussing here in previous entries, is part of the Next Big Thing in education. This piece from the conservative Manhattan Institute shows that the passion for using data to help teachers improve student learning stretches across the ideological spectrum. The author essentially praises Secretary of Education Arne Duncan for his emphasis on getting more real-time data into the classroom.

The most interesting data initiative I've read about lately comes from Denver. While in vacation in Colorado earlier this month, I read a Denver Post story about how Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper wants a big-time data system that will allow schools to tap into all sorts of information about students. He believes the comprehensive data, which also would come from non-school organizations, will better help teachers understand their students' needs.

Yesterday, I took down every comment that was posted after I asked participants on Friday to debate the topic at hand in the entry about whether the mayor should take over Dallas schools. The discussion had degenerated into personal barbs and attacks, and I had hoped my reminder would put an end to that. It didn't. So, I took down all remaining posts because the general nature of the discussion had turned sour.

In the future, I will take down all other comments under any entry that turn personal. As I said at the beginning of this blog, The Education Front is about having a lively, robust exchange about education policies. We have largely been able to do that, and I believe we can continue to do. But when exchanges get personal, they will come down.

The blogosphere is a microcosm of our larger democratic experiment. And I believe we need to practice here what that larger experiment needs: the ability to remain civil while agreeing and disagreeing.

I hope you share that vision. If not, there are other places in the blogosphere for you. For everyone else, let's get back to the mission at hand.

NYT columnist David Brooks made some strong points in favor of community colleges in praising President Obama's plan to invest $12 billion into schools like the Dallas County Community College District. I haven't had time to study this proposal, so I'm not here to say pass it.

However, I do think community colleges are an under-appreciated part of our educational chain. Increasingly, they take students who want college but can't afford four years right out of high school or who don't have the grades to get into their college of choice. And, for a long time, they have taken workers who want to go back and update their skills. In our economy, that's really important.

So, here's my question: Would you invest $12 billion in community colleges, even if it adds to the $10 trillion debt?

We had Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa in for an ed board meeting Tuesday. He brought along the district's new chief financial officer, Larry Throm.

I'm pretty sure this was the first time Dr. Hinojosa had been in since the "great unpleasantness." You know, the budget overrun last year that ended up costing teachers their jobs during the school year.

Hinojosa pointed out a number of the academic improvements in the district, which indeed there have been. For all the bad headlines about its financial management, Dallas' school district keeps progressing.

Don't envy Gail Lowe.

Rick Perry's selection as the latest head of the State Board of Education must lead a board split between social conservatives on one side and moderate conservatives and a few minority Democrats on the other. Finding common ground has never been the board's strong suit, and the struggle really has little to do with party lines.

Skirmishes between the sides over teaching creationism and defining reading standards have been among the latest meltdowns. The board's contentious fights have been such a problem that the Legislature usually looks for ways to take some powers away from the board. This year, the Senate even refused to reconfirm Don McLeroy, one of the social conservatives, as head of the 15-member elected body.

Hence, Ms. Lowe's selection. While I would have preferred he picked someone from the moderate-conservative/minority Democrat side of the board, I fully expected Gov. Perry to select someone from the social conservative side. And it appears he has picked one of the least objectionable members of that faction. Interestingly, Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican member of the moderate conservative/minority Democrat side, had favorable things to say about Ms. Lowe, including praising her for her intelligence and preparation.

I don't see what the Obama administration's big pot of stimulus money for schools has to do with creating jobs and revving up the economy in the short-term. But the money's being spent, so I would rather see it go to good use than bad use.

That's why I'm glad the administration's trying to find the best way to deliver remedial education. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's using part of his big pot of money to improve remedial work, which community colleges and four-year schools spend a lot of time providing.

Folks, we're introducing a new feature to The Education Front today, and that is three guest bloggers.

Sandy Kress, former DISD board chairman, Melody Townsel, an active DISD parent, and Paul Sadler, former head of the Texas House Public Education Committee, will be blogging for the next 30 days as our first guest bloggers. They will post entries straight to the blog, just as I do each week.

Before anyone has a chance to say, Hey, what about me?, we will have a new round of guest blogging in August, September and so on. We will incorporate guest bloggers as a regular part of The Education Front.

As always, we want a spirited exchange about education policies. What we don't want are personal, derogatory or profane comments. We believe that it's possible to have a good back-and-forth without that.

So, welcome to Melody (who's already posted), Sandy and Paul. I'm off for the next two weeks, but will report back to duty after that. Meanwhile, keep the debate going!

I wish those in our fair state who think we're at risk of putting too much pressure on kids, especially poor kids, to get ready for college could have been with me yesterday. Ditto for those who think the premium of a college education is way overblown.

I wish they could have heard Monica Washington, a Texarkana high school teacher. Or Ron Rossingh, an Odessa Permian 10th grader. Along with students from Richardson and the Valley who addressed a gathering of teachers and students yesterday in Dallas, these were some of the most determined people I have ever seen. They not only are dreaming big, they have the determination to realize their dreams.

Let's look at this Supreme Court ruling from Monday that tells school districts like Dallas' that they must pay for all special education students' private schooling if the districts don't provide an adequate public alternative.

The case is worth looking at for no other reason than Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito formed a majority with three left-of-center members of the court: John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. It isn't everyday that you see that kind of alliance on a major case.
Nor do you see the left-of-center David Souter bolt to join with, migosh, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in the dissent. How can you ignore a case with that kind of lineup?

My gut tells me the court made the right decision, although this could cost districts a boatload of money. And that worries me, especially given how tight finances are in this economy.

Rick Perry's positions on education issues this session perfectly captures the challenge Kay Hutchison faces in a primary against her fellow Republican. He took some forward-looking stands that will make it hard for her to make him out as a disaster. And he has taken some odd positions that continue to make people wonder, what's the deal?

The governor's office won't confirm or deny it yet, but several reliable sources, including the Austin Statesman, report that Gov. Perry has vetoed HB 130, the pre-K bill. What a loss for Texas.

GOP Dan Patrick has now responded to my post about charters and to Lon Burnam's earlier comments to my entry.

HERE ARE BURNAM'S COMMENTS:

Thank you, Bill, for the email invitation to respond to your posting. My comments about charter schools were taken completely out of context from a twitter posting by Senator Patrick and have not been accurately reflected in the media.

There are several misunderstandings about what the final bill did. Like most bills, this one contained both good and bad provisions. You wrote about the good, but omit the bad. Specifically, the bill would have rolled back years of progress mainstreaming students with special needs by creating new charter schools ambiguously defined to "primarily serve students with disabilities." The bill also allowed charter schools to expand without prior approval by the State Board of Education. Also, the House Public Education Committee made important changes to the bill that were not included in the final version, such as a reasonable cap on charters.

I support prudent experimentation with private sector participation in public education as well as better regulation of charter schools, but this legislation was a blank check for continued diversion of public sector dollars for private purposes and profit.

HERE ARE PATRICK'S COMMENTS:

The killing of my bill on charter schools was one of the real tragedies of this session. Let me explain.

42% of students in charter schools are drop out or at risk students. These schools are often the last chance to save these kids. Other charters offer an opportunity for gifted and talented students, or those who need a extra push, to have a school that meets their needs. Charter schools, promoted by President Obama, are not the only answer to helping fix certain problems in our education system, but they are part of the solution.

My bill was passed by the Senate 31-0. I had the help of Democrat Royce West and Democrat Leticia Van De Putte in crafting this legislation. Both made valuable contributions to this bill. Senator West helped craft language that would require at least two charters be established for students with special education needs and austism. This was one of the most important parts of the bill.

The bill would have given the education commissioner the ability to close bad charters. Like anything else in life, there are problems with a few charters. We estimate 10% should be shut down. This bill would have given the commissioner new powers to do so.

This bill also passed through the House conference committee and had input from House members as well. This was a good bill. People ask us all the time why Republicans and Democrats cannot work together. On this bill we did. I'm proud of the contribution everyone made to this bill.

Rep. Burnam says I misquoted him in my twitter saying he killed this bill because he hates charters. I took that quote from a newspaper. Secondly that is exactly what he told me on the House floor.

He says that this bill would allow charters without going through a formal process. That is correct, but only for charters that had already passed through the system once, and had their schools at acceptable levels as measured by the TEA. And even in those cases the commissioner could deny those added schools.

Rep. Burnam says this bill would have ended mainlining of students with special needs. That is an out and out lie. Two charters a year for special needs children would not stop mainstreaming in our state. Secondly, ask any parent with an autistic child if our public schools can eduate their children and most will tell you no.

As vice chairman of the education committee in the Senate, I and others heard heart breaking testimony from parents with children with autism. They need help. It is not the public school's fault that they do not have the trained teachers or facilities to help these children in all cases. Some do a fine job. But there is a need. Sen. West had the courage to work with me on this solution.

This bill was killed out of meaness by Rep Burnam. He said it and now he is trying to take back his words. Killing this bill on a minor clerical point of order is not only disgraceful, it is symbolic of a problem in our Legislature.

In the House, the rules are such that any member can set themself up as if they were elected statewide. Any member can kill -- in effect, veto -- a bill before it ever gets voted on by the membership. We have similar opportunities in the Senate, but when a bill has the support of the overwhelming majority of the Senate, and is in the best interests of the people of Texas, we do not kill bills on minor points of order.

This bill would have likely passed the House with over 100 votes, maybe more. We'll never know. After almost a year of work that started before session, after a wonderful example of bi-partisan work, after passing the Senate 31-0, and getting through the House conference committee, a handful of House members, led by Rep. Burnam killed the bill for personal vindictive reasons. Rep. Jim Dunnam, of Waco, also told me if Lon had not called a point of order, he would have because he hates charters too. I asked Rep Dunnam if he had even read the bill and he said no.

The people of Texas demand and deserve better. No one in the House or Senate should have the power to kill a bill, that the overwhelming majority support, and the people want, out of sheer meaness or pettiness.

If the people of Rep. Burnam's district knew how he acted in this case, or if Rep. Dunnam's district did, I don't think they would approve. Children in their districts were hurt by their actions. We have 130,000 students in charter school in Texas, with another 16,000 plus on the waiting list. Thanks to the action of these two representatives, children and parents in our state will be hurt.

It is my hope the wise people of Rep. Burnam's district will speak to him on this issue. Maybe it is time for that district to send someone who is mature and responsible to the House to represent not only their district, but our great state. All of us in office have a duty and responsibility to act on behalf of the people and not behave as Rep. Burnam did on this very important issue.

(If you want to contact me on this issue with your opinion I look forward to your comments here or on my facebook site.)

If you're wondering how The Education Front came about, or any of the other new Opinion blogs our editorial staff recently created, read editorial page editor Keven Willey's explanatory column here. And, of course, please join us daily.

Gov. Rick Perry has only a few days left to sign HB 130, the proposal that would expand pre-K offerings across Texas. Some conservatives reportedly don't like it, but I hope he signs it for these reasons:

1.The legislation would not require students to enroll in pre-K classes, but it would help more districts offer the option.

2.A Bush School of Government study has shown that a dollar invested in pre-K classes yields $3.50 in returns.

3.The bill is not a budget buster. The budget provided about $25 million for this effort. Eventually, we need more money to make this work, but the fiscal restraint crowd won out. Perry should like that.

4.Latinos are the largest population group under age 5 in Texas. Latinos also are the ones who often lack the means to enroll their kids in a private pre-K class. Bottom line: The state could help its largest share of young children by offering more public pre-K classes for eligible families.

5.Kids start falling behind as early as pre-school. If they start first grade trailing their peers, they may struggle for a long time to make up the learning gaps.

6.Learning deficits are an especially pertinent problem for children who aren't proficient in English. A good pre-K school gets them on the road to learning in English.

I sure don't see pre-K classes as a cure-all. But kids who lack them are increasingly at a disadvantage. And we as a state will suffer if they enter school behind and stay behind. That only perpetuates the cycle of unprepared workers.

Here's hoping Perry signs HB 130, which Arlington GOP Rep. Diane Patrick passed with strong bipartisan support.

The case for national school standards has received a boost in the last few days. You may recall that we talked here last week about what will go into the next phase of the standards movement, and evidently some feel like they can make national standards the lead piece.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave a speech Sunday in which he urged states to come together in forming a unified set of standards. In fact, he just didn't talk about it. He promised federal money to entice states to participate in the project.

A few weeks before his speech, a Big Think group involving the Gates Foundation and others got in on the national standards debate. The panel thought it should be the top goal for education stimulus spending. The members proposed that organizations like the National Governors Association come together to create a model set of national standards.

National standards are a bit like Obama's push for a government-run health plan. I can see the case, but I don't know how we get there.

One of the oddities at the end of this year's Legislature was the death of the session's charter school reform bill.

GOP Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston was the author of the legislation and his Republican colleague Florence Shapiro of Plano supported him on it. But Fort Worth Democratic Rep. Lon Burnam got up on the Sunday evening before the session ended and struck down the bill on a point of order. According to the Quorum Report, Burnam killed it because "This is a massive charter school expansion bil. I hate charter schools. I'm going to kill this bill."

The legislation, which already had been approved by a House/Senate conference committee, would have allowed the state to open 12 new charters a year. Equally important, it would created an easier way for the state to shut down failing charters. (The Texas Education Agency has the power to deal with them, but lawsuits get filed, and not much ever happens. The Patrick bill, like Shapiro's bill from 2007, would have made it simpler to close down bad charters.)

This is one fascinating story about A&M's president stepping down after only a short while on the job. I don't know anything more than what's contained in this good report about A&M's goings on by Holly Hacker in our paper today. But there must be some riveting behind-the-scenes moves.

Michael Landauer, our resident A&M grad on the editorial board, has some thoughts on her exit on the Opinion blog. If I find out more, I will report back.

Meanwhile, your take?

Education Front readers will recognize Sandy Kress as a regular commenter on our blog. The former Dallas school board president also is involved in a national discussion about the role of standards in improving schools.

He and former Bush 41 education adviser Diane Ravitch have traded online essays at Education Week's website, where Ravitch questions whether the standards movement, whose values are well captured in the No Child Left Behind Act, has made any difference. She cites data to back her claim.

Kress fired back this week arguing against the data she uses to denounce No Child. His point, which I share, is that students have shown real progress since the standards movement started about 20 years ago. In some cases, they have shown a whole year's gain in subjects.

Holly Hacker had a good explanatory piece on the outcome of the Legislature's revision of the 10 percent rule, the law that grants students who finish in the top 10 percent of their high school classes automatic admission to most Texas universities. As has been mentioned here before, and in our editorials, the 10 percent rule has been a good way to expand minority enrollment at Texas schools. It also has helped rural students get into the University of Texas and other colleges.

But the rule has put the UT in a real bind. The school's popular with leading high school grads, so its entering classes are becoming almost completely 10 percent grads. The school has little flexibility in rounding out its student body.

That's why our editorials during this session urged the Legislature to cap the number of top 10 percent grads in a freshman class. We preferred a figure somewhere between 50 percent to 60 percent of a freshman class, which is what the Senate basically ended up with in its bill.

The House, however, took a much different approach. It put a cap on only UT's 10 percent admissions, and the cap was set at only 75 percent of the school's freshman class.

The sponsor of the House bill, GOP Rep. Dan Branch of Dallas, certainly faced a different set of politics in the House. He argues that there weren't enough votes for a cap of 60 percent or so at most universities.

Okay, but this really isn't much reform. As Holly's piece explains, UT will be letting in top nine percenters instead of top 10 percenters. That's not much change.

The real answer is to grow more top universities, which Branch and others made headway in this session in doing. But it's going to be several years before we get more schools that qualify as Tier One research institutions.

Until then, UT and perhaps other schools still are going to face a problem with the 10 percent rule. What's going to happen in the meantime?

I was talking to a lawyer friend yesterday who observed that more businesses are likely to start moving offshore with taxes and regulations expanding under President Obama. At the same time, he said, some companies in New York and California may think more seriously about moving to Texas.

While Texas would face the same tax/regulatory issues under Obama, the state has no income tax and it has a fairly friendly attitude towards business. Indeed, Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed said Texas should use this moment to gather up more companies to come here.

Our good fortune, however, presents a conundrum. While Texas has no income tax, it also struggles with a way to pay for its schools. And, along with low taxes, businesses look to see whether a state has good schools.

The challenge to pay for schools, by the way, also is getting harder. Facing a court order, legislators a few years ago finally reformed the state's business tax. It, along with higher cigarette taxes, became the primary way the state pays for its share of school spending.

But a rear-guard action was launched against the business tax this year. Gov. Rick Perry helped lead the charge during the session. He wanted to go out and tell GOP primary voters that he lowered business taxes in a recession. Never mind that lower business taxes mean less of a revenue stream for schools. Austin went along and exempted businesses whose annual gross receipts total a million bucks or less.

The Legislature will make up the difference for the next two years, but what about after that? I don't know. We could be facing a constant hole in school funding.

One of the options, of course, is creating an income tax. I've been open to it in the past, and I guess I still am. But I am getting more and more reluctant to go that route, precisely for the reason my lawyer friend outlined. I don't want to see Texas become California and New York.

In fact, one of the exciting elements of living here is seeing if Texas can prepare for the future without turning into California. Can our low-tax, low-regulation model be amended enough that we can take care of growing needs, like funding schools adequately, without giving into California-creep?

This is a balancing act. We can't afford to not invest in our state. We have too many needs, whether that's for roads, water or schools. Yet we can't tax ourselves so heavily that we become a less attractive place to live.

True, no one's talking about an income tax these days, not with a governor's race coming. But it's one of those issues that will remain on the back burner as long as we struggle to finance the state's needs. That puts the pressure on those of us who aren't wild about a state income tax to come up with alternatives. And we may need some answers by the time the 2011 Legislature rolls around.

Anybody got any ideas?

We reported this story today about fewer DISD students finishing high school. Obviously, that's not a good trend, although this report about promotion trends in Oak Cliff schools is good for DISD and the southern half of the city. I first read this in the Oak Cliff People, which got the information from Bill Betzen, a computer applications teacher at Oak Cliff's Quintanilla Middle School. Roy Appleton also reported on this in his DMN Oak Cliff blog last week.

According to Betzen's report, Oak Cliff high schools are retaining more, not fewer, high school students. Over a ten-year period, they "improved their average promotion rate by 10.1 percent," writes O.C. People writer Silver Hogue.

I haven't had time to dig more into this, but it certainly tracks some earlier good news about Adamson and Sunset. Both schools are likely to receive "recognized" rankings from the state this year. That's the second highest rating the Texas Education Agency hands out.

These reports may seem contradictory: DISD is losing more students, while Oak Cliff schools retain more. But this situation captures the plight of big urban districts They can go backward and forward at the same time. You just hope they have more going forward than backward.

There's no way anyone could call the Dallas school board's weeks-long attempt to reduce staff at learning centers and magnet schools a thing of beauty. First, they said they had to cut. Then, maybe not. And finally, yes, cuts were in order. Whatever.

The process wasn't as important as the fact the board reduced positions at the learning centers primarily and the magnet schools secondarily. I can't say every magnet needed a trim, but the centers did. They haven't produced as many positive results as the extra bucks poured into them would warrant. In some cases, the results have been no different than those achieved at regular schools.

It may have taken the board a while to deliver, but it did -- and in a way that spreads the pain around the centers.

Who says all the uproar during the legislative session about the proposal to end social promotions was overblown? Look at these results:

Texas third, fifth and eighth graders are showing a clear uptick in scores. Now, maybe not all of the progress is due to students worrying about getting held back if they don't buckle down and learn their material in grades 3,5 and 8, where Texas students must pass the state achievement exam to move to the next grade. But I have a hard time seeing how this is more than a coincidence, just as I have a hard time seeing how the improvement in Central Texas eighth grade test scores that I blogged about last week doesn't have something to do with the ban on kids being socially promoted to ninth grade.

The early drafts of the Legislature's school accountability bill would have done away with the state ban on social promotions. The governor and others fought back. I'm glad they did. They forced lawmakers to at least keep the ban on moving kids out of fifth and eighth grades if they don't know their material.

Rodger Jones wrote a detailed, superb editorial on Tuesday that explains the importance of the Legislature's decision to create more Tier One universities. The state will realize many spin-offs from growing more research universities, ranging from keeping the Texas economy flush with innovation to giving Texas students who finish in the top 10 percent of their high school classes more options than UT-Austin, Texas A&M and Rice, which are the state's only Tier One universities today.

The Tier One decision, however, was not the only major higher ed decision made in Austin.

The biggest winner in the passage of SB 3, the school accountability bill, appears to be the education commissioner. The office gained several new powers under the bill, and that's a good thing.

Reason number one is that Texas needs to go to a Cabinet-form of government, and this gets us closer to that point. When we elect a governor, that person should be able to appoint a cabinet, not these zillion commissions we have today. And we voters should hold the governor accountable for how well the Cabinet works.

The powers in this bill don't get us to a Cabinet-style government, but the education buck increasingly will stop with the commissioner -- and the governor who appoints him or her.

Reason number two is I much rather have the commissioner make more education decisions than the elected State Board of Education. The board is too caught up with cultural issues, like debates over evolution. And it gets caught up in rancorous fights about reading standards.

Some good members serve on the board, like Pat Hardy. But it has become dysfunctional. I couldn't imagine giving it the power to, say, set the passing rate for high school exit exams. Fortunately, SB 3 gave the commissioner that authority.

Here are a few other areas SB 3 gives the commissioner important authority:

1. Define what it means for a child to be ready for college, stretching all the way back to grade school.

2. Adjust the college ready standards if they are no longer apply.

3. Review schools, particularly at the third grade level, to see if they are "socially promoting" too many students.

4. Define what "accelerated instruction" should mean for students in fifth and eighth grades who are required to extra help after passing the TAKS test.

By the way, determining what it means to be college ready is really important. The state hasn't done that before, so the commissioner will have a big chore. If he doesn't get it right, kids could fall behind.

The commissioner's new authority to determine the passing standard for end-of-course high school exams also is a big deal. If he sets the average too low, kids will waltz out of high school into a meat- grinder. If he sets it right, kids will have a pretty good shot of making it past high school.

Robert Scott is the education commissioner today. His job just got a lot more interesting.

The school accountability bill that the Texas Legislature passed Sunday by a unanimous vote was anything but unanimous a few days ago. And SB 3 was anything but unanimous over the last few months.

This bill and its several compromises are the result of a lot of hard work by GOP Sen. Florence Shapiro and GOP Rep. Rob Eissler, the respective heads of the House and Senate education committees. They put in a ton of hours going back and forth on this bill.

The legislation also was the subject of dramatic behind-the-scene politicking between the two factions within Texas' education debate: The anti-testing crowd that rails about too much pressure being put on schools and the reformers who believe schools and students should be held accountable through testing and rigorous standards.

Greetings to The Education Front. This is the first day of our official new blog that is devoted to debating the school policies that are decided upon from Washington to Austin to Dallas.

We will take policies seriously, so beware: This blog won't dumb down issues. But it also will relate them to what's happening -- or needs to happen -- in schoolhouses and universities.

The way this discussion will work is each week I will post several essays about education topics and then get folks with some degree of expertise in an area to comment upon the post. The responders may be teachers, prinicpals, policymakers, think tankers, university professors or college deans. And, of course, we want readers chiming in on these matters because each of us, in one way or another, are affected by what happens in schools, from K-16.

Some of you already may have read Education Front posts on the main Opinoin blog the last few weeks. If so, the way this discussion takes place will be familiar to you.

If not, we hope you will join us for a lively discussion. Over the last week, for example, we have heard from one physics teacher responding to Austin's accountability debate, one former head of the Texas Education Agency, one former chairman of the Texas House's Public Education Committee and one Bush White House negotiator of No Child Left Behind. Some of our recent posts also have been circulated widely in Austin as the debate over a new school accountability bill goes through its last stages.

So, welcome. And join us each day as we take education issues seriously. I don't know about you, but I don't think there are many issues that matter more to the future of Texas or the country.