Superintendents featured at Save Texas Schools Rally

Two superintendents joined a long list of lawmakers Saturday as featured speakers at the Save Texas Schools Rally. The march to the Texas Capitol and rally on the steps drew roughly 2,000 supporters, all delivering the message to lawmakers that they need to find a way to increase funding for public education.

John Folks from Northside ISD in San Antonio kicked off the rally telling those gathered he wasn't willing to accept "the new normal," a catch phrase bandied about by lawmakers last year referring to economic conditions and the fact that schools will have to do less with more.

Dr. Folks also reminded those gathered that the upcoming elections (early voting is May 14-24 and primary elections are May 29) are incredibly important.

"The fight begins now with elections," he said. "Not when then the legislature comes in."

John Kuhn, superintendent of Perrin-Whitt CISD and author of last year's "Alamo Letter" that compared the plight of Texas schools to the odds faced by William Travis and his forces at the Alamo, also a spoke.

Kuhn compared education to football, with the educator as quarterback and lawmakers as the offensive line.

"Give us time to stand in the pocket and complete these passes," Kuhn said.

Washington Post writes about Texas resolution

Valerie Straus, writer of The Washington Post's phenomenally popular education blog The Answer Sheet, just posted a lengthy entry about the debate surrounding high-stakes, standardized testing here in Texas and how that debate may influence the rest of the country.

Here at TASA we are getting notifications on an hourly basis from districts that have approved the Resolution Concerning High Stakes, Standardized Testing of Texas Public School Students. As of 11:40 a.m., we'd heard from 145 districts that have passed it. Many more have let us know the resolution is on their agenda for upcoming meetings.

We'll be updating our online list of school districts this afternoon.

Twitter is also abuzz with tweets from around the nation about the movement going on in Texas, thanks in large part to promotion from education historian and writer Diane Ravitch, who has almost 28,000 Twitter followers.

Texas resolution goes nationwide

The total confirmed number of Texas districts that have adopted the board resolution concerning high stakes, standardized testing of Texas public school students is now 122. But the effort is spreading beyond Texas. The Community District Education Council 30 in Queens, New York unanimously passed a nearly identical resolution at a board meeting last night – essentially substituting New York for Texas. The council said they hope other New York City area districts will adopt similar resolutions.

Resolution on high-stakes testing causing a stir nationwide

So, far we’ve heard from 46 school districts across Texas that have adopted the board resolution originally drafted by the North Texas Regional Consortium, tweaked by TASA and posted on our website for use by districts statewide.

Another 20 or so have contacted me to let me know it’s on their agenda for later this month or early April. And I’m sure there are more out there we haven’t heard from.

But already, the resolution is causing a stir. The Houston Chronicle ran a story about the resolution and backlash to standardized testing on its front page Monday and Diane Ravitch tweeted about the resolution Monday night to her 27,000 plus followers on Twitter. That caught the attention of Valerie Strauss, education writer for The Washington Post and author of the widely read blog The Answer Sheet. Strauss emailed last night asking for details about the resolution.

Texas school districts are taking a bold stand against the over-reliance on standardized tests and what it’s doing to our public schools. Below is the list of districts that have adopted the resolution so far. Please email me at jcaputo@tasanet.org if we need to add your district to the list.

Blue Ridge ISD 

Coppell ISD 

Lewisville ISD

Hereford ISD 

Manor ISD 

Community ISD 

McKinney ISD 

Clear Creek ISD 

Plano ISD 

Northwest ISD

Richardson ISD

Allen ISD

Highland Park ISD (Dallas) 

Frisco ISD

Goliad ISD

New Boston ISD 

Longview ISD 

Hillsboro ISD 

Mineral Wells ISD 

Union Grove ISD 

Friendswood ISD 

La Feria ISD 

Klondike ISD 

Poth ISD 

Mercedes ISD 

Clarksville ISD 

Burleson ISD  

Spearman ISD 

Palmer ISD 

Boles ISD 

Royal ISD 

Kaufman ISD 

Granbury ISD 

Seminole ISD 

Wall ISD 

Alvin ISD

Bland ISD 

Chisum ISD 

Channing ISD 

Palacios ISD 

Mesquite ISD 

Burkburnett ISD

Bloomburg ISD 

Iowa Park ISD

Stockdale ISD 
Shamrock ISD

Mission: School Transformation highlighted at SXSWedu

TASA staff shared information about Mission: School Transformation Monday at a pre-conference event for SXSWedu. SXSWedu focuses on innovations in learning and is part of the hugely popular SXSW music, film and interactive conference.

Executive Director Johnny Veselka and Associate Executive Director Susan Holley gave attendees background on how the document “Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas” and the Texas Visioning Network came to be and how the vision has morphed into Mission: School Transformation.

Holley called the mission “incredible work by some very courageous educators.”

Veselka gave on overview of Senate Bill 1557, which gives the Texas Commissioner of Education authority to create the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium for the purpose of informing the governor, legislature, and commissioner about ways to transform public schools to improve student learning through the development of innovative, next-generation learning standards and assessment and accountability systems. The bill permits up to 20 school districts and eligible open-enrollment charter schools to apply to be included in the consortium, and those selected must include a representative range of district types and sizes and diverse student populations.

Final rules for the consortium and the application process should be out soon and districts are scheduled to be selected in July.

“This legislation certainly was driven by the work of our visioning institute,” Veselka said. “We have the foundation here for building the future for education in this state.”

Texas Education Agency associate commissioner Anita Givens, who led sessions on TEA’s Project Share, said every time she hears about Mission: School Transformation, which has a goal of Student-Centered Schools, Future-Ready Students, she realizes more and more what an exciting opportunity it is for public education in Texas.

Givens and colleagues from TEA discussed Project Share, a portal through which teachers and students can communicate, collaborate and access 21^st century digital content, at the pre-conference. Project Share leverages several technology platforms to provide multiple levels of access and flexibility for educators and students.

Visioning Network districts standing tall despite criticism

The controversy surrounding STAAR and end-of-course exams has been a powder keg for months. With his speech at Midwinter calling the state’s testing system a “perversion of its original intent,” Commissioner Robert Scott tossed a match right in the middle of it.

It’s no secret that school leaders, teachers, parents and students have long been frustrated with an over-emphasis on standardized testing, but the recent uproar has given a unique chance for school districts to highlight the visioning work TASA has led the last few years, and talk about how that vision has now become a mission, specifically Mission: School Transformation.

The North Texas Regional Consortium has been leading the way in going public with its visioning work and this week the Dallas Morning News ran a detailed story on their efforts.

The story pointed out that the consortium is made up of high-performing districts serving students from across the economic and demographic spectrum and included a graphic listing the districts’ four-year graduation rates and rates for students who are college-ready in math and English. The rates are all well above the state average and, in most cases, are stellar.

“Consortium members say their complaints can’t be dismissed as sour grapes, because they’ve done well on the TAKS and expect to succeed with the STAAR,” the story reads.

Still, Texas Association of Business president and CEO Bill Hammond told the Dallas Morning News that the high-performing districts are complaining about higher standards and he’s not impressed with their success, going so far as to call them “the tallest of the midgets.”

I don’t think the parents in Allen, Coppell, Frisco, Highland Park, Lewisville, McKinney, Plano Northwest, Richardson or Plano feel that way. And I know the students in those high-performing district would shatter that characterization. 

School district leaders believe in their students and strive every day to help them reach their potential. They welcome accountability but will not back down on delivering the message that our current system’s over reliance on standardized, high stakes testing is detrimental to our public schools and undermining any chance that educators have to transform a traditional system of schooling into a broad range of learning experiences that better prepares our students to live successfully and be competitive on a global stage.

Bloggers' Lounge: What did you think?

A new treat at this year’s Midwinter Conference was the Bloggers’ Lounge. This centrally located space, sponsored by SMART and hosted by #BlogathonATX and qannection.com, featured seating for over 30 attendees and their electronic devices. With power sources for computers and phones spread throughout the area, the lounge became a place to recharge batteries as well as brains. Attendees used the area to perform remote work, document new strategies they learned in sessions, or simply check in with the office back home. 

Aside from the Lounge itself, professional writers, bloggers and social media enthusiasts were on hand to attend and blog about various speaker presentations. These bloggers continued the conversation back at the Bloggers’ Lounge by moderating post-session Q&As with presenters such as Alan November, Scott Kinney, Tom Burnett, and more. These informal sessions allowed attendees to delve further into presentation topics and gave speakers an opportunity to address attendees in an informal environment. 

In addition to writers, the Lounge provided technical support for attendees needing advice on blogging platforms, search engine optimization strategies and other issues affecting bloggers. #BlogathonATX representatives, Ilene Haddad and Julie Gomoll, presented a Q&A session about social media and blog management. 

The Bloggers’ Lounge team kept attendees up-to-date with frequent posts to Twitter using the hashtag #TASAmw. Messages included everything from session highlights to reports from the floor of the Education Expo. People were able to view these updates in real time via TASA’s Midwinter smartphone app, as well as on a large SMART Board inside the Lounge.

We’d love feedback on the lounge, or, if you missed it, let us know if it’s something you’d like to experience next year.http://qannection.com/