In April, the Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) sued the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and its Commissioner Mike Morath, alleging that the scheduled July 1 implementation of the new Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) violates state law by requiring that school districts base 20% of each teacher’s evaluation on student achievement growth measures […]

After years of haggling and delays, Congress has finally passed and President Obama has signed the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known since 2002 as No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s signature domestic program.  The new legislation is named the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and while it will not […]

President Obama has now succumbed to the firestorm in opposition to standardized and “high stakes” testing that has swept the country over the past several years, even picking up on the talking points–“Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble”.  So now he wants a cap on standardized testing at […]

Over the past three legislative sessions, the Texas public education accountability system, once rated by national organizations as the best in the country, has come under relentless attack by a firestorm of misguided opposition to standardized and so-called “high stakes” testing, so that by the end of the 2013 session, the system had essentially been […]

The recently released SAT exam results reflect a decline in both math and reading scores across the nation, but the declines were remarkably worse in Texas, where math scores dropped nine points to an average of 486 and reading scores fell six points to an average of 470.  In both cases, these represent the worst […]

The free community college plan introduced by President Obama was not the worst proposal he has made this year, but it’s bad enough, for a variety of reasons.  It has already been well-covered by many, but I will mention a few that might have been missed: * In Texas, 51% of high school graduates must […]

Substantially all knowledgeable public education reformers will tell you that the sine qua non of the mission to deliver a quality K-12 education for every child is an effective teacher in every classroom.  These same people, if they are honest, will also tell you that this won’t happen until we break the mold that has […]

The results of student achievement in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the so-called “nations report card” released last November, were characterized as “encouraging” and “the strongest performance in the history of the NAEP” by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  What he conveniently overlooks is that substantially all of the progress in reading and […]

  The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) is currently deliberating on the restructuring of the Texas high school curriculum.  House Bill 5, adopted by the Texas Legislature in the 2013 session, provides multiple pathways to a Texas high school diploma that include routes to industry certification leading to meaningful 21st century jobs in addition […]