The Texas Tribune: Schools Turn To Fees After Drop in State Aid

Consider the Keller Independent School District just north of Fort Worth, where students who ride the bus will now pay $185 each per semester. Rather than scrap busing altogether after voters rejected a property tax increase in June to make up for lost state revenue, the district opted to institute fares.

The $4 billion cut in education financing at the state level for 2012-13 means these extra charges will become increasingly common.

“We’re going to see districts charging fees for things that they have always been able to but just haven’t chosen to in the past,” said David Thompson, a former general counsel for the Texas Education Agency who now represents school districts.

Across the country, such fees also threaten to draw lawsuits — affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union in California filed in September against what it called the state’s “pay to learn” public schools —?about what it means to provide a “free” public education under state constitutions.

Texas law gives districts broad authority in deciding what fees to charge students. There is one firm boundary: If it is an expense related to an activity or item required for a course grade, like textbooks, districts cannot charge for it. Basics like pens, erasers and notebooks do not count, and any charges related to activities or services where participation is voluntary — extracurricular activities, class trips and, yes, transportation — are fair game. The district must also have a process to waive or reduce fees for students who cannot afford them. Keller I.S.D., for example, will charge $100 each for students who qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches.

Michael Griffith, a school finance expert with the Education Commission on the States, said that while fees for extracurricular activities had been on the rise even before the current economic downturn, more schools were now exploring ways to pass on basic costs to parents. ?

“We see a lot of evidence now that there are districts and schools pushing the line,” Mr. Griffith said.

That can often happen in letters home, he said, with teachers implying that certain supplies are required and that students cannot show up without them.

Charging fees can hurt poor students, especially those whose families just miss qualifying for a waiver, said Caroline?Holcombe, a research analyst at Children at Risk, an advocacy group based in Houston.

“It’s likely money families just don’t have,” Ms. Holcombe said. “And if they are choosing between the next meal they are going to put on the table, whether they are going to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, and whether they are going to allow their kids to spend time after school at an activity, that’s a tough decision.”

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The Texas Tribune: Change in Rating Formula Creates Anxiety in Schools

This will be the first year the official ratings — which categorize schools as “exemplary,” “recognized,” “acceptable” or “unacceptable” based primarily on test scores — will not contain the mechanism known as the Texas Projection Measure since it was put into use in 2009.

Instead of using students’ actual scores on standardized tests, the ratings formula gauged students’ future test scores based on a campuswide average, which raised ratings statewide. For instance, in the 2009-10 school year, 245 schools were rated “unacceptable” with the projection measure factored in. Without it, 603 would have fallen into that category.

So whether or not schools’ actual passing rates have changed, many school leaders will be forced to explain lower ratings to parents and taxpayers.

“Districts are facing this real dilemma,” said Jackie Lain, an associate executive director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “They have in some cases significantly lower accountability ratings they will have to explain to their community.”

Accountability ratings, so easily brandished on banners across campuses, are often the simplest way for administrators to communicate how their schools are performing, especially to voters who do not have children in their schools.

School officials will enter the new school year with $4 billion less in state revenue over the next biennium, and an additional $1.4 billion less in discretionary grants for programs like pre-kindergarten and dropout prevention. Many will try to approach their school boards and communities to raise local property tax rates to help cushion the blow. They are also moving to a complex new standardized testing system.

The education agency first indicated that it was considering discontinuing the projection measure last summer, after lawmakers and others in the education community said that the measure artificially raised ratings and allowed schools to count students as passing tests when they had not. After the public uproar, the agency decided to issue two side-by-side ratings, one with the measure factored in and one without.

Earlier this year, lawmakers again attacked the measure and unanimously voted against it during a spirited debate in the Texas House on a testing bill. Then Robert Scott, the Texas commissioner of education, wrote a letter to administrators giving them the final word that the measure would not be included in the 2011 ratings in order “to preserve the integrity of the accountability system and public education as a whole.”

Ray Braswell, superintendent of the Denton Independent School District, said the late decision was difficult on his district, though he said he believed it was the right one. Denton I.S.D., he said, was making sure to find an “apples to apples” comparison across the ratings so parents could accurately gauge changes in test scores.

“It will be a communication effort on our part,” Mr. Braswell said.

Ms. Lain said schools will have to deliver a complicated message: that in most cases, it is not their achievement level that has changed but how the ratings are calculated. She said that her organization was preparing materials to help schools deal with that, but that the lack of public explanation about how eliminating the measure would affect accountability ratings from the education agency has made that more difficult.

Representative Scott Hochberg, Democrat of Houston and vice chairman of the House Public Education Committee, led the charge against the projection measure. Mr. Hochberg said he was not concerned about the transition because districts have known what to expect since they received both ratings last summer.

“The measure was only used for about two years,” he said, “and so this is not an earth-shattering sort of change. The ratings released show what students actually do, not what they were predicted to do.”

View the original article here

The Texas Tribune: Change in Rating Formula Creates Anxiety in Schools

This will be the first year the official ratings — which categorize schools as “exemplary,” “recognized,” “acceptable” or “unacceptable” based primarily on test scores — will not contain the mechanism known as the Texas Projection Measure since it was put into use in 2009.

Instead of using students’ actual scores on standardized tests, the ratings formula gauged students’ future test scores based on a campuswide average, which raised ratings statewide. For instance, in the 2009-10 school year, 245 schools were rated “unacceptable” with the projection measure factored in. Without it, 603 would have fallen into that category.

So whether or not schools’ actual passing rates have changed, many school leaders will be forced to explain lower ratings to parents and taxpayers.

“Districts are facing this real dilemma,” said Jackie Lain, an associate executive director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “They have in some cases significantly lower accountability ratings they will have to explain to their community.”

Accountability ratings, so easily brandished on banners across campuses, are often the simplest way for administrators to communicate how their schools are performing, especially to voters who do not have children in their schools.

School officials will enter the new school year with $4 billion less in state revenue over the next biennium, and an additional $1.4 billion less in discretionary grants for programs like pre-kindergarten and dropout prevention. Many will try to approach their school boards and communities to raise local property tax rates to help cushion the blow. They are also moving to a complex new standardized testing system.

The education agency first indicated that it was considering discontinuing the projection measure last summer, after lawmakers and others in the education community said that the measure artificially raised ratings and allowed schools to count students as passing tests when they had not. After the public uproar, the agency decided to issue two side-by-side ratings, one with the measure factored in and one without.

Earlier this year, lawmakers again attacked the measure and unanimously voted against it during a spirited debate in the Texas House on a testing bill. Then Robert Scott, the Texas commissioner of education, wrote a letter to administrators giving them the final word that the measure would not be included in the 2011 ratings in order “to preserve the integrity of the accountability system and public education as a whole.”

Ray Braswell, superintendent of the Denton Independent School District, said the late decision was difficult on his district, though he said he believed it was the right one. Denton I.S.D., he said, was making sure to find an “apples to apples” comparison across the ratings so parents could accurately gauge changes in test scores.

“It will be a communication effort on our part,” Mr. Braswell said.

Ms. Lain said schools will have to deliver a complicated message: that in most cases, it is not their achievement level that has changed but how the ratings are calculated. She said that her organization was preparing materials to help schools deal with that, but that the lack of public explanation about how eliminating the measure would affect accountability ratings from the education agency has made that more difficult.

Representative Scott Hochberg, Democrat of Houston and vice chairman of the House Public Education Committee, led the charge against the projection measure. Mr. Hochberg said he was not concerned about the transition because districts have known what to expect since they received both ratings last summer.

“The measure was only used for about two years,” he said, “and so this is not an earth-shattering sort of change. The ratings released show what students actually do, not what they were predicted to do.”

View the original article here

The Texas Tribune: Universities Are Challenged as Demographics Shift

White students, who accounted for 51 percent of U.T.’s freshman class in 2009, made up 48 percent in 2010. Black and Hispanic students represented about 5 percent and 23 percent, respectively, with Asians and other races making up the rest.

The state’s flagship university passed the demographic milestone earlier than some had anticipated, reflecting a similar shift that is rapidly taking place at other top-level educational institutions across the country.

Although the changing demographics of college campuses may be grabbing the headlines, the more compelling issue is how the growing number of minority students presents serious social and academic challenges for financially strapped universities, even as the schools are under pressure to boost graduation rates.

Nationally, 52 percent of Hispanic students and 58 percent of black students are unable to earn a bachelor’s degree in six years, compared with 40 percent of white students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“What is increasingly evident now that wasn’t evident 10 or 20 years ago is the extent to which this is a national phenomenon,” said Steve Murdock, a sociology professor at Rice University and previously the state demographer of Texas and head of the United States Census Bureau. “This is not a Texas issue. It’s not a California issue. It’s a national issue.”

For the United States to maintain — let alone grow — a college-educated work force, Mr. Murdock said, those graduation numbers will have to change.

Stan Jones, former Indiana commissioner of higher education and the current president of Complete College America, a national nonprofit group dedicated to boosting the number of college graduates, said the numbers have been telling the story for years. “But it hasn’t necessarily gotten through to policy-makers that this was going on, and clearly not to the general public,” Mr. Jones said. “All of us are seeing it happening faster than we had expected.”

For example, although their birth rate is growing at a significant clip, Mr. Jones said, Hispanics do not graduate from high school, go on to college or graduate in the same numbers as white students. “If you look at the freshman class everywhere in this country, it is more representative than it’s ever been,” he said. “But in four years, if you look at the graduating class, it is not going to be representative of the country, because many of those students from the underrepresented groups won’t make it to graduation.”

Educators give several reasons for the disparity, including economic differences, the comparative quality of college preparation at urban, rural and suburban schools, and a sense of isolation among those who are the first in their families to go to college.

“These are terrific students,” said William Powers Jr., president of U.T. “Often, they may have gone to a high school where they didn’t have a calculus class or Advanced Placement classes. The challenges are also financial and what I call cultural. They might be away from home, and they don’t have parents and aunts and uncles who have already been here.”

In 2007, recognizing the demographic shift — and its accompanying challenges — U.T. set up a Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. With an annual budget of $30.4 million, it encourages minority high school students to apply to college and then supports them with a complex framework of programs that include tutoring and personal advising.

“The question is, can we get them the support to help them over the gaps?” said Gregory J. Vincent, vice president of diversity and community engagement.

The results, so far, have been promising. Generally, students in the division’s programs have grade point averages and retention rates as good as or better than the average in their respective classes. “The good news is that our students come highly motivated, so our challenges aren’t as great as you’d expect, despite assumptions some people might make about their backgrounds,” said Aileen Bumphus, executive director of the Gateway Program, an initiative under the Diversity and Community Engagement umbrella that works with about 300 first-generation students in each class.

rhamilton@texastribune.org

This article was produced by The Texas Tribune in partnership with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media, based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 3, 2011

An article on Sunday about the demographic shift at the University of Texas had an incorrect credit for the picture. It is Spencer Selvidge, not Caleb Bryant Miller.

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