Publish Date: August 18, 2024 12:48 pm Author: Texas AFT
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Friday, August 16, 2024
McAllen AFT, Southwest Dallas AFT,San Antonio Alliance,Cy-Fair AFT, and many other local unions attended the various district back-to-school events for employees this month.
Welcome back, educators!
It’s that magical time of year again! Across Texas, educators and school employees are heading back to school, ready to inspire and nurture the next generation. The start of the 2024-2025 school year brings with it a renewed sense of purpose and possibility.
Public education is more than just a job — it’s a calling that transforms lives and shapes futures. Our members consistently express dedication to their students and excitement for the new academic year. This enthusiasm persists even in the face of significant challenges, a testament to the resilience and passion of education professionals.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the reality of our situation. Educators’ and school employees’ compensation remains stagnant, while working conditions continue to demand improvement. Due to our state’s inadequate support for public education and misguided priorities such as the state takeover of Houston ISD and the ongoing campaign for taxpayer-funded vouchers, students are returning to schools staffed with an unprecedented number of uncertified teachers and offering reduced programs and services.
As you will read about in this week’s Hotline, the House Public Education Committee’s interim hearings on Monday and Tuesday touched on issues that will have a profound impact on our profession and the future of public education in Texas. However, the interim charges assigned to the committee by the Speaker of the House omitted some of the most critical issues facing educators and school employees.
We must continue organizing and advocating for ourselves and our colleagues this school year, focusing our efforts on critical local campaigns, the high-stakes November elections, and the defining 2025 legislative session. Together, we can ensure that our public schools thrive, our educators and school employees are respected, and every Texas child receives the high-quality public education they need to flourish.
In this week’s Hotline:
A debrief of this week’s House Pub. Ed. Interim hearings.
Last school year’s A-F ratings have been blocked by a judge, find out why.
Testing is not an accurate way to measure a student’s English skills (surprise.)
Is Sentinel the answer for school safety?
51 school district dress codes were found in violation of the CROWN Act.
— Texas Legislature
House Public Education Committee Hears Interim Charges
Injunction Issued to Halt Controversial A-F labels
This week, as the Texas House Committee on Public Education met to discuss private school vouchers that would syphon tax dollars from our public schools, a Travis County district court issued a temporary injunction to halt the release of the controversial A-F school ratings determined by the governor-appointed commissioner of education. Five public school districts petitioned the court to stop the release, arguing that the commissioner of education has failed to abide by statutory requirements.
The A-F ratings are controversial because they are overly simplified, based primarily on the STAAR test, and are also used as justification for the commissioner to take over entire elected school boards of trustees including the largest district in Texas, Houston ISD. In Houston, the Commissioner of Education Mike Morath replaced its democratically elected school board with an appointed board of managers and appointed Mike Miles as superintendent, thereby undermining local governance and disenfranchising the voters of Houston. The result has been record numbers of teacher turnover, record numbers of uncertified teachers hired, and community members losing trust in their school district as evidenced by overwhelming opposition expressed during board meetings and community protests including a resolution of no confidence by the Houston Federation of Teachers.
On July 25, Governor Greg Abbott announced the launch of a new school safety system called Sentinel. This new platform– designed to collect, process, store, and distribute school safety and security information– is housed within the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and is a part of ongoing school safety and security improvement measures.
We have written extensively about House Bill 3 from the most recent session but primarily in the context of requiring (but not fully funding) armed security officers on every public school campus. However, this legislation was more comprehensive in scope and requires TEA to establish an office of school safety and security,provide technical assistanceto school districts to support the implementation and operation of safety and security requirements, and conduct district audits. Sentinel is the result.
School safety initiatives required by state statute, including intruder detection audits, behavioral threat assessments, district vulnerability assessments, and Emergency management
Connecting data from multiple sources to provide a complete, accurate, and current dataset for data analysis and other applications and business processes
Tools and resources that users can interact with or use to gain a better understanding of their work
Processes designed to facilitate the functioning, optimization, and automation of the system
Among its capabilities, Sentinel is equipped with a mass communication feature that can transfer information out when emergencies happen to Texas’s more than 1,200 school districts.
The Flaws in Texas’ English Proficiency Testing Hurt Our Students
English-learning students across Texas have faced an uphill battle with the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS). In 2018, the test was redesigned, and the shift to automated computer scoring has led to a troubling trend — drastically lower scores that don’t seem to reflect students’ true abilities, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.
For years, TELPAS was a tool that allowed educators to engage with students directly, assessing their English skills through human interaction. However, with the introduction of computer scoring, many students who previously excelled are now struggling to meet the necessary benchmarks. The result? A mere 10% of students are achieving the highest score in speaking, down from 50% before the redesign. This same system of grading portions of the TELPAS is being used in STAAR grading – showcasing that automation is not always best.
Texas ACLU Finds Dress Codes of 51 School Districts Violate CROWN Act
In 2023, Greg Abbott signed HB 567, also known as the Crown Act, into law to ban hair discrimination in schools and workplaces.
Since then, many school districts have altered their dress codes to adjust to the new regulations put in place by the CROWN Act. However, the ACLU of Texas found that, still, many districts in Texas have not changed their dress codes. Conservative judges have sided with school districts that are refusing to change their dress codes, pushing civil rights organizations to fight back.
In response to many districts still not making the necessary changes, the ACLU sent letters to 51 independent school districts across the state, which appear to still be in violation of the Texas CROWN Act in their 2023-2024 dress and grooming codes. The letters demanded that the districts update their policies to comply with the law.
Horace Mann is giving away $50,000 in prizes to help you get Set for Success for another school year!
Horace Mann is a long-time corporate supporter. Enter their sweepstakes for your chance to be one of 100 lucky winners who will take home a $250* gift card to either Target or Amazon. And if you win a gift card, your school could be one of 25 schools that wins a new-school-year celebration worth up to $1,000! Horace Mann will announce individual winners every Friday during the sweepstakes, and the winning schools will be announced on Friday, Sept. 6.
No purchase, renewal or quote is necessary to enter or win. Must be at least 18 years of age to enter. Not valid in Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, Wyoming and where otherwise prohibited by law. See Official Rules for full details. *Entrants living in or a resident of Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, and Washington are only eligible for a $100 gift card.
EMI-00402 (July 24)
Recommended Reading
Texas education news from around the state that’s worth your time.
📖 Cy-Fair ISD’s approval of Bible courses for next year catches parents’ attention. Two courses coming to Cy-Fair ISD high school classrooms caught parents’ attention this week. Approved on Monday night, Literature and the Bible, and Western civilization and the Bible will be elective courses starting next school year. Students aren’t handed a Bible, but a textbook looking at the Bible’s influence on public policy and literature.(ABC 13, Aug. 13)
📖 Rural Texans Speak Out Against Vouchers. The Texas House of Representatives released 198 pages of public commentary on Governor Greg Abbott’s proposed school voucher program. Among the many comments were dozens from rural Texans explaining how it would hurt them. (Reform Austin, Aug. 14)
📖 Texas Education Agency releases this year’s Intruder Detection Audits.Recently, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) shared its findings from Intruder Detection Audits (IDAs) from 2023-2024.The audits evaluate safety at campuses across the state to improve security practices.(KVUE, Aug. 9)
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