On January 29th Education Commissioner Mike Morath spoke to the State Board of Education. Morath reviewed the TEA second’s Annual Report, TEKS guides, organizational changes, special education, industry certifications, open education resources, and reasoning for increases in teacher compensation.
Morath
- The second Annual Report of the TEA has been released – some of the results from the report were shared
- First part of plan is supporting teachers and principals
- For the first time ever in US History, they majority of parents do not want their children to become teachers
- Limited raises in the profession
- Connecting High School with Career and College is another section
- Highlights hosts of initiatives to improve education
- Describes what STAAR test is based on
- Information about the accountability system and issues of high public interest
- Hardy – didn’t do anything on science and social studies results
- They had to make choices as there are so many indicators to choose from
- Hardy – concerned that it not being in the report allows it to be dismissed
- This is a high level overview but the report cards do include it
- Bahorich – on NAEP results, is the apple to apple comparison in the report?
- Not in there but can include it in 2019 version
- Thinks apple to apple comparison, they are outperforming with groups as compared to other states
- Do pretty well in mathematics but less well in reading
- Refers to a study where we were third in the nation but next report may say we are seventh or worse
- Robinson – in terms of how we do with how diverse we are and we outperform New York and they send more
- Outperform New York and they spend double the amount we do per pupil
- Mercer – avg. $11,300 per pupil, but he received pushback on that amount
- It will land differently in different districts such as could have low CEI but the 11k is a fully loaded number – all M&O, I&S and federal funds
- Most will be North of $10k
- Little – Really like the graphs on page 20 and 21 and would like to share with ISD
- Figured page 21 will be of interest so working on getting an isolated copy of that which is easily printable in black and white, will also do this for page 20
- Bahorich – pointed out IMA is TIMA
- Will work on clean up on version that is electronic, correct the printed version next year
- TEKS guides – Covered support for reading language arts implementations,
- Currently implemented – produced charts organized by strand and released side-by-side comparisons charts,
- TEKS guides project – roll out this June and next June will be more robust
- Will work on details and short video for each strand, released items will provides examples of how the SE will be assessed, hover feature will explain important terms and phrases for each standard
- There is also an alignment navigator in TEKS guides
- Assessment group has been combined with the curriculum groups
- $2.5 million out of IMA and one of the primary vehicles used to support this work as well as some from open education resources since this is open source
- Will then link the reading academies to this tool set (monies are k-3 and then 4 and 5 so they are reordering the content to be as big of a shot as possible)
- Assessment and Standards
- In 2016 conducted an alignment study, etc and part of continuous journey to improve, wanted to give an update on one item
- Content staff from the Student Assessment Division and the curriculum division were consolidated into the curriculum division
- Staff who support the SBOE in reviewing and revising the TEKS are now responsible for assessment item development
- Organizational changes
- Penny Schwinn is moving to Tennessee, will not be replacing her position
- Changes will be made, some will be moved into Deputy Commissioner role and reporting directly to him
- Cecilia-Perez – Texas Gateway, is it to ESCs or districts go to gateway? Asked about resources being produced in Spanish as well as English? Noted some of the accountability videos in Spanish look good.
- Services centers can train around content, some districts do it themselves
- There are many areas setting up for fee-for-service professional development
- Staff – yes
- Cargill – concerned about June roll-out, there used to be face to face professional development where TEA staff would go to ESCs and they would go out and train districts, could at least overview of each standard be released earlier so districts can start training by summer
- Will talk to team to see how they can produced
- Staff, Martinez – will see if they can accelerate
- Will get with Martinez to see if they can get out to ESCs, notes they were not given any appropriations to support standards roll-out but they may have something available
- Cargill – happy to see there will be like 20 different ways a standard can be assessed published in the guide
- Maynard – update on federal government and Special Ed and impacts to funding
- Continue to execute plan to address special education broadly
- Separately in negotiations on maintenance of financial support requirement
- Department has been supportive of helping them stand up new business unit, stood up roughly 55 person business unit to provide technical support in the field
- The plan is a 5 year plan
- Maintenance of effort – best way to remedy a shortfall that happened a few years ago and prevent it in the future
- Maynard – agency has released CTE industry certifications, curious if agency will continue to work with third parties and vendor to fill in gaps so district decisions are not based on accountability
- Briefing from TEA will be given to the later in the week
- Feedback from 12k individuals, narrowed down to a list around 1k
- Statute screen had 5-6 characteristics so list is now just over 220
- Getting more feedback during proposed rule phase, so anticipate it will be more than 220
- There are clearly holes, notes there is no such thing as an entrepreneur certificate
- Maynard – asked him about his role, he has been in it for three years, still learning from it and having fun?
- So blessed for the opportunity to serve in this capacity
- Ellis – asked about open education resources, has there been a request for this biennium?
- Initial has been mathematics that has smaller user number
- The legislature substantially updated the number but was told to do ELAR – so they are a work in progress and can not tell them how valuable it is now
- Theory is sound – should allow districts to shift the way they spend IMA, how many classrooms are buying full sets of text materials, this should allow a shift so there is a much deeper level of readily available literature texts since the core of textbook purchases will go down
- Will need to wait a little longer to prove this is beneficial
- Believes request is most likely the same
- Mercer – What is range in House and Senate for salary?
- Not sure he could synthesize at this time, since conversations are still in process
- Gov. come out with a goal to give everyone a $5k raise
- Conversations that emerged from Finance Commission were more differentiated, heartened to see conversations from School Finance Commission report
- Raises are not solving problems of current teaching force, but will younger teachers quit? so desire is to tilt the curve of retention – because of their compensation package
- Compensation also change the recruitment paradigm, it effects the likely hood someone stays as an educator or becomes an educator