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Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath spoke before the full board of the State Board of Education on January 28th. The following reports details Commissioner Morath’s comments before the board.

This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics the committee took up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the hearing but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.

 

Commissioner Mike Morath, TEA

  • TASA midwinter, thank you to Kevin Brown for being a phenomenal partner
  • 3 years ago, we started issuing annual report on state of education. 3rd annual report is available. It is in front of you, the first public unveiling. Within a few days, you will be able to download the annual report link on TEA’s website
  • Lets go through the sections:
  • Synopsis of high-level year over year performance
  • Next page is high level view, strategic plan
  • Recruit, support, retain teachers and principals- background work and features potential impact of HB 3 teacher incentive allotment
  • 2nd key strategic priority regarding building foundation of reading and math, science of teaching reading exam and academies
  • 3rd key strategic priority, connecting HS to college, strategic plan and breakdown of how we are doing with this
  • Work done to improve underperforming schools including key initiatives we are taking to improve. Over 500 fewer D and F campuses this year than in ‘16-‘17
  • Data on SPED improvements that have occurred. There hasn’t been positive press regarding SPED on driving improvements. We are spending $1 billion more on SPED than 3 years ago, significant increase in TEA support and monitoring, approx. 50,000 more kids than 3 years ago
  • High level demographics. 5.5 million total kids, growing for some time
  • High level overview of HB 3. Shows how much new money came into the system.  Extensive list that shows new funding sources that came from HB3
  • NAPE results: elementary school promising, middle school more problematic
  • Would love feedback. It is annual, so we will immediately start to work on the report for next year. Purpose is to make sense of massive sea of information we are given. There is a lot of complexity in public ed and we picked out the most salient information. What is the state of public ed and what direction are we going?
  • Proposed rule related to charter review processes:
  • Sentence in rule appeared in one column that is not in another. Some people misinterpreted. Rule was to raise bar on minimum requirement for charter to expand. Purpose was to raise threshold.
  • Interpreted as us trying to create an automatic improvement on our end, which was not intention. We are reflecting on comments as we tweak that rule
  • Bahorich- Would love to see long range plan for public ed as part of what’s going on for us strategically
  • Robinson-If a quality charter school went into South San ISD, and drew out some of the quality kids in that district, then left the district with bigger challenges, could TEA do something to help that ISD?
  • HB3 creates significant change in underlying nature of need based funding for districts. School funded based upon needs of students. If a kid moves from one district to another, they are still drawing down the same amount of money. Free/reduced lunch kids get around $1000 extra per year after HB3. Doesn’t create differential funding
  • Maynard- The more you dig into NAPE, the more you realize it’s a convoluted process. Who is being tested and how does it happen? What they are testing doesn’t line up with our standards. With a decline in NAPE, is there a corresponding decline in STAAR when we disaggregate data?
  • Answer is largely no. Team is analyzing problem. If you looked at most recent results of 8th grade math on STAAR up 4% this year and the last 2 years in NAPE, there were noticeable declines. Even more divergent when broken up by student group. In one test group, Hispanic STAAR and NAPE trends going in same direction. White and African American going in different directions on STAAR and both going down in NAPE. NAPE asks more open-ended questions and we don’t on STAAR. NAPE assesses skills and knowledge that are not TEKS. We look at it to try to figure out how to get it to inform practices.
  • Maynard- It is important for us to be able to articulate differences and begs question of seeing if there is a better measure than NAPE to see how we are doing
  • We do need to be cognizant of differences, but I think NAPE is a good standard for us to use. If we are seeing improvements on state assessments but not improvements on SAT/ACT and NAPE, we need to ask ourselves if our curriculum focus is too narrow. Every data point needs to be considered in context. NAPE is not useless, it’s just a slightly different test
  • Hardy- I saw a report that said top 10 districts in nation were sending kids to Ivy League. 5 in TX and 3 were public schools. I am confused about ranking and how they come up with it. I read that we are #38 in ranking in the state. Isn’t it a question of sheer numbers? 5 million students in TX versus 150,000 in other states.
  • There are interest groups that rank on any number of things. You have to look at what is being ranked. If they value school districts based on money spent, then it’s a ranking, but not a good holistic measure. There are 2 grades of pre-k and kinder in the state. If you compare us with a state that doesn’t have kinder, it will look like they are spending more on kids than us, but that isn’t accurate. In comparison, they may not be spending more money over the life of the students. We are the only state in the country that tracks kids ages 5-17
  • Hardy- Study saying fewer of our kids are going to college. Does it have to do with how well our economy is doing? Kids are going straight into work because there is opportunity?
  • We have seen decrease in kids enrolling in college after HS graduation. It could coincide with massive increase in economy during that time and decrease in unemployment
  • Hardy- There is a tremendous amount of frustration for the classroom teacher, keeping up with data and other things. The job of teaching curriculum is put on the back burner because they are too busy doing other things. I think that’s why we lose a lot of teachers
  • I don’t think there is an easy answer to that. There are practices that when done well make a bunch of sense and practices when done poorly, don’t make sense. I have sat in on data team meetings, that were a total waste of time. This is about good training and investment. Something like reading academies can be so valuable. Comes into quality of execution
  • Hardy- Any value in going back to practices we used to have where we used to evaluate just certain schools?
  • Something like a site-based audit is very resource intensive. We moved from 20-80 SPED employees because we are doing that with SPED, but it’s a lot of site visits. We must support principals and superintendents because they are running their districts
  • Perez- Regarding charters, during public hearing on proposed rules, I think one of the proposals was tiered system and automatic expansion?
  • There would be no automatic expansion. We can provide clarity that if you reach certain standards, you can do that much more. Goal is to raise floor
  • Little- You have appointed committee on assessment?
  • Yes, Educator Advisory Committee and Technical Advisory Committee
  • Little- What will their work look like?
  • Martinez- We had first meeting last week. Ms. Melton-Malone is part of the committee and will be a bridge between TEA and SBOE. Several subcommittees meeting over several months and looking at Implementation of HB 3906
  • Commissioner- HB 3906 sets up cap on number of questions on exams and how they are formatted (multiple choice, sentence diagram, drop down boxes). We are surfacing questions with Educator Advisory Group like, “what questions would be most supportive of high-quality instructional practices?” These are the types of things we will be addressing in the subcommittees
  • Little- Would this committee look at reading passages?
  • I don’t think this committee will look at that. We just did a study though that all the reading passages were appropriate
  • Little- We have talked about prior knowledge in reading passages from science and social studies
  • That is a big part of the advisory committees. We need passages that reinforce knowledge standards across content and test over that
  • It would be helpful If we could more affirmatively communicate that background knowledge and reading proficiency comes from reading across subject areas. If we can signal in passages that there should be a big science and social studies block, it will increase reading proficiency
  • This also needs attention in curricular systems. Kids need to be able to see causality in history and how it is interrelated. We are trying to be effective in this as we roll out STAAR aligned to new ELAR TEKS
  • Bahorich- It seems like we are doing the right stuff but when I look at the NAPE scores, it seems off. Is NAPE the right thing? It doesn’t translate to those scores
  • Like I said, we have a group working on helping us see why we see the disconnect
  • Davis- NAPE scores, is there anything agency is doing to make reading academies more successful than they were back in 1999?
  • They were successful then but the problem was that they stopped. It was a function of how they were structured, optional and funded by Rider. They now have permanent infusion of funding from HB3
  • Davis- Young man in BHISD not allowed to graduate because of hair and other not allowed to go to prom?
  • I don’t know if an appeal has been made to TEA yet
  • Maynard- Emphasis right now is on early reading. Question is, are there any plans moving forward for grades 4 and 5, where kids are reading to learn?
  • There is resource differential between the 2. On p. 9, there is a conceptual framework for reading. Shows how everything weaves together, there are some things that are foundational. Kids in grade 4 and on are missing foundational skills. We are making sure teachers have access to resources to help improve this. Goes down to how strong the knowledge is that’s being taught through the TEKS. Foundational reading is only funded in the K-3 space. We are thinking every teacher will go through reading academies eventually. We think there will be spillover in 4-5th grade for foundational reading strategies.
  • Maynard- Is there any effort to measure effectiveness on k-3 reading academies?
  • Yes, but since they are so small right now we likely haven’t gotten a measure in yet
  • Clarification that 6-8 doesn’t have funding available right now. Hoping to get help into 4th and 5th as soon as possible
  • Question about charter expansion and acct. If you don’t have a certain number in subpop., a lot of small schools and charters are not getting credit for growth with that subpop. Are they getting appropriate for where they are making a difference with kids?
  • I will look into this more
  • School districts CCMR, are we counting kids going to the military?
  • We are fixing that problem. That is currently a self-report, but we are now getting a direct feed from DOD. One-time concern, not an issue going forward
  • Hardy- This committee on assessments. Will there be opp. For public input?
  • We are in organizational stages and there will be opportunities for public input on everything we are considering. We will talk to other groups and this committee.