The Committee on Public Education met for an organizational meeting on March 2 to hear invited testimony from the Commissioner of Education. The link to this hearing can be found here.

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.

Mike Morath, Commissioner of Texas Education Agency

  • Allocated $2.2 billion of federal resources to public education
  • Distributed massive amount of PPE with TDEM in preparation for in-person return
  • Tracking statistics on the virus as it relates to public education; have found school might be the safest congregate setting that has existed in the pandemic
  • Provided extensive support for remote instruction, providing extensive resources and closing digital divide to an extent; is more work to be done on broadband
  • Completely new school finance system for remote children after HB3; should be of significant interest to committee because emergency rules were used and only last 1 year
  • Down 150,000 students from this time last year, was projected to be up at least 35,000 students
  • Have lost 10,000 high school students from October-January, exclusively juniors and seniors; enrollment affects funding
  • COVID has academically disrupted students’ retention and learning curve, explains academic environment that tie in with this
  • Three large themes in adjustments to close achievement gap; curriculum rigor, teacher support, increased time for students (tutoring, after-school programs, summer learning)
  • Phase 1 of digital divide has been completed, massively bridged digital divide, 1.7 million low-income students have commercially available internet services in their areas, working on cost estimates for offering a cheaper price for all affected students
  • Bright future for hybrid instruction; Texas Virtual School Network statute mechanism for remote learning model
  • VSN funding is pay for completion; new emergency rule’s funding is attendance based
  • Overviews HB 3 and the quantity of funding and resources provided to students and teachers
  • $4.4 billion of new resources infused in 19-20 school year compared to 18-19
  • HB 3906 set up changes that will be implemented in the 22-23 school year, STARR assessment redesign, will transition to online testing in next 5 years if legislature supports
  • Dutton – You stated that students had 3.2 months of instructional loss, what does this mean?
  • Look at where students start the year
  • Research techniques from data on an end of year assessment and see the trajectories from a growth perspective
  • Dutton – Could you use this same method to determine students whether students are 1 or more whole grade levels behind?
  • Within limitations, we can get to a set point and things beyond that we do not know.
  • VanDeaver – Could you share the methodology that you used for finding these statistics?
  • It is published to our website, but yes, we will send it to the committee
  • Bernal – Could you walk us through the posture of elementary, middle, and high school students?
  • In normal years, grades 3, 4, 6, 7 STAAR has no stakes; in grades 5, 8 if student does not meet standards, there is immediate support for said student
  • If the student does not meet standards again, Grande Placement Committee has authority to just advance the student, although policy is to retain the student
  • High schoolers have to pass 3/5 exams to be eligible to graduate, if they do not a committee will discuss an alternative way the student can show proficiency
  • Bernal – We should look into offering relief to high school students, as the way you described it seems that all grade levels have been impacted by COVID, but high schoolers are put at a disadvantage
  • Distinction between consequences for the adults and consequences for children, remarkably beneficial outcome for adults, especially lowest achieving students; no beneficial effect for children
  • Allison – Hold Harmless is a huge concern to committee members, and you said that it is coming, but there seems to be reports about hesitation over the lack of incentive of districts to continually search for missing students; is this accurate?
  • School finance system is supposed to encourage students to be present daily, has the most positive affect on students who are the hardest to find
  • Educators claim that the overwhelming majority of school systems are being very aggressive in finding their disengaged and missing students
  • Allison – Is there any other aspects to the Hold Harmless or release of budgeting funds to districts, other than that concern?
  • Biggest concern is alignment of incentives; probably fiscal concerns until January, then fiscal picture became much clearer
  • Allison – What can you share about the availability and delay with the SR 2 funds?
  • $5 billion has been allocated in SR 2 that will distributed to every school district with Title 1 funds; schools with no Title 1 campuses will receive no federal assistance
  • Allison – Remaining Cares Act Funds? Where will they be going?
  • $2.2 billion from first round of funding, $5 billion to K-12 education from second round, potential SR 3 version that passed US House would have $12 billion dollars specifically to Texas Public Education
  • Huberty – You said public education money has to go in the “formula.” Is this supplement or supplant?
  • No supplement/supplant prohibition in the federal statute
  • Huberty – IGC has to be extended, correct?
  • Yes, even the process needs to be extended
  • Huberty – Do you have any update on fund balance?
  • Is updated at the end of June every year, in 2019 fund balance was $14.7 billion, 2020 was $15.3 billion
  • Huberty – Of the $15.3 billion, how much in an excess of 110 days?
  • Close to $7 billion dollars
  • Huberty — How much out-of-pocket do we have outstanding for school districts as of now?
  • Have set up 2 funding streams, one for any allowable expenditure they had for 19-20 school year, $190 million reimbursed, $40 million reimbursed from last school year
  • Have not provided reimbursement for general spending- close to half a billion in expenses
  • Huberty – That is an appropriation decision; can you talk about SPED funding and where we are at with that? Should we be thinking about having a commission?
    • Significant development is that work we have done has improved Child find practices
    • Last year crested 10.7% in need of SPED, added 120,000 kids to roles in 3 years
    • HB 3 included dyslexia funding, drawing more funds into district budgets
    • State requirement to maintain MOE
    • All new resources for SPED have been distributed, communication with Feds has been slow, ask that legislators roll supplemental appropriation forward to resolve issue
  • Huberty – Mechanisms of HB 3, updates?
  • Statutory lack of clarity in formula had to be resolved, mechanisms to conduct property tax changes required adjustments, CTE formula inconsistencies
  • Weird MOE issue that had to be resolved; regional service centers benefitted from staffing supplements
  • Huberty – Heard from comp-ed waiting and how its required to be spent; some districts cannot spend it all
    • Comp-Ed increased by a billion dollars; investment made in students is built over time. Requirements force funds to be spent in a year, needs some more flexibility to encourage wise spending
  • Dutton – More than a million kids who are affected by lack of commercial wireless internet services? Game plan to attack this?
  • Yes, even more than that; could negotiate with the ISPs to offer discounts for the families in need
  • Different groups of students do not have access to areas with internet; infrastructure needs to be looked at
  • Dutton – If you offered it on the internet, could it be offered on television?
    • Some content can be effectively streamed on television because it is one way synchronous; difference is lack of rewind and two-way communication
  • Buckley – When we look at digital divide and rigor, the path forward is mixture of remote and in-person learning? What is the plan to make sure it is rigorous?
    • Trying to keep content aligned and fluid designed to monitor progress, needs to be targeted
  • Talarico – Is the STAAR appropriate of a diagnostic assessment? Considered mandating the diagnostic that was used at the beginning of this school year?
  • Interim, formative, and summative assessments have a role, are valuable when properly used; BOY would not be an adequate substitute for the STAAR test
  • STAAR also communicates important information to parents about where their children are and what needs to be done next
  • Talarico – Are we tracking the social, emotional, and mental health losses over the past year? How are we planning to address that?
  • Not really, there is no quantitative answer to your question; qualitatively there has been a large amount of feedback from particular groups such as parents, teachers, students, CPS services, etc.
  • Talarico – What role do you think high quality tutors will play going forward?
    • They will be critical, just difficulty in making tutoring “high quality” at a scale of so many schools
    • Needs to be imbedded over time, data driven; not easy to put a system like this in place
  • Talarico – Information on SPED students and learning loss?
    • We will let you know when STARR data comes back
    • Reason to believe there is a decline in SPED student achievement
  • Talarico – Any statistics on whether “fund balances” are equally distributed amongst poor/wealthy entities?
  • Depends on your definition of “poor” and “wealthy,” we can run pattern analysis and test trends to find this out
  • Talarico – Do we have any idea of students who are completely MIA vs how many have moved?
  • Short answer is no; track something called a leaver code, meaning if you do not return to your school after 7th grade, there needs to be a listed reason why
  • Students sitting the year out is the smallest sliver of enrollment decline
  • Talarico – Are we anticipating a spike in enrollment when normalcy is returned to the Pre-K or kindergarten enrollment? Concerned about ripple effect on staffing
    • 20% of kindergarteners did not enroll
  • We don’t actually know how parents are going to respond; in their best interest to enroll kids who should be in 1st grade in kindergarten
  • Talarico – What did this expose about our industrial revolution model of learning? Some are seeing this as a moment to rethink things about how schools work.
    • For all the bad pandemics has wrought, we have seen more innovative approaches to schools’ models in day, year, instructional design
    • Hybrid has a very vibrant future for us; high schoolers could be more prepared for college if coming into class few days a week
    • Years before we see trends emerge
  • Talarico – the fact that learning fell apart when students shifted online suggests to me that we do not have student-driven or personalized learning to a certain extent.
    • Back to HB 3, there were plans to use blended learning so that it could happen anytime; schools who used that handled the pandemic vastly better than anyone else
  • Buckley – Social and emotional deficits due to the pandemic, where do we see the role of fine arts?
    • Reading and math are important, but so much else is important too
    • If you push tutoring, you need to make sure it is not at the expense of fine arts classes or any other part of the curriculum
    • Tutoring would need to be additive otherwise it is to the students’ detriment
  • Bernal – Need to gather data to learn two things 1) where students are academically in light of what is happening in their life 2) understanding the why will tell us a lot more
    • Could discuss this with data gathering division, provides a personal anecdote on gathering data; notes locals have more data than the state
  • Cain – CTE and public private partnerships, how does industry get on the list for an accredited program?
    • Accountability system was significantly modified to consider academics and response to the industry; conducted an analysis and ended up with 220-240 on the industry certification list
  • Cain – Industry certifications, should consider a regionally portable view
    • Are adding regional certifications to the list the next round
  • Dutton – Are schools safe?
    • Data suggests yes; rate of viral infection is higher outside of school and likelihood of spread is also low
  • Huberty – Percentage of population of students are not back? Growth rate in juniors and seniors has increased, and offering in-person education is critical to getting them back?
    • Enrollment decline is 3%, is a larger chunk of those who are not engaged
    • They are dropping out
  • Huberty – Instances of reporting child abuse cases are down? Typically, the teacher or counselor is usually the one who reports child abuse?
    • Have heard that, but is not my expertise; and yes, those children who have been learning from home have had it hard the last year
  • Allison – Emergency wavier that allows for virtual education is going to end? If we want hybrid or virtual to extend, the legislature would have to do something about it?
    • Only offered that for this school year; and correct