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The State Board of Education met on June 13 to take up a full agenda. The report below reflects comments made by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath at the beginning of the hearing.

This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics the committee took up. This report is not a verbatim transcript of the hearing; it 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, Texas Education Commissioner

  • Santa Fe ISD/School Safety
    • Terrible situation, law enforcement has done and continues to do a tremendous job, local and federal partners have been fab
    • Department of Education has authorized a $1 million grant to Santa Fe ISD for reconciliation and counseling support
    • Governor has released Safety Plan, Morath participated in each of the roundtable discussions leading up to the plan
    • Generally speaking, our campuses are safe, shootings are “exceedingly rare”
    • Issued an administrative letter to districts on immediate steps that can be taken to improve safety before school begins this year
    • Many campuses already engaged in a lot of the safety steps, but there are areas to improve
    • Highlights 5 safety steps
      • Increased law enforcement/police support, promoting school marshal program in places where this is not possible or useful; training is free & will likely continue to be free, can involve non-teaching staff
      • US Secret Service did a complete analysis of prevention strategies after Columbine, concluded that prevention is possible; working to spread awareness of this report; Incl. increased awareness of students & guiding students to counseling/intervention when needed, can also help decrease suicides
      • Deputy stops; Hays County has all deputies stop 1/day at a school, increases appearance and random presence of law enforcement
      • Extensive safety training services, School Safety Center in San Marcos is a huge resource on many practices
      • Funding; $62 million for districts this Summer related to safety/security automatically
    • Hurricane Harvey
      • Made adjustments to accountability due to Harvey, previously 10 or more days out = ‘not rated’ for accountability
      • In addition to this closure provision, added provisions for campuses needing to relocate
      • If you needed to relocate to another campus, the receiving campus could be eligible
      • Also eligible if 1 in 10 teachers or 1 in 10 students lost their homes
      • Increased eligibility provisions created a huge number of campuses
      • If you’re eligible, the only rating you can possibly achieve is ‘met standard,’ if you needed improvement then you can only achieve ‘not rated’
      • District level ratings also adjusted, can only receive an ‘A,’ anything less is ‘not rated’
      • This has impact on improvement plans, risk assessments, etc.
    • Charter Schools
      • Approved 4 charters to be created this cycle
      • There is a pretty robust gauntlet that new applicants must move through, 21 began this cycle and only 4 “survived”
      • Similar to venture capital or angel investor process, applicants need to prove they are worth
      • Highlights 4 charters approved (Bloom Academy Charter School, Elementary School for Education Innovation, Promesa Academy, Rev A Preparatory Charter School)
    • Assessment
      • Had another online testing interruption/slowdown, in April had a connectivity slowdown lasting 20 minutes, had a different slowdown/login issue in May impacting 53k students
      • Test results for these students will be taken into account for this year’s campus and district ratings
      • Where I had waiver authority, I did – waived 5th & 8th, but Morath does not have waiver authority for EOCs, though likely less than a dozen impacted by this
      • Assessed LDs around $100k
    • A-F Accountability
      • Released proposed rules for HB 22 framework, taken extensive feedback from the public on these rules
      • Intending to highlight progress on A-F system, not intending to do a “deep dive”
      • System goes live this year, but ratings do not go live on a campus level this year
      • Rated on 3 domains: student achievement or school progress (70%), disaggregated student results (30%)
      • Began by proposing that 10% would be based on graduation rates, received feedback that it should be more, ended up doubling graduation rate weighting
      • Initially proposed not using coherent sequence of courses in system at all and only if they had achieved credentials, received feedback that credentialing is not quite where it needs to be, so will be giving partial credit for coherent sequence aligned with credentials at least for 2 years
      • When we began, we determined 12 hours of dual credit would indicate college readiness, now it is 3 hours of college credit in English, 3 hours in math, or 9 hours in any subject
      • Will be giving schools the better credit for school growth out of options (longitudinal student growth, etc.)
      • Including looking at growth on EOCs at high school levels
      • If schools maintain mastery performance year over year, you receive a full growth credit, if you maintain proficiency you receive a half credit; this is in addition to prior metrics
      • Relative performance model was altered, received largely positive feedback, but at the extremes of almost no poverty or almost total poverty then the math was not fitting appropriately, made changes to improve these edge cases
      • Received a lot of feedback from the federal government, wanted to avoid two accountability system; A-F is the only accountability system now
      • Inside Domain 3, made changes to match federal requirements, equally weight growth and proficiency, set performance targets to be the same for 5 years
      • Committed to policy goal of keeping targets the same for the next 5 years, but will change if there are changes needed or as directed by legislature or federal authorities
    • Bradley – Did you see the report saying there is a 25% decline in rural districts not taking Algebra 2? Very disappointing
      • Agrees
    • Hardy – Comm. Morath was not present for Algebra II discussion, “off the hook” for this
      • When I was on Dallas School Board we adopted a policy that all students needed Algebra II
    • Hardy – Appreciates response to Harvey and safety, shares personal experience with Fort Worth ISD school that rapidly improved due to Region 11 guidance and focus on “bubble” students
      • We have been relentlessly focused on school improvement, complements Region 11 team
      • HB 22 changes and A-F framework will help, can create campus improvement focusing on all students instead of a small subset
    • Ellis – If a child does not take Algebra II, they are not eligible for the Top 10% program, Lufkin ISD also implemented an Algebra II requirement
    • Ellis – Regarding safety, what about the 8-hour Mental Health First Aid course offered and what are your thoughts on adding this into Health curriculum?
      • Worthy of SBOE consideration as you go through Health TEKS, have convened an interdisciplinary team to look at this area
    • Perez-Diaz – Is there opportunity to discuss safety best practices from around different ISDs? Cites San Antonio ISDs working to support youth in challenging situations
      • Very valuable, there is the concept of schools safety committees at the district level, TEA does not have oversight over things in Chapter 37 issues like this, however
      • Clearly need to build more supports, working on what recommendations we can make from a practice and policy perspective
      • Part of the solution is ensuring children have appropriate coping skills
    • Bahorich – If there is anything in the Long Range Plan you see that we can emphasize on safety, would appreciate it
      • Resounding response is focused on mental health, training for teachers & staff, etc.
      • Requests from individuals teachers to look at this are overwhelming
    • Maynard – Looked at NAIP scores previously and saw decline in math, where are we in disaggregation of data?
      • We do have it disaggregated by race and other factors, will make sure we share this with you
      • But this is different than root cause analysis, have attempted, but difficult to determine
    • Maynard – Probably SBOE would like to know underlying cause
      • Out team has essentially been unable to answer this question, potentially worthy of an outside research group doing comprehensive analysis
      • Can’t look only at Texas, also need to look at other environments to compare to similar situations
      • We have opinions, but no clear reasons worthy of reporting out
    • Mercer – Will pass on to Hays County that law enforcement drop-ins are a best practice
    • Mercer – Regarding metal detectors, based on controlling entry points; how do we work with this for schools with a large number of spread out entry points?
      • Conversation with district leadership has shown there is no single approach, many recent buildings have a more formalized approach to entry and exit control
      • Retrofitting older buildings for this could be a challenge, cites Skyline High School with 43 entry and exit points, metal detectors are not a practical solution
      • Needs to be thought through at each local campus and each district
      • Would like to convene architects, etc., to come up with a recommended model for environments that foster education, but are also secure
      • Part of this is being thoughtful about physical campus safety, part is threat assessment to identify children or adults; there are management actions that can be taken, but they are not
    • Perez – IS the school safety information available online or can you share that with us?
      • Will share this with you
    • Perez – Regarding A-F 3 hours English or 3 hours math, or 9 hours in anything, 20% of district grade will be on time graduation
      • Best of 4, 5, or 6 year graduation; designed to recover dropouts
    • Perez – How does this factor into accountability
      • 20% per year
    • Perez – Maintaining mastery equals 1 point?
      • If you maintain mastery you get full credit for growth
    • Perez – So there is only one accountability system with no taper?
      • Taper will actually be made more robust, only one labeling system
    • Perez – Have received many emails regarding how demographics are scored, are demographic standards maintained across 5 years (e.g. Latino students @85 across 5 years, Anglo students @88 across 5 years)?
      • Exactly accurate, look at calculated scores across 20+ areas
    • Perez – Then for instance if for Latino students the score is 70 in English, how do we incentivize doing better in this area?
      • As long as you hit this you are fine in Domain 3, but you still need to see improvement to do well in Domain 1 or 2, which is 70% of the score
      • There is no perfect accountability system, Domain 3 was built to ensure there were no students that lacked management attention
    • Perez – And Domain 3 is only 30% so it can’t be solely relied on
      • Correct, one could argue that Domain 3 needs to be higher, but trying to account for all variables
      • Our system is the most robust out of all states
    • Bahorich – Is it such that districts could figure out their ratings before you do?
      • Every year post implementation, districts will be able to calculate and predict their own rating
    • Bahorich – Asks after outreach and education regarding how the process works
      • Looking to build out these information sources, one thing planned is a calculator, videos will be provided for some aspects, FAQs, etc.
    • Cortez – you will send us al school safety information, including the secret service report?
      • Will send out presentation and link to TAA with secret service report; encourages SBOE to read this report
    • Cortez – Have you already sent this out to Superintendents, etc.?
      • Yes
    • Cortez – Highlights safety seminars and meetings across the state, who does handle Chapter 37 issues and engages these campuses?
      • Only local school boards have oversight on Chapter 37, no other regulatory framework
      • Nothing prevents you from reaching out to individual boards and convening committees; districts can have safety committees
    • Cortez – There is not single system to get this together
      • We are trying to do just this, working with service centers and health science centers, have program based out of Texas Tech, involves 20 districts around Lubbock
      • Trying to replicate this in other areas
    • Cortez – Can the agency provide us with any info if we try and convene these meetings?
      • We have ¼ of one FTE that we can provide to attend these meetings, she also covers Harvey, etc.
      • Can help support this to the extent we have the capacity to
    • Cortez – Regarding the charter recommendations, one had principal experience & I don’t recall this from the interviews
      • Goes through different qualifications, there is one district administrator
    • Cortez – Have a concern with one applicant, they wanted to ask for criminal background checks on children; also had one that wanted to reach out to a mentor from KIPP, concerning for a charter school operating in the Houston area
    • Cortez – Also saw an 8/1 ratio for teacher/student, there might have been inaccurate or misleading information
      • Have yet to see a business plan that is prefect, question we were trying to answer is if management team has talents to bypass challenges
      • Have no reservations about the 4 charter applications, everywhere needs more ‘A’ campuses
      • That being said, if there is a specific compliance issue that came up, TEA works with each to ensure no compliance problems persist when the school goes live
    • Bahorich – The charter that wanted to reach out to KIPP was not going to invite them to run the school, but only reaching out for support
      • Cortez – I asked the question, still concerning
    • Cortez – Lubbock charter did show a clear outreach from the community & advocates for special needs children
    • Bahorich – We will talk more about this, just did not see the same KIPP connection