By Ken Mercer Member: State Board of Education
Published: 03-24-08
The State Board of Education (SBOE) is now reviewing the English Language Arts and Reading (ELAR) standards for the next decade. The SBOE must determine a path for radical change that moves our 4.5 million public school students from near the bottom of performance in national assessments to the top of our fifty states in graduation and college readiness.
Real change for any legacy system is difficult. For those controlling and managing any current system and policies change is especially hard.
In business those who succeed recognize and embrace the need for positive meaningful change. Organizations that blindly continue with failed policies and procedures go out of business.
Meaningful change must involve a thorough three-pronged analysis of: 1) your experts 2) the competition and most important 3) your customers.
I publicly applaud the work of our public school ELAR experts. Texas’ best educators are the “salt of the earth.” Many left their classrooms to testify at several SBOE meetings. Their coalition of educators and unions sent the SBOE a deluge of emails phone calls and letters to ensure we listened to the results of their $85000 ELAR study.
Thanks for your valuable input. You have been heard.
The result is the new proposed ELAR standards document now available online by clinking “hot topics” at: www.tea.state.tx.us. The SBOE will hear public comments at our March 26th-28th meeting. Stakeholders have sixty days until the May SBOE meeting to submit additional input.
Now the SBOE must balance the new ELAR standards with input from the national competition and our customers. Many dislike the term “customers.” Caution: In the real world if you don’t know and understand your customer you are out of business.
Our primary customers are the Texas public school students and their parents. Secondary customers are the taxpayers and the employers of Texas.
But is the growth of private schools and home schooling a message from our customers?
Ten years ago coupled with the ”Voice of the Customer” crying for change and the empirical evidence of poor national rankings in reading and writing a move was initiated to shift from a failed theory of “Whole Language” instruction to a more “Phonics-based” ELAR curriculum.
Unfortunately in 1997 the opposition forced the votes on the SBOE to kill true phonics-based curriculum requirements.
Five years after that vote the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECD) published a study stating that of our top high school graduates who are accepted to a four-year college or university thirty percent are enrolled in remedial classes in English Reading and/or Math.
This is what I call “Education Purgatory.” You are not a senior in High School. You are not a freshman in college. You are in “Grade 13” – up to one full year of remedial or developmental courses.
Today ten years after that 1997 vote the figures are worse. In November of 2007 the Commission for a College Ready Texas with input from groups such as the THECB NCEA (National Center for Educational Accountability) and the ACT and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) published a 115-page report that summarized:
“The Commission received evidence from ACT the THECB and NCEA
to indicate that Texas high school graduates are more poorly-prepared to
succeed in college coursework than most of their peers in other states.”
The report continued:
“The Commission learned that the lack of college readiness of high school
graduates is a problem nationally but according to ACT worse in Texas.
Data from the THECB showing that 50 percent of college freshmen in Texas
are enrolled in remedial or developmental education compared to 28 percent
across the U.S. support ACT’s findings.”
These results are not solely the fault of the tools and methods of the current (1997) ELAR standards. Blame must also be placed on the value our society places on education and a lack of parental involvement.
However remediation rates that are almost double the national average raise a huge red flag.
God bless our best public school educators. They are doing the best they can with standards that desperately need to be updated. The SBOE now has a historic opportunity to bless our educators and the next decade of public school students.
We must ensure the new ELAR standards are rigorous and easily understood by our 1200 Independent School Districts and more than 7000 public school campuses.
These new standards must also be clear quantifiable and measurable – by grade.
Parents and students the SBOE will continue to hear from our ELAR experts. We thank them. Now your voices those most impacted by the standards for English Language Arts and Reading must be heard. Please email us at SBOESupport@tea.state.tx.us with your thoughts and ideas.
Former State Representative Ken Mercer was elected to the SBOE in 2007. He chaired the 2008 Teacher of the Year Committee and is the Vice-Chair of the Committee on School Initiatives.
