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| Investing In Our Children's Education |
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"Investing in our children's education promotes prosperity for all."
State Representative Mike Villarreal
Texas has one of the strongest economies in the world, but that will only continue if we invest in our future workforce. When we invest in our children's education we create opportunity for them and prosperity for their families and our community. College graduates earn one million dollars more on average than high school graduates over their lifetime. They have the opportunity to follow their dreams and become productive citizens that reinvest in their communities.
Today, Texas is failing to make a smart, responsible investment in education. But this is a challenge that we can fix. We need to go from being 49th in the nation in high school completion rates to having a world class educational system for all Texas students. We can ensure that students have access to an affordable college education, and that our students complete their education prepared to excel in the workforce.
We won't improve the educational experience of our children with money alone. It also requires our best reform ideas, and parental and community involvement.
Early Education at Home and School
Research shows the first three years of life are critical for healthy brain development. The more we can shift our investment to these early years, the greater success our children will achieve in the following years. Research in Texas has found that every $1.00 invested in high-quality pre-k returns at least $3.50 to our communities by boosting school success and lifetime earning. Unfortunately, we know children receive different levels of nurturing and mental stimulation during these early years. For example, researchers have found that four-year-olds in poor families have heard 32 million fewer words than those whose parents are professionals, and therefore have starkly more limited vocabularies when they start school. Consequently, some children show up to kindergarten ready to learn while others fall behind starting on day one.
We can change this by providing state funding for high-quality voluntary full-day pre-kindergarten. To expand access to pre-k, I passed a bill in 2007 to include foster children in public pre-k and another bill in 2009 to enroll more currently eligible children. To ensure that pre-k truly provides the boost that we know it can, we must continue to improve the quality of instruction. One step is limiting class size, as I have attempted to do. We must also involve parents in their children's education from the time they are born. That's why I passed legislation to give parents more information about reading to their children and other critical parenting skills.
Great Teachers and Principals in Every Neighborhood School
In 2008, I sent all my House colleagues a report from The Education Trust entitled "Their FAIR Share: How Texas-Sized Gaps in Teacher Quality Shortchange Low-Income and Minority Students." The report said:
"Year after year, Hispanic, African-American and low-income students are less likely to be assigned to teachers who know their subject matter, less likely to be in classrooms with experienced teachers and less likely to attend schools with a stable teaching force…..Fortunately, research also confirms that changing current teacher distribution patterns would have a tremendously positive effect on low-income and minority students."
By improving teacher quality in every school, and encouraging parents to enroll their children at their neighborhood school, we will ensure that all students and neighborhoods have an opportunity to succeed.
We can do that by recruiting our best students and professionals into the teaching profession and offering bonuses and loan forgiveness for working in hard-to-staff schools and subjects, such as math, science and bilingual education. The profession will be more attractive if we pay teachers more, give campuses more autonomy and end the micromanagement and administrative burden that is particularly heavy for teachers at low-performing schools. In addition to improving professional development for all educators, we need to give struggling teachers individualized support and then remove them from the classroom if they don't improve. Some steps I've taken include an amendment to HB 3 to make sure we develop a plan for placing experienced certified teachers in schools that perform poorly in our accountability system; my amendment to allow individual districts rather than the state to develop teacher incentive pay programs; and funding to bring Teach for America teachers into more communities, including San Antonio.
Supporting and Innovating our Schools
We need to ensure that schools have the funding they need, and we need to leverage our financial and other resources, such as volunteer time and our ideas. When we find innovative ideas that work, we need to invest in them. When we find wasteful or inefficient expenditures, we need to redirect these funds to better uses.
In 2006 I was one of a just a few legislators to vote against tying the hands of school districts trying to raise funding for our students. The next year I filed legislation, HB 1876, to allow districts to raise revenue from developers building new neighborhoods that fill their schools. I also helped to secure a pay raise for active teachers. To encourage innovation and develop new education ideas, I've supported the expansion of high-performing charter schools. We should replicate the innovations that have worked in charter schools, such as longer school days and weeks, more autonomy for principals and teachers, recruitment of top teachers, and specialized missions for each campus, such as the arts, dual language instruction, dropout recovery, or college prep.
Testing and Accountability Reform
Testing and accountability play an important role in setting high standards for our educational system, but in recent years we have begun to lose perspective and control. Teachers spend too many days administering and preparing for tests instead of educating students so they can pass any test that comes their way. In some cases, students only learn what the state tests. This means that many elementary students miss out on important subjects such as social studies. Additionally, over the years we have increased the punishment for low performance instead of rewarding high performance and assisting those schools and students with low scores
In 2009, I had the opportunity to serve on the Conference Committee that finalized the reform bill for our school accountability system. While we need to do much more, I was pleased to include provisions that limit the number of practice TAKS days and instead focus on providing quality teachers to campuses with low scores. I also exempted from TAKS tests the unschooled refugee students that have been placed at a handful of schools in San Antonio and other communities. We also reduced the test pressure on 3rd graders and started measuring progress rather than absolute scores.
Healthy and Well-Rounded Students
Effective classroom instruction and high test scores are part of academic success, but we must also broaden our understanding of successful students and schools. If we want students to succeed in the classroom and in life, we need to make sure they are healthy and well-rounded.
In response to parents' concerns about recess disappearing from elementary schools, I passed HB 366 in 2007 to require districts to establish a local recess policy based on the documented physical, social and academic benefits of recess. In 2009, I helped maintain fine arts and physical education as required high school courses, and filed legislation to prohibit medically inaccurate information in sex education classes. By enrolling more children in CHIP, we can also ensure they have the glasses they need to see the board and the care they need to go to school everyday and focus on learning. Finally, we also need to make sure students are eating enough nutritious food at school to pay attention in class and maintain healthy weight levels.
We must invest in every Texas student who is prepared to pursue a college degree by making college affordable. Today, too many bright students with limited means fail to apply for college admissions. Many students who do attend college place a heavy financial burden on their families, or struggle to work long hours while keeping up their grades. Over the years the state legislature has contributed to this problem by failing to adequately fund its main college scholarship program, TEXAS Grants, or by cutting higher education funding. In 2003, rather than raising TEXAS Grant funding to keep up with growing demand, the state legislature instead passed a budget that scaled back the program. With insufficient state funding, tuition rates at Texas public universities increased 45 percent between 2003 and 2007
As a member of the House Appropriations Committee on Education in 2009, I led the effort to increase TEXAS Grant funding to give 36,000 more students a chance to afford college. Along with better financial aid, we must control costs for items such as textbooks and help families save for college. The Texas Tomorrow Fund II that we passed in 2007 will help by allowing parents to buy tuition credits at today's prices. We can also encourage savings by working with employers and others to match low and moderate income families' contributions to the state's 529 college savings plan or similar accounts.
Integrating Community Colleges
Half of the students in public higher education in Texas attend community colleges. There is a growing demand in our economy for workers with a community college associate's degree. Community colleges also serve as an avenue into higher education for the growing number of "non-traditional" older and part-time students while providing an excellent bridge for students who are not prepared financially or academically to go straight to four-year schools. Yet our budgets, transfer policies, financial aid systems and higher education strategies under-utilize our community college system.
Every community college student who works hard and completes their first two years of course work deserves a place at one of our state's universities. We can improve that transition by developing a clear pathway for transfer students. Instead of cutting state support for community colleges, as the Governor's veto temporarily did in 2007, we need to provide funding that reflects the critical strategic role they play in our state's economy and education system. We need to improve financial support for their students through efforts such as the JET program I established.
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State Representative Mike Villarreal - Texas House District 123 San Antonio
P.O. Box 830601, San Antonio, Texas 78283 - (512) 382-0357
Paid for by Mike Villarreal Campaign
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