Felix Alvarado On Education

Felix Alvarado is a candidate for governor in the Democratic primary. Since most of the candidates for governor, especially Democrats, are emphasizing education as one of the centerpieces of their campaign, I thought you should know about Felix Alvarado's ideas on how to improve education in Texas. Personally, I think his plan makes a lot of sense. Here is what Mr. Alvarado has to say about education in Texas:

The major problem with education in Texas is the fear on the part of its leadership that they will be blamed for its failing. This fear must be dealt with in the open as we recognize that today’s problems with Texas education can be traced back to our Governor and Legislature’s ongoing decisions to ignore the problems or blame someone else.

In Texas, nearly 2/3 of high school graduates who go on to college or a university are required to take non-credit remedial courses at Texas universities and universities around the country.

Over 30 % of Elementary and Middle School teachers are either not certified to teach at all or are being forced to teach subjects where they have little or no background and where they are not certified. In our high schools that number is more than 11% of non-certified teachers.

Why is this happening here among our Texas schools?

My recommendations will not require any tax increases, just a new way of looking at how state programs are funded.

1. The efforts of our state leaders have been focused on who is to blame and not on how to fix the problems. It seems to me that punishing the teaching staff and community served by a failing school is not a reasonable approach.

2. Instead of punishing failing schools, we should recognize that the school has problems, target those specific problems with additional materials. , technology and personnel and begin helping that staff and community to reverse the trend and work with the school to make it an acceptable learning community where the question “How does this affect the Children” is asked before every decision is made.

3. Standardized testing needs to be used diagnostically to identify needs in a school community so that competent people provide aid to an ailing school.

Instead it has become a means of blaming Principals, staff, teachers and the community.

4. We should be using standardized testing as a minimum standard, rather than as the goal of our educational community.

5. If the parents in the school community do not have enough money to provide students with the materials and technology that they need to surpass the minimum standard of standardized testing, the state and the businesses in the community need to provide those needed materials, rather than punishing the school and parents. If parents in a school community do not speak or understand English the community and the State must intervene and provide incentives for the families to be able to communicate in both their native language as well as English so they can help their children read and study to be able to live up to their potential.

6. Teachers should be given meaningful opportunities to learn languages spoken by students in their school, to allow better communication with the student, parents and interested members of the students’ families and communities.

7. Your Governor needs to understand that we cannot train students to be successful in the 21st Century when there is one 5 year old computer in our classrooms. Classrooms need to have up-to-date computers with current software available for each student to prepare for whatever the world will need when they graduate.

8. Most rural and some urban districts in Texas are doing a great job of preparing students to live in the 20th century. However these students will be forced to compete for colleges and jobs, not just in their county, not just in Texas and not just in the US, but in the flexible worldwide economy of the 21st Century.

9. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that today's graduates are likely to have 7 – 10 different careers in their life time and that of those 7 – 10 careers; more than 5 don't exist yet. We need to be preparing students to be able to function in this fast paced and ever changing world they will live the rest of their lives.

10. Teachers in Texas are paid poorly; there is no doubt about that. 33 states pay their teachers better than does Texas. Now I am not saying that paying teachers more will make them better teachers. They are, for the most part, highly committed people who have the best interests of our children at heart.

But paying teachers more, would encourage better qualified teachers, who are not now teaching, to fill the positions now given to non-certified teachers. This may convince new teachers that they can make an adequate living as a teacher. Today nearly 80% of new teachers leave the profession in the first 3 years.

11. Every decision about education needs to include the question

“How will this affect the children.”

For the past decade and a half this question has NOT been part of Texas' planning for our children's education. Instead the questions have been more like “What can we do to limit funding for education so I can fund my pork barrel project?” And “How can we keep the people of Texas from finding out that the biggest problem with education is the State Legislature and the Governor?”

12. Texas has one of the fastest growing populations in the country. Yet there is an artificial cap on the amount of property tax that citizens in a school district can authorize for their school budgets.

13. Our legislature has consistently under funded education, statewide, by failing to budget amounts dictated by their own funding standards.

Legislatures and Governors have arranged for school districts to not be able to deal effectively with large numbers of new children moving into their areas. Every dollar of increased property tax these new families contribute is offset by a reduction in state funding, so that school districts available funding remains flat with the exception of the Average Daily Attendance funding (ADA).

When was the last time that your Governor asked the question “How does this affect our children?” If he did, the answer would be “They are not being treated well by their state.”

Now, how do we provide funding for all of this?

Each week thousands of good Texas citizens cross the border into other states to be entertained at their Casinos and associated tourist destinations. It does not make sense to me that all of that tax money should go to our border states when we have so many needs right here in Texas.

A well-regulated casino industry would pour millions, tens of millions and perhaps hundreds of billions of new tax money into the state without raising anyone’s taxes. If you don’t think we have gambling here in Texas today, go to any convenience store on Wednesday or Saturday afternoon or evening and see the people lined up to pay the voluntary tax of the Texas Lottery.

We have the ability to begin correcting the problems that neglect and apathy from the previous Republican administrations have created while deflecting the blame from themselves.