Mike Falick's Blog

My Testimony Today before the House Higher & Public Education Finance Select Committee

Regular readers of this blog know that school districts in Texas are facing a significant funding crisis as a result of the limitations imposed in 2006 by House Bill 1.

Today, the House Select Committee on Higher & Public Education Finance held a meeting here in Houston.  I provided testimony to this Committee regarding the challenges that continue to face Spring Branch as a result of Robin Hood (Chapter 41) and House Bill 1.  You can read the testimony I provided here or by clicking the image below.

Additional information can be found in these prior posts here, here, here, and here.

Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News Article on the Crisis in School Finance Funding

I was quoted in a front page article by Gary Scharrer that appeared in today's Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News.  My quote:

Take the Houston-area Spring Branch Independent School District. Its budget projections show the district's current $58 million reserve fund will slide $68 million into the red within four years.

Unless a fix is enacted during next year's legislative session, school districts will be faced with difficult choices, including closing campuses and firing teachers, said Mike Falick, president of the Spring Branch school board.

"It's an untenable system. No business in the world would be able to survive with fuel, health insurance and salary increases and a flat revenue source," Falick said. "It's not sustainable.

Some school districts eventually will face "insolvency, some in a shorter time than others," he said.

The entire article appears below after the jump and can be found in the Houston Chronicle here and in the San Antonio Express News here.

Recap of the Board's Second Budget Advisory Meeting (and More on the Clear Picture of the Devastating Consequences of the Current School Finance System)

Tonight we had the second of our 2 Budget Advisory Committee meetings.  The Budget Advisory Committee process was established several years ago.  During these 2 meetings, each Board member selects a member from the community who participates in reviewing the proposed budget. 

This year, we also invited the members of our Texas Legislative delegation to participate.  Tonight, we had the honor of having Representatives Dwayne Bohac and Jim Murphy and members of the staffs of Senator Dan Patrick, Representative Beverly Woolley and Representative Jessica Farrar attend our meeting.

In addition to the documents that were provided to each member of the Budget Advisory Committee in advance of our first meeting on April 8 (which included an Executive Summary of the draft budget for FY2009 (2008-2009 school year), a Financial Summary of the draft budget, the District's Profile, and an Appendix), the following documents were provided to the Committee for tonight's meeting:

Salary and Benefit Information
Schedule of General Fund expenditures by function
Campus and Departmental budgets

As I posted on April 8 after our first meeting, the FY2009 proposed budget presents the stark reality of a broken school finance system.  Regular readers of this blog know that when the Texas Legislature "fixed" the school finance system in the Special Session in 2006, school district revenue was capped at the 2006-2007 revenue.  There was no provision for inflationary cost increases, and the revenue cap remains in place forever.  As a result, the 10% property valuation increases and resulting tax increases many Spring Branch residents have seen over the last 2 years (and will continue to see) do not remain in Spring Branch, but instead now benefit the State's general fund.  (For more information, please see these prior posts here and here).

And to repeat what I posted on April 8, perhaps the most troubling document contained in the materials provided is this Mulit-Year Projection that shows the devastating impact the changes to the school finance system have had and will continue to have on Spring Branch.  These projections show that, without legislative changes, Spring Branch will exhaust its fund balance by FY2012 (2011-2012 school year), and will be facing unimaginable budget deficits in just 2 years. 

These budgetary problems are a direct result of the failure of the legislation to include inflationary increases at a time when salaries, benefits, health insurance, energy, fuel, etc., all continue to rise.  Combine that with our ever-increasing Robin Hood contribution - estimated at $20 million next year, and you can see why the finance system must be overhauled.

In Spring Branch, we are fortunate that our Legislative delegation understands these issues and is prepared to assist the District.  They will need our help in January to address this impending crisis.

Recap of the Board's First Budget Advisory Meeting (and a Clear Picture of the Devastating Consequences of the Current School Finance System)

Tonight we had the first of our 2 Budget Advisory Committee meetings.  The Budget Advisory Committee process was established several years ago.  During these 2 meetings, each Board member selects a member from the community who participates in reviewing the proposed budget.  This year, we also invited the members of our Texas Legislative delegation to participate.  Tonight, we had the honor of having Representative Dwayne Bohac and members of the staffs of Representative Beverly Woolley and Jim Murphy attend our meeting.

Here are the documents that were provided to each member of the Budget Advisory Committee.  These documents include an Executive Summary of the draft budget for FY2009 (2008-2009 school year), a Financial Summary of the draft budget, the District's Profile, Campus & Department Budgets (to be provided at a later meeting), and an Appendix.

The FY2009 proposed budget presents the stark reality of a broken school finance system.  Regular readers of this blog know that when the Texas Legislature "fixed" the school finance system in the Special Session in 2006, school district revenue was capped at the 2006-2007 revenue.  There was no provision for inflationary cost increases, and the revenue cap remains in place forever.  As a result, the 10% property valuation increases and resulting tax increases many Spring Branch residents have seen over the last 2 years (and will continue to see) do not remain in Spring Branch, but instead now benefit the State's general fund.  (For more information, please see these prior posts here and here).

Perhaps the most troubling document contained in the materials provided is this Mulit-Year Projection that shows the devastating impact the changes to the school finance system have had and will continue to have on Spring Branch.  These projections show that, without legislative changes, Spring Branch will exhaust its fund balance by FY2012 (2011-2012 school year), and will be facing unimaginable budget deficits in just 2 years. 

These budgetary problems are a direct result of the failure of the legislation to include inflationary increases at a time when salaries, benefits, health insurance, energy, fuel, etc., all continue to rise.  Combine that with our ever-increasing Robin Hood contribution - estimated at $20 million next year, and you can see why the finance system must be overhauled.

In Spring Branch, we are fortunate that our Legislative delegation understands these issues and is prepared to assist the District.  They will need our help in January to address this impending crisis.

Dr. Klussmann Testifies before the Select Committee on Public School Accountability

Today, our Superintendent, Dr. Duncan Klussmann, provided some very good invited testimony before the Select Committee on Public School Accountability. 

Here is the link for the archive of today's hearing in which Dr. Klussmann testified.

This link will open in a Real Player automatically.  If the link does not work, try this link and click on the link for the March 27 hearing.

Dr. Klussmann's testimony begins at the 2:49:40 mark, so scroll ahead to that point unless you have lots of time.

Other information about the Select Committee, including the video archives, handouts, members, etc., is available here and at this prior post.

The Education Policy Analysis Archive: High Stakes Testing has a Negative Affect on Low Income Students

The Education Policy Analysis Archive has posted a report entitled Will Standards-Based Reform Increase Cultural Capital Among Low-Income and Minority Students?.  The report concludes that

these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had mixed effects on students’ opportunities to acquire embodied and institutionalized cultural capital.

The report's abstract appears below, and the full text of the report is available here.

__________________________________________

Will Standards-Based Reform Increase Cultural Capital Among Low-Income and Minority Students?

Won-Pyo Hong, Peter Youngs

Abstract

This article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether high-stakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to acquire cultural capital. While students’ performance on state or district tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several studies indicate that these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had mixed effects on students’ opportunities to acquire embodied and institutionalized cultural capital. These findings are consistent with the work of Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a), and others who have written of the likely negative repercussions of high-stakes testing and accountability policies.

Full Text: PDF

Select Committee on Public School Accountability Will Hold Its First Meeting Today at 9:00a: Here's the Link to Watch the Hearing

The Public School Accountability Committee which has been established by Senate Bill 1031 to address the issues with the present Texas Accountability system, will hold its first meeting today.  The meeting begins at 9:00a and can be watched here.  You will need RealPlayer to watch, which can be downloaded for free at www.realplayer.com.

Information about the members of the Committee is available here.

Joe Smith at texasisd.com has done a very thorough job of explaining the history and purpose of the Committee.  His article, posted today, can be viewed here.

Here's the posting for the meeting:

*Update: Click here to listen to the archived broadcast of this meeting, which lasted almost 7 hours.

Sen. Kyle Janek Announces His Retirement from the Texas Senate

Senator Kyle Janek, who represents a portion of Spring Branch, announced today that he will retire from the Texas Senate effective June 2, 2008.  A special election will be called to fill his unexpired term.

Senator Janek and his staff have always been responsive, and in the last session, he authored and lead the charge to get Senate Bill 8 (the Steroid bill) passed.  He has also been a champion of limitations on eminent domain and securing personal property rights.

Edvance Report Blasts the State Center on Its Pre-K School Readiness Initiative: Says the Center's Budget is Not Transparent and Shows the Center has Spent 40% -- $8.6 million of Your Taxpayer Dollars -- for Its Own Internal Administrative Expenses

Last Spring, I testified in Austin on Senate Bill 50 and my concerns about the State Center, operated by Dr. Susan Landry, at the UT Health Science Center in Houston.  The State Center has created a pre-K curriculum that it has been selling to school districts throughout Texas.  I believe that one of the  problems with the State Center's curriculum is that it has not been subject to any review to determine success by any outside group.  In addition, there has been a push to impose the State Center's curriculum on Districts like Spring Branch, despite the outstanding success enjoyed by our program.

During the Spring, one of the things that the State Center highlighted in its favor was that it would be independently reviewed by Edvance with a report to be made publicly available by early Fall 2007.

I have been asking for the Edvance report for several months, and have been told by the State Center that the report was not available and/or had not been approved, and this despite the fact that $375,000 taxpayer dollars were allocated for the report.  Indeed, as of today, I am unaware of anyplace (other than this blog post) where you can easily obtain a copy of this report.

I finally obtained the report from another source and have now had the chance to review its contents.

The report is dated October 26, 2007, further calling into question the delay in releasing it to the public.

The report is a large file that I have broken down into the following parts which can be downloaded for your review: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

The headline from the report should be this quote taken from page 91:

Presently the State Center operates in the netherworld of state finance; the budget of the State Center is not transparent, expenditures and performance are not recapitulated for policy makers and a key and growing public school program is being operated not out of the Texas Education Agency but a medical school in Houston, Texas

This quote is especially troubling when you consider that the State Center has had $78 million allocated to its Pre-K readiness program in the last 4 years.  Of that amount, the Center has spent only $21.8 million with fully 40% of those funds totaling $8.6 million of taxpayer dollars on its own administration, i.e., none of that money reached a classroom.

On the expenditure side, the report further condemns the State Center for its failure to identify its expenditures in a manner that would allow for a cost allocation analysis.  It is impossible to determine how your tax dollar is being spent.  As an aside, the State Center reports that it has paid employee benefits that total approximately 21% of each employees salary.

The report further states: TEEM communities have received very little funds (in the form of cash) since the inception of the TEEM initiative.  With $21.8 million already spent, this is a very surprising revelation.

Equally problematic is that the report found no statistically significant benefit from the State Center in terms of student improvement.

In addition, one of the principal concerns I had in the Spring is that the State Center has developed the test to determine whether its own program is successful, yet it has refused to share the methodology it uses for that test with the public.  As a result, the data sources for the Edvance report, all of which has come from State Center data, is highly suspect given the Center's lack of transparency.

Finally, on August 31, 2007, I posted about my concern that the State Center's model is the equivalent of high stakes testing for 4 and 5 year olds.  The report does nothing to alleviate this concern, and indeed, the amount of money flowing (inefficiently) through the State Center, and its lack of public visibility and scrutiny only serve to enhance this problem.

I have submitted the following questions to Dr. Landry at the State Center, but have not yet received a response.  I will post the responses to these questions once they are received.

From: Mike Falick [mailto:mfalick@swbell.net]
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 12:29 PM
To: 'Mcmanis, Lilla D'; 'Landry, Susan '
Cc: 'Mike Falick'
Subject: Edvance Report

Dear Dr. McManis and Dr. Landry,

 

Please disregard my prior request concerning the Edvance report on TEEM.  I have obtained a copy of the report from another source.

 

I would like to give you the opportunity to respond to the following issues raised by the report:

 

    1.    The Cost Description (Chapter 3), states that the State Center has been awarded $78m over four years and spent $21.8m.  What is the intended use of the remaining balance?

    2.    Why were the 2006-2007 applications for the TEEM program not available for the evaluation team to review (page 31)?

    3.    Why has the State Center not identified specific cost drivers so a cost allocation model can be developed (page 44)?

    4.    How are the faculty and classified salaries, other wages, benefits, operating expenses, and indirect costs allocated to the individual TEEM classrooms (page 44)?  If they are not currently allocated, why not?

    5.    The expenditure category (Chapter 3, page 47) shows State Center General Operating expenditures of $8.59m over FY 2004-1/31/07 which represents approximately 40% of the total expended by the State Center.  Is this accurate?

    6.    Is the report accurate when it states on page 48 that "TEEM communities have received very little funds (in the form of cash) since the inception of the TEEM initiative?

    7.    Is the TBRS referenced throughout the report for both teacher and student evaluation publicly available?  Are the performance measurements publicly available?

    8.    Do you agree with the report on page 70 where it states "There was only one instance . . . in which the difference was significant for the overall sample, and no instances in which the English subsample yielded significant results?

    9.    Do you agree with the report on page 73 where it states regarding teacher behavior variables that "None of the findings were statistically significant . . . ."

    10.    Is it accurate to say that the data in the report based on the TBRS comes from the evaluation instrument developed internally by the State Center to judge the success of the TEEM model?

    11.    Do you agree with the report on page 76 where it states that "For Math Activities and Phonological Awareness Activities, although there were no statistically significant differences in gains, both had small negative effect sizes?

    12.    Does the State Center report "unique student identifiers" to any outside third parties (as suggested on page 84)?

    13.    Is the report accurate when it states that the second year did not include a true control group?  If so, why is that the case?

    14.    Do you agree with the report on page 91 where it states "Presently the State Center operates in the netherworld of state finance; the budget of the State Center is not transparent, expenditures and performance are not recapitulated for policy makers and a key and growing public school program is being operated not out of the Texas Education Agency but a medical school in Houston, Texas?  If so, why is the State Center's budget not transparent, and readily available to the public for scrutiny and inspection?

    15.   In Appendix B the report references datasets provided by the State Center.  Where/how was this data collected?

    16.    Is there longitudinal student data for the students who participated in Year 1 or Year 2, and if so, why was that data not utilized in the report?

    17.    Why was the Edvance report, which is dated October 26, 2007, not widely disseminated at the time of publication?

    18.    Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the Edvance report and its findings?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to respond to this email.

Mike Falick

The Texas Association of School Administrators Publishes List of New State Unfunded/Underfunded Mandates

The Texas Association of School Administrators has published its list of unfunded/underfunded mandates that came out of the Legislative Session completed last Spring.

The bills on the list are good bills with good goals.  However, the ever increasing amount of unfunded and underfunded mandates costs Spring Branch millions of dollars each year. 

For more information about the cost of these mandates to Spring Branch, see this prior post.