Volume 18, Issue 8
April, 2010
MCALLEN AFT NEWS
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
CHANGES THAT AFFECT YOU!
"Flexibility" Sought in State Education Rules:
Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott has followed through on a promise to school superintendents to comb through state regulations "to reduce the number of unnecessary rules." The commissioner in an April 9 letter to superintendents said he is "determined that this process results in greater flexibility for school districts to achieve there student achievement goals within the state's accountability system."
The process will start with stakeholder meetings from April 15 through July 23 to review all the formal administrative rules of the commissioner that have been established over the years to enforce state law.
These include many rules of importance to educators, affecting their duty-free lunch periods, their planning and preparation time, and class-size waivers, to name just a few. From July 26 through September 30, the commissioner's staff at the Texas Education Agency will review responses and come up with recommendations for revision of commissioner's rules, and formal proposals to change the commissioner's rules would begin in October.
The "soft" deadline for responses from stakeholders on the rules affecting educators would be June 30. The commissioner's timeline for rule review also indicates that the process may lead him to recommend changes in underlying statutes, which would have to be enacted by the legislature. He might conclude, for example, that school districts should have more flexibility on a given issue but that he lacks the authority to provide new leeway via changes in administrative rules.
This whole process will bear close watching. Some superintendents seem all too eager for the state to jettison important quality safeguards such as class-size limits in the name of budgetary belt-tightening--to the detriment of students.
Texas AFT Hotline 4/10
New Federal Aid Proposed to Avert School Layoffs
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, chair both of the Senate's education committee and of a key education-spending subcommittee, today proposed a plan to distribute $23 billion to school districts nationwide to avert hundreds of thousands of anticipated layoffs of employees.
Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, said that without the emergency spending students would suffer what U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan termed an "education catastrophe" as schools cut essential programs and staff.
The U.S. House already passed a similar measure as part of a larger spending package back in December, but the Senate has not acted on it. The fate of Harkin's new proposal could depend on cooperation from the Republican minority in the Senate.
At least one Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, didn't rule out supporting the bill today, the Washington Post reports. "We cannot get ahead by under funding education," said Shelby.
Reinterpreting "Highly Qualified" Standard for
Elementary Single-SubjectTeachers
Last fall the U.S. Department of Education, reinterpreting its own longstanding policy, advised the Texas Education Agency that the state was out of compliance with federal laws defining a "highly qualified" teacher.
The Department decided that those teaching a single subject in elementary grades would no longer be considered "highly qualified" if they held certification for that single subject without having passed an elementary generalist exam.
Thus, for example, a fully certified 4-8 math teacher with a college degree in that subject would be required to pass an elementary generalist exam--covering English language arts, math, science, and social studies--even if she taught only math courses.
Texas AFT protested the federal reinterpretation, noting that the prior federal interpretation represented sound educational policy and that it accorded with the intent of federal education law to ensure subject-matter expertise among teachers.
Now, in a positive step, the Department of Education has retreated somewhat from its fall 2009 reinterpretation.
In an October 19, 2009, letter, TEA had advised school districts of the new interpretation of "highly qualified."
Additional letters from TEA on January 22, 2010, and most recently on April 6, 2010, reported modifications and clarifications of the feds' original position.
Together, these three letters lay out requirements that local school districts and thus teachers must meet to ensure compliance with federal "highly qualified" teacher rules.
The current requirements for each case, reflecting the latest guidance from TEA, are as follows:
1. For all those teaching elementary subjects outside the core curriculum--including art, music, foreign languages, and so on--no new exam is required. This is true regardless of whether they are newly entering or experienced. For purposes of being considered "highly qualified" under federal law, these teachers may demonstrate subject-matter competency by passing either a certification exam for the single subject taught or a generalist certification exam.
2. Experienced elementary teachers (those who entered the profession in the 2008-2009 school year or earlier) who teach the core subjects of reading, writing, math, science, and social studies must establish subject-matter competency EITHER by passing a generalist certification exam OR through the "high objective uniform standard of evaluation" (HOUSE) option, which gives credit for teaching experience, college courses, and professional-development hours.
3. In two special cases, experienced elementary core-subject teachers may require additional steps to achieve and maintain "highly qualified" status. Those who had not been deemed "highly qualified" under the earlier interpretation or who had been deemed "highly qualified" but changed subject-matter assignment will have to demonstrate subject-matter competence by passing a generalist certification exam.
4. Newly entering teachers--those who entered the profession in the 2009-2010 school year or later--who teach core subjects must establish subject-matter competency by passing a generalist
certification exam.
certification exam.
Texas AFT Hotline 4/13/10