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January 16, 2015

Title: Failing Schools in Texas
Topic: Education

Discussed by Lance Izumi
with Pacific Research Institute (www.PacificResearch.org)

Pacific Research Institute recently did a study of the Texas public education system and the results will probably shock you! Lance Izumi, the Senior Director of Education Studies, says that many parents in middle to upper-middle class neighborhoods think their schools are just fine, when the opposite is most likely true.

In Texas, for example, PRI discovered that 60%, or 673 non-low-income schools, had half or more of their students in at least one grade level fail to reach the “recommended” level of satisfactory academic performance on a 2013 STAAR exam. In addition to this, schools have been “deflating” grade bench mark results so that it appears more students are passing each subject, when in reality less than half of the students are actually passing! How do the school district get away with this? Listen in as Lance explains the sad reality.

One way to determine if your child needs help is to sit down and read an age-appropriate book with them. If they cannot read the book without assistance, then something is wrong – not necessarily with your child, but with the system.

There is nothing wrong with being an involved parent – make monthly parent/teacher meetings, volunteer once a week in the class, help your child with their homework. Don’t just simply trust the “results”. After all, they are government-run tests and we all know how well that usually turns out.

Finally, what about school choice? Should parents be given more choice on where to send their child to school? Lance Izumi says that when Sweden began offering nation-wide school choice, the school systems improved dramatically because the principals now had to fight for their students. Should Texas and America begin universal school choice to improve competition, grades, and test scores?

Log on to www.PacificResearch.org  for more on this study.

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