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Today's Texas State Board Work Session agenda looks like a sleeper--adjusting graduation requirements to align with recently-passed state legislation, and "considering strategies to achieve cost efficiencies in the adoption process." But what they're talking about is whether to delay adoptions or cut back on their scope. I'm reporting, live, as it happens...

9:21 am
GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS
House Bill 3 removed some state requirements (Health, Speech, etc.) to allow students greater flexibility, among other changes. (Local districts can continue to require all of these as part of their local rules.) Now the Board must adjust its rules to align, and decide details like when the new requirements should apply. But the Agency attorney says that because most of the legislation loosens requirements, it takes place for the 2009-2010 school year, as written in the bill because no students are disadvantaged.

9:30 am Parenting and Paternity Awareness/Alcohol Awareness in Health Classes
House and Senate Bills passed give teachers the ability to modify the order of the program in Health Class. Students under 14 need parental consent to participate. Another bill requires alcohol awareness program in all Health Classes. Barbara Cargill points out how odd it is that all of these requirements are being made of a class that is no longer required.

10:30 am As the Legislature pushed for more flexibility, there are a raft of courses proposed to fulfill specific graduation requirements to allow flexibility for the fourth year of math and science (including courses in Fine Arts and CTE--Career and Technology Education). Pat Hardy is emphatically opposed, saying that this is a way to water down the curriculum. Rene Nunez is worried about whether universities require 3 or 4 years of math. David Bradley complains that the "Minimum" plan is stigmatized and students are steered away from it, but universities look at coursework and test scores, not the level of diploma.

11:15 Now there is a course requirement for Fine Arts, according to new legislation. The Board is concerned because Technology Applications was removed as a high school requirement. One option is to move it to middle school, as maybe a semester course. (Pat Hardy says kids know enough about how to turn on machines and print that it could be done in a semester, and not clutter middle school too badly.) Decisions will be pending until full school board meeting.

11:45 Speech is part of English/Language Arts--it is a foundation course, and the legislation affected only enrichment courses. So the Board can maintain a statewide requirement for speech, but the half-credit that speech makes the number of credits for graduation a little funky. Allegedly, Agency staf has discovered that the TEKS for this course wind up being covered during 4 years of Language Arts. Pat Hardy can't believe that those who take Debate don't get credit for fulfillng a speech requirement.

12:05 Lunch Break

1:15 Geraldine "Tincy" Miller claims coaches are behind this plan to loosen requirements--she points out that 7 electives could be all athletics or athletics-substitutions (team sports, band, etc.). She wants to limit the number of substitutions to be allowed to cut down on abuses.

1:50
The Agency warned the Board that they need $38M to be cut because the Legislature didn't appropriate enough money to pay for the adoption of Proclamation 2010 (Reading and literature). Even after scaling back purchasing to 103% of enrollment instead of 105% of enrollment, there's still not enough money. (The extra is to account for replacement costs and expansion of schools.) The Agency asked all the publishers to re-bid and voluntarily reduce their prices. Most cut prices between 1 and 7% --not enough to solve the 10-15% problem. The Agency is going to try to look at past ordering patterns--not all districts order everything they're entitled to. (If YOU want details from the list, e-mail me at m.grayson@sixredmarbles.com. I've got the data.)

The Board is hanging tough--nobody wants to postpone adoptions. So they may re-set the maximum allowable cost lower given the reduced bids, possibly pricing some publishers (who didn't reduce their price) out of the market.

Another wrinkle is that those with electronic materials are making offerings like state-wide licenses that would be much cheaper than buying material per-student or per-district. The more districts that take advantage of open-source textbooks, they are entitled split the savings with the Agency. The Agency could use its 50% to reduce this problem, but nobody knows how may districts will go for this, or what kinds of open-source materials will be available.

Under pointed questioning from Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, Agency staff said that even though the Board will not be formally approving or adopting the electronic or open-source textbooks, the Board will be allowed to name people to serve on the committees that approve the materials.

The Board will look at amending the next proclamation 2011 (language arts, spelling, handwriting, etc.). Anita Givens from the Texas Education Agency urges them to leave proclamation 2012 alone until 2010 (reading) and 2011 are sorted out.

Social Studies TEKS-writing teams re-convene on September 16 and 17.

2:49 pm Adjournment