Judge Dietz, continued from page 8
as they put more money in — was
now widening. The English-language
learner (ELL) students, they were not
catching the train. And what was really sad is that there was evidence in
the trial that if the students stayed
in the ELL program four to six years,
they performed better in every test —
SAT, any of the STAAR tests — than
any other demographic group. Better
than rich white kids? Yeah. They
had developed cognitive abilities in
two different languages. So it takes
a period of time. But if they do it,
the children will succeed more often
than not.
TO: So this was one specific cost
with clear evidence of results.
JD: One really important point,
which was certainly not addressed
[by the Supreme Court]: With economically disadvantaged students,
the undisputed testimony is that
if you didn’t grow up economically
disadvantaged, when you arrived at
school you had roughly a 1,500-word
vocabulary and understood probably
another 1,000 words. An economically disadvantaged child shows up
knowing 500 words or less. What do
you do about that?
The undisputed testimony is that it
takes about time and a half over a
period of four to six years to overcome the poverty of their experience.
And you do it through preschool.
You try to get them into a learning
situation before kindergarten. When
they’re in school, you try to have
after-school programs, you try to pull
their parents in to see the school not
as an enemy but as a friend. You
try to have summer programs that
are not just remedial but try and
get them excited about education.
Because it’s the economically disadvantaged people who are substantially all of the dropouts that you lose
beginning in eighth grade and ninth
grade. And is the Legislature doing
anything about that?
It’s undisputed, it takes 50 percent
more of the resources to educate an
economically disadvantaged child;
60 percent of our population in this
state is currently economically disadvantaged and it’s only getting worse.
TO: What struck you as the
strongest indicators that schools
weren’t getting enough money?
10
JD: So, we want to make students
career- and college-ready? Look at
the number of Texas graduates who
have to take remedial English and
remedial math in college. Take a look
at eighth grade, and the number of
students who are still in school in
the 12th grade, and you’re missing
a whole lot of people. Isn’t that kind
of a failure? Here’s one I’ve gotten
an audible gasp at. I was speaking
in Lubbock [and mentioned Texas’
No. 43 rank in per-student funding].
Think about Louisiana, or Arkansas,
or New Mexico, they all spend more
money. And we’re no longer 43rd.
We’ve slipped to 45th. And here’s
the most amazing thing: In 1996 we
were 24th in the country. There were
two Democrats in the room — my
wife and myself — and the rest were
Republicans, but they gasped. I said,
“A football coach with this kind of
record would’ve been fired and run
out of town.” There’s this gradual
diminution of the services that our
government is providing because
we’re being starved of money.
Somebody ought to sit
there and say, ‘Kids, pool
your lunch money together
and see if you can’t hire a
lobbyist.’ Except 60 percent
of our kids don’t have lunch
money...
TO: When Governor Greg Abbott
says he wants Texas to have the
best education system in the
country, but then year after year
we rank so low in per-student
funding, what’s your reaction?
JD: Personally, the worst part of
this is that they were doing this to
our kids. Kids don’t have a lobbyist.
Somebody ought to sit there and
say, “Kids, pool your lunch money
together and see if you can’t hire a
lobbyist.” Except 60 percent of our
kids don’t have lunch money and
they get free school lunch because
they’re economically disadvantaged.
They’re doing it to the children. So
what do I think? Somebody should
be ashamed. Where would any of us
be but for our education?
TO: In your courtroom, I kept
thinking what a great window onto
the entire state that trial must
have given you. What lessons
about Texas stick with you the
most from that time?
JD: A couple of impressions I had: As
a class of witness, I have never seen
a smarter, more savvy group as a
whole than school superintendents.
They’ve got to be experts on the content, and they’ve got to be experts on
running the organization; they have
to answer to a board, and then they
have to go out into a community and
drum up support from local businesses to raise the taxes they need to
run the school. I must have had 70
school superintendents testify, and
I never saw one that I wasn’t impressed with.
The second thing: There was a
teacher who taught his students in
Brownsville, Texas, to play chess.
And eventually, Brownsville had, as
I recollect, 4,000 kids participating
in chess, far more than any other
intramural activity. It had spread so
that, when I first saw it, it was kids
in Harlingen who won a state championship. Then it caught on with the
University of Texas at Brownsville.
They didn’t have a football team,
but they had one of the preeminent
collegiate chess teams in the country. And this was one teacher. I know
there are some slugs that are there
just to pick up a paycheck, but in
general you are going to find some
really smart and dedicated people
trying to do better for our children
under an enormous bureaucracy.
That’s an image that just never goes
away for me.
The third impression is just how
devoid of caring the Legislature is,
concerning this responsibility. If they
had to pass a tax increase, and they
pass a tax increase and the public
runs them out of office, OK. But I
think their oath is to preserve the
constitution. It’s not to get re-elected.
Goddamn! What is more important
than education?
The Texas Observer is an Austin-based
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TASBO REPORT | AUGUST 2016