From the ACC website:

“Austin Community College makes it easy to take the next steps toward your future with an open-door policy that encourages all students to explore all the options available.

You are eligible for admission if you are:

*A high school graduate or GED recipient

*A non-high school graduate who is at least 18 years old and can demonstrate skill proficiencies that support an ability to benefit from college-level instruction

*A current high school student who has completed the sophomore year or a home-schooled student who has reached 16 and is academically prepared for college-level instruction”

Does the study “Diplomas Count” follow up on the graduated students to see how many successfully complete college? Tech schools? Employment? It takes more than guaranteeing each SMHS graduate automatic admission to local colleges or $500 thrown at them. What happens to our graduates after the $500 is gone and they are enrolled in college-level classes? How do TSU professors rank SMHS graduates?

Also, I have to wonder if we would have more students in bilingual programs, if we had the proper staffing levels. Despite a proportionately HUGE Hispanic population, only 8% of our students are in bilingual programs, compared to 16% statewide.

I don’t know about availability of bilingual teachers, either. It seems like we could offer training for the ones we have already. Also, Hays ISD has about 60 bilingual teachers (to our 3), which puts them at 25 students per teacher.

If the school district is “over-achieving” then more reason for the board to be embarrassed by the fact that our teachers are the poorest paid teachers in the Austin- San Antonio area. It is heart breaking to watch them at board meetings asking for an additional 1% raise on top of the 1% raise given them. (What do our teacher turn-over rates look like? How much is spent in training new teachers) Instead, I understand each year more money is being paid to people who don’t work directly with the children. There appears to be a trend in hiring coaches (academic, not athletic) to teach the teachers and even coaches to coach the coaches! These are out of state consultants, so it can’t be cheap and has been going on for over 4 years.

I also heard that the district had to go to Mexico to hire around 5 new bilingual teachers because they couldn’t fill those postions locally. Does anyone know the facts about this?

Sorry for going off topic…..

In fact, according to the TEA website, in 2005 we graduated 80% of our students and in 2006 we graduate 81%. In 2007? 76%.

That sounds like a step in the opposite direction.

So, let’s continue to press forward the best that we can and stop trying to convince ourselves that our schools are good enough today.

That report shows that Texas overall is ranked 36 of 50 for graduation rates and while I could not pull individual district data from their site, I could get it from the TEA site (which Education Week, the source of this report, says underreports our dropout rate).

According to the TEA, we rank around 850 out of 1050 school districts in Texas for graduation rates. We also rank around 730 out of 1000 districts for graduating Hispanic students (some districts either have none, or have too few to report). And we rank around 820 out of 1050 for graduation of economically disadvantaged students.

So, while I applaud any long-term progress that has been made, let’s call a spade a spade. We are in the bottom 20% of all districts, in a state that is in the bottom 30% of all states. There is much work to be done and now is not the time to be patting ourselves on the backs.