TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2009
(copyright 2009 Texas AFT)
 
AFT Back-to-School Tour: Houston, We Have a Solution
 
AFT President Randi Weingarten called for community-wide involvement in school improvement in Houston today on the second leg of her eight-city back-to-school tour of the nation.
 
While some look at struggling schools and prefer to play the blame game, Weingarten offered a very different perspective. "Blaming doesn't help one child succeed," she said. Instead, she called for school-community alliances, with AFT's local affiliates as full partners, in a common effort to "compete with poverty" and its ill effects that undermine students' ability to learn and teachers' ability to teach.
 
Weingarten visited Houston ISD's Kashmere High School to spotlight efforts to turn around that struggling school with the help of a wide array of community partners. The core idea of "community schools" is to combine access to a full array of social and academic services for students and their families in their neighborhood school. That idea is animating the turn-around effort at Kashmere, as educators at the campus join forces with community leaders to make the school an "opportunity agent" for Kashmere's students and neighbors alike.
 
Kashmere has been rated "academically unacceptable" this year by the Texas Education Agency solely because of its dropout rate, not because of its students' test scores. Weingarten and local AFT leaders touring the school today saw example after example of the school's focus on solving that problem, engaging students through a strong junior ROTC program, an exciting music curriculum, and dual-credit courses with Houston Community College that allow students to earn up to 24 hours of career-oriented college credit before they ever leave high school. All these measures help counter the undertow of neighborhood decline and the exodus of students that intensifies that decline.
 
Joining Weingarten in a pledge to take part in community-wide alliances to turn around schools like Kashmere were leaders of eight Houston-area AFT locals, including Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon and Houston Educational Support Personnel Union President Wretha Thomas, representing the teachers and all school personnel on Houston ISD campuses. Also on hand to sign the pledge were Kashmere administrators and leaders of key parent and neighborhood groups.
 
Weingarten's Houston visit today was capped by an evening community roundtable discussion, sponsored by the Houston Federation of Teachers, that drew in community partners and potential partners interested in the "community school" concept and ready to set aside scapegoating to work together to improve schools.
 
The day's events also included a lively discussion with Congressman Al Green, Democrat of Houston, concerning current issues in Congress, including health-care reform, the Social Security Fairness Act, and the need to rethink federal education policies that hinder rather than help schools. Such policies include ill-advised elements of the rules currently proposed for new "race to the top" incentive grants from the U.S. Department of Education. Upcoming hotlines will share insights gleaned from today’s discussion on all these issues, and we will report fully on the critique and recommendations for change made by Texas AFT and AFT this week regarding those "race to the top" rules.