National Teacher Appreciation Day

Last week was National Teacher Appreciation Week, and in the middle of it, on Wednesday, it was National Teacher Appreciation Day. It was a glorious week. A free breakfast on Monday that I forgot about because it was, after all, Monday, a Snickers bar in my mailbox on Tuesday. On Wednesday parents brought in sweets (thank God someone remembered those of us who don’t do sweets, and brought fruit). On Thursday if you stood in line with the kids you could get some shaved ice for free. On Friday there was a rice and bean burrito for lunch along with an embarrassing tote bag that I have to give to a female.

Oh and some kid tripped me in the hall after leaving the lunch as I tried to negotiate a path back to my room in the crowded halls.

I still have bruises.

So yeah, happy National Teacher Week. This Jimmy Kimmel video says it all, I am afraid:

What Dyslexics Must See

Someone put up an image on Facebook last night that I had never seen before, but have seen similar ones, ones that demonstrate that the mind doesn't process letters of words when you read, it matches patterns. Substitute a "7" for a "t" a 5 for an "s." The shapes are similar. Here is the image:

Now I know what dyslexics must be seeing when they attempt to read some text. I once had a profoundly dyslexic student whose writing was unintelligible to me. It was like a foreign language. Then one day I figured it out. He was embedding whole words inside of other words. The breakthrough was in answering a question on a lab worksheet. What he wrote was "Heatiting." What he meant to write was "Heating it."

Kent Grusendorf: He’s Baaaaack…

Former State Rep. Kent Grusendorf, the guy who personally led the charge for Texas education to go over the cliff until his constituents put a stop to him, is back. He is back with a vengeance. He is back to end public education as we know it.

 
While people of good intentions toward public education, and their concern about how the Texas legislature has shorted the state’s school children so badly have filed lawsuits to right this terrible wrong, Grusendorf has joined in on the fun with his own disingenuous litigious campaign.

He has joined the other groups that have filed suit to challenge the unconstitutional act on the part of the state legislature to deny public education the funds they need to educate. His claim, horrendously, is that charter schools are being shorted. Charter schools that by far outperform public schools. A claim that is a complete myth.

First, by what measure? Charter schools do not have to comply with state testing requirements. How can you compare apples to tomatoes?

Grusendorf’s motives are completely transparent and joining in these lawsuits to right these terrible wrongs to our school children is, in a word, callous. But why should I be surprised? I am not surprised at all that someone with such ill intentions toward public education as Kent Grusendorf enter this legal fray with complete disregard for what matters most: the education of our children. What he is looking out for is the best interests of the people who want to seize public education and privatize it.

Grusendorf wants to take what has worked for 200 years and turn it on its ear to the benefit of those who can pay for education, to the detriment of those who cannot.

Grusendorf wants to make the story of Barack Obama, someone who battled against the tide to better himself, an impossibility in the future.

His own constituents rejected him. We must  do no less.

Rick Perry’s Shady Math Shorts Texas Students

Now here’s the thing, according to Rick Perry’s report card while he was at A&M Perry received a B in Algebra (a course that is taken by 8^th graders these days) and a D in Plane Trigonometry (a 9^th grade course at my workplace).

Rick Perry, you could say, is math-challenged.

So suffice it to say that when Rick Perry cites that the State of Texas is forking out $10,000 per student this year in public school education funds, and so there is no need to have a re-look at next year's education budget, he may not have done his sums very well.

One has to resort to Chinese algebra to come up with that fact.

According to this piece in the Houston Chronicle, Rick Perry thinks we are seeing to our students’ needs just fine thank you very much. A claim that is hotly disputed by TSTA spokesman Clay Robison (TSTA is a Texas teacher’s union much like my beloved AFT).

“Robison cited new rankings and estimates from the National Education Association, which reports that Texas is spending $8,908 per student this school year, based on average daily attendance (ADA).”

“‘That is $538 less than the $9,446 per student Texas was spending in 2010-11, when we ranked 41^st in the country,’ Robison says. ‘The national average of per student expenditure (ADA) for 2010-11 was $11,305. The national average for 2011-12 is $11,463.’”

And guess what, that figure is down from the 2009-10 revenue per student in Texas ($10,630) when Texas was ranked number 36 in the nation.

In short, over the past 3 years Texas education has slowly but surely been put on a starvation diet. Class sizes are up, textbooks are falling apart. But Rick Perry keeps playing his fiddle in his $10,000 per month rented mansion as Texas education faces yet another $2 billion shortfall in the 2012-2013 school year.

People, we are being governed by a guy who thinks SOHCAHTOA is an Indian woman that led Lewis and Clark on their historic expedition to the Pacific Ocean. Perry can’t do the math. Perry has no business in government.

(OK sorry, for the oldsters among us SOHCAHTOA is a mnemonic device for Sine, Opposite over Hypotenuse, Cosine, Adjacent over Hypotenuse, Tangent, Opposite over Adjacent).

STAAR Test: Let the Caving Begin

The new high stakes Texas state test to measure accountability in high school education, the STAAR test, takes effect this year with this year’s entering 9^th graders. Starting this year, students  must not only have a cumulative score of some amount to be determined at a later date on all of the STAAR end of course tests taken, but in addition to that, the test is to count for 15% of their grade in the course.

15% is peanuts.

15% hardly affects a student’s grade at all.

Nevertheless, parents from Beaumont to El Paso raised a hue and cry so loud about what this “harder test” will do to their children’s GPA and class rank (which determines which Texas university they get accepted to), that today, TEA Education Commissioner Robert Scott announced: “Never mind.”

Scott was advised that he had the purview to overrule what the state legislature mandated in their legislation that established this new accountability system.

So what he said today is this:

“Based on my conversations with the Governor’s Office and clarification of legislative intent from the House and Senate, I am modifying the Texas Education Agency’s House Bill 3 Transition Plan. The modification gives public school districts and charter schools the ability to defer implementation of the statutory provision that requires performance on an end-of-course assessment to count as 15 percent of a student’s final course grade”

 In other words, “Never mind.”  The high stakes test became less high stakes. He let the districts decide whether they were going to let the grade count or not, but do you think any district will let the test count for 15% of the grade if other districts opt out? In this litigious society of ours, a school district that declines to opt out of the relaxation of the rules is a school district begging to be sued by a parent.

But wait, it gets better. The provision to have the state test count for a percentage of a student’s grade was actually a good idea. Know why? When a test will not affect a student’s grade in the present tense, there is little motivation on the part of students to do their best. The school accountability system is a joke because students have not been given sufficient motivation to do their best.

You see, today’s youth is very much focused on “the now.” They could care less about the future. If a test affects their present grade, they are concerned. If it doesn’t they could care less. That’s why this idea was such a good one. Besides, if a whole instructional day is to be spent on a state test, let it count for something.

But no. The caving has begun. And now looking to the future, I can only begin to predict what percentage correct responses will be assigned to a “mastery” rating. Certainly not 70%. More like 50% or 45%.

Texas education. Making mediocrity work each and every day.

Good News: *Only* 32,000 Teacher Jobs Were Lost This Year

The Austin American-Statesman has a blog post today touting the hopeful results of a Moak, Casey and Associates poll conducted over a portion of the Texas school districts that responded to their poll, and it shows that much, much fewer than 100,000 teacher jobs were lost this past year than predicted.

That is, according to their statistical projection over the entire state, only 32,000 teachers are no longer plying their trade in Texas.

This, the American-Statesman says, was “much, much smaller than the 100,000 school jobs that consultant Lynn Moak estimated would be lost when the 2012-13 budget was first released in January.”

Much, much smaller.

Except it isn’t.

In my recollection, the prediction was for a loss of 100,000 jobs over the life of the present biennial budget.

The article goes on to point out that fewer jobs were lost due to an infusion of cash from the federal government that saved many jobs from extinction. Yes, thanks to the feds, that Governor Rick Perry is “Fed Up” with, fewer Texas teachers were laid off than predicted.

But the truth is, we are not done. Not yet. While this year we saw a $4 billion shortfall in what the state ought to rightly send to its districts, next year the number is $13 billion. And there is no federal money coming next time to help offset some of this funding gap.

So while a $4 billion shortfall resulted in the loss of only 32,000 jobs, a shortfall of three times that without a federal backup translates to a loss of three times that many jobs in 2012 – 2013.

Or more.

Now I keep hearing that revenues are not coming in as predicted by Comptroller Combs. They are actually higher. That’s good. But the fact remains Texas is cutting off its left arm and its right leg in order not to raise revenue to pay for public education – a full frontal assault on public education that, if not countered, spells the end of education in Texas as we know it.

Teacher Pay for Performance Goes to New Lows

Oh Good God.

One of my six readers sent me a link to this Huffingtonpost article on what the State of Idaho has done to the public and charter school teachers in its 29 school districts.

Pay For Performance, a concept begun in the private sector, has been revamped in Idaho so that performance pay is based on several key indicators.

One of them being how parents feel about their children’s teachers.

That’s right, parents get to vote on what teachers get for bonus performance pay. They list several key factors that should go into the parents’ decisions, like communication: notes and phone calls to the home as well as parents attendance at parent-teacher conferences.

That is, one factor that is totally in the control of a teacher, and one factor that a teacher has absolutely no control over. The standard is that teachers must get a 40% attendance rate in order to qualify for the maximum bonus in that area.

Forty percent is dreamworld for most of us.

But really, what you have to realize is that these standards will not be followed, will they? How will parents rate their children’s teachers then? Grades. Grades are the local currency in public schools, and teachers who try and challenge their students by demanding only the very best out of them will suffer the most in this scenario.

Teachers who pass out A’s and “free 100’s” like Jesus passed out the loaves and fishes will most certainly be at the front of the pack in receiving bonus checks.

This is a scenario that promotes mediocrity and further lowering of the academic bar.

Watch out Texas, Idaho is vying for last in education along with Mississippi.

Lawsuits Loom in State Education Finance

According to this item at the Austin American-Statesman, there are three separate theories being argued in three separate lawsuits challenging the 81^st Legislature’s cutting of $4 billion for public education from the current budget – resulting in the layoffs of tens of thousands of public school teachers. That’s nothing. In 2012 it will be a $13 billion cut.

These theories are as follows:

1. The Texas State Constitution, since 1876 requires the Legislature to provide an "efficient system of public free schools." The argument goes that the system is anything but efficient because funding levels are arbitrary, irrational and inequitable.

2. In another lawsuit, ISDs maintain that the Legislature has once again levied a statewide property tax, which is constitutionally prohibited.

3. The third tack holds that funding is inadequate to prepare students to meet the state's standards, “which have been ratcheted up in recent years.”

Duh.

Now here’s the thing. All of this won’t play out until 2013. That is the projected trial schedule. In other words, in 2013 the damage will have been done. More teachers will be chased out of the profession, belts will tighten and it will be all that much more difficult to teach. With NCLB still in force, more and more campuses will not meet their AYP.

Forcing public schools to the private sector, which is exactly the goal of Republicans.

Privatization of public education.

State Rep. Jim Keffer has famously defended his party’s assault on public education in this quote, found at the Austin American-Statesman:

“But that's usually how legislatures work. We do our best when our back is against the wall and the gun is cocked against our head.”

Except that didn’t exactly happen, did it? Or maybe he is referring to the fact that 3 lawsuits are the cocked gun. That works for me.

Only it’s going to be too late, and there is no guarantee the legislature will fix this inequitable system that fails to educate Texas’ schoolchildren.

And that, I think, was also planned.

ISDs Flocking to Join in School Finance Lawsuit

Here in Texas, where schools have purposely been shorted to the tune of $4 billion this year, school districts are resorting to the courts to gain what they are constitutionally guaranteed, funding that is adequate to educate its schoolchildren.

Back in August, it was announced that a lawsuit would be filed. And today I hear that we are close to filing a lawsuit, within two weeks from now, but the effort now is to get school districts to join in the suit. About a hundred have to-date.

The lawsuit will complain that the Texas legislature failed to adequately fund Texas’ public schools, a gross violation of the state constitution. It will also complain about the inequitable distribution of funds between the districts.

The school financing scheme is doubly in violation of the state constitution in that it forbids a statewide tax on property, something that is happening de facto. In response to the legislature cutting school district tax rates to $1.17 per hundred dollars of assessed value, every district in the state charges this maximum. The result is a uniform state property tax, which is illegal.

In 2006 the courts ruled that the state’s school finance law was unconstitutional, forcing the legislature to revise its scheme. So we are due for a repeat performance.

Perhaps this is the only way we can get legislators off their collective behinds and fund public education. It they can go to their constituents and say that they had no choice but to raise revenues because the court ordered them, can they be blamed?

But my guess is that their constituents, by that time will be so tired of being nickel and dimed by their school districts, and having to buy stuff that was once free, and having to outfit classrooms with school supplies that were once provided by the district, they probably won’t give a rip about revenues being raised.

A “free education,” after all, isn’t free.

Obama: States Can Opt Out of NCLB

So because our bickering, non-functional congress cannot agree on a way to make the No Child Left Behind law, a federal disaster if there ever was one, work for us and not against us, President Obama today signed an executive order that allows states to opt out of some provisions of this very bad law championed by George W. Bush, and modeled on a similar law passed in Texas while Bush was the state’s governor.

What makes NCLB a bad law you ask? NCLB assigns such horrible punishment to schools who fail to educate their students that states have lowered their educational standards in order to prevent these punishments from happening. The result? An entire generation of poorly-educated children.

States can now apply for a waiver from these provisions, but there is one condition: states who get approval must adopt stricter educational standards, must raise the bar, as it were.

This is very welcome news, but I wonder whether Texas will be in and among the states to get in line to file a waiver. Because Texas is the birthplace of NCLB and NCLB is the brainchild of a former Texas governor and his wife. Filing for a waiver is tantamount to admitting that the law is wrong, and I don’t think our Republican-dominated government is willing to admit making such a catastrophic mistake like that.

Besides, NCLB really is a veiled attempt to achieve a voucher system in Texas, ending public education as we know it.

So I am going to be very surprised, pleasantly surprised though, if Texas files an application for a waiver. The result? Texas will put itself on the path of delivering a second-hand education while the rest of the states retool and deliver a first class education to their school children once more. Ten years from now we should see noticeable differences, especially as Texas becomes a state where the minimum wage is the rule rather than the exception.

Just a Brief Vacay

I apologize to those of you, 6 by my count that come here for an infusion of, I guess it is called, "half emptiness." I have been engaged in other pursuits. Like yesterday when I was hauled out on the carpet by someome who can be arguably considered my best friend, Susan, because I have not done my due diligence at a bank where we will maintain an account specially meant to defeat Republicans. And then today, when I went up north to visit my insurance agent who wanted an update on my rapidly concluding life. (No, no cancer nothing like that, just getting old...Ok?). I promise to post tomorow. I am really interested in a local school district's desire to buy Ipads and laptops for its students. How this happens when teachers are being layed off is beyond me.

On Teaching Creationism in Texas

Take a look at this AP video shot in Portsmouth, New Hampshire of Rick Perry speaking to a boy and at the same time answering his mother’s questions.

You get that? Rick Perry actually told the boy that both Creationism and Evolution were taught in public schools.

Politifact rates this claim as false, but I take exception to that.

Now it is true that the state’s school board just went through that exercise as its young Earth Creationist members struggled to add Creationist notions to the state curriculum. As close as they could come to doing that is the recommendation that students look at all theories “from all sides.”

Assuming that one such side is the Intelligent Design side, this opens the door, at least, to teaching Creationism in Texas public schools.

So that seems to justify what Perry claimed, in a small way at least.

But here is the thing. I know for a fact that, here in Texas, if a high school biology teacher is deeply religious, and believes in the Biblical story in Genesis, that teacher will devote instructional time to the Creationist point of view.

Even if it isn’t in the curriculum.

So getting back to Perry’s claim that both Creationism and Evolution are taught in Texas public schools, I’d have to agree. Perry made a simple affirmative statement, not qualifying as to whether this was sanctioned by state standards.

The trouble is, and Perry is extremely good at doing this, the way he said it makes it sound like Texas’s curriculum standards call for doing just this.

Legislature Won’t Adequately Fund Public Education? Let’s Litigate!

The fly in the ointment, it seems, over our state government’s desire to end public education as we know it, in favor of privately run charter schools and private schools, is the fact that the state’s constitution won’t allow it. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but let’s just say that it is down in the constitution that the state legislature must adequately fund public education.

Not may, not might. Must.

So it comes as no surprise that another lawsuit is in the works. A lawsuit inspired by a woefully underfunded public education budget for both 2011-2012 and worse for 2012-2013.

Part of the problem is that many school districts cannot raise additional revenue as they are currently taxing at the maximum state-mandated limit of $1.17 per $100 assessed value. They depended on the state to stake them to their fair share, and the state reneged.

From The Chron:

“Humble ISD is one of about 220 school districts that have hit the maximum school operations tax rate of $1.17 (per $100 of property valuation) and cannot increase revenue.”

“The district's administrators have made cuts every year for most of the past decade and now face ‘even more devastating cuts,’ spokeswoman Karen Collier said: ‘Our backs are truly against the wall.’”

So when your back is against the wall, there is no other recourse than to litigate.

“’There's going to be litigation. The timing of it is really nothing more than putting together the case. We're still analyzing all the impact of the mess that they passed,’ veteran school finance lawyer Randall "Buck" Wood said.”

This isn’t a first, and it surely won’t be the last time there is litigation in Texas over adequate funding of public education. As long as there are forces in Austin that are actively lobbying for privatization of education, there will be inadequate funding of public education.

And there will be H-E-Double Hockey Sticks to pay at the polls if there is any justice on this planet.

Texas State School Board Has a New Chair

Odd as it may sound, the Texas State Board of Education has not had a chairperson leading it that has been confirmed by the State Senate for several years now.

Don McLeroy, who actually lost in the last election to a Republican challenger, was the first chairman not to be confirmed by the senate, and this is mainly because of the antics he pulled in the recently completed overhaul of the state’s science curriculum.

The vote, taken in May 2009 was 19 for and 11 against confirmation – right down party lines. You need a 2/3ds vote to get confirmed.

And so that left Governor Perry no choice but to name a new chairperson in July after the legislature adjourned Sine Die, and that person was fellow young Earth creationist Gail Lowe. I did a piece on Lowe in January of that year exposing her very, very poor grasp of science in general and geology in particular.

But guess what? Lowe was supposed to get confirmed in the last legislative session but they never brought the matter to the Senate floor for a vote. Again, they didn’t have the votes to confirm her. So as soon as the legislative session ended, so did Lowe’s tenure as chairperson.

So now what does Rick Perry do? He named fellow young Earth creationist Barbara Cargill to be the new chairperson.

So, nothing new under the sun. The state school board will continue to be a hotbed of crazed religious fanaticism and socially regressive ideology that has made Texas education standards a laughingstock across the nation.

And she still needs to be confirmed. In 2013.

Texas’ Continuing War on Teachers

Remember back when Classroom Teachers created a budget crisis in Texas by refusing to collect enough revenue in order to provide basic state services and then refused to balance a state budget by taking a sufficient withdrawal from the Rainy Day Fund? Remember how teachers created economic hardship and at the same time created tax holidays for corporations to lure their business into the state?

And do you remember back when it was the Classroom Teachers that caused Texas to be in 44^th place out of 50 in the nation with its per-student education funding rate?

I don’t either.

But Classroom Teachers got hit once again this week by both houses of the Texas state legislature when the both passed – right down party lines – the so-called “Furlough Bill.” This is a bill that allows school districts to put teachers on up to six days per year of unpaid leave. That’s the furlough part. Then there’s all the other goodies like how it allows school districts to reduce the pay scale and eliminates teacher seniority protection during layoffs so that the higher end salaries of more experienced teachers can be eliminated.

And oh yeah, the “Furlough Bill” also slashes another $1.4 billion in state grants to school districts.

In short, what the Texas legislature just said to its public school teachers is this: if you’re teaching now, start looking for another profession or another state to ply your trade. If you are thinking of becoming a teacher forget it, Texas is no country for teachers.

Why They Won’t Use the Rainy Day Fund

So you’d think that with public education being under funded for by $4 billion, under funded for the first time in the state’s history, you’d think legislators wouldn’t allow that to happen and you’d think they would plug the budget hole with the Rainy Day Fund – something that the fund’s very existence was meant for.

You’d think that as the state sees thousands of teachers being laid off, schools closed and schoolchildren compressed into classrooms, you’d think they would have freed up funds from the Rainy Day Fund.

You’d think.

But they didn’t. And when Donna Howard’s amendment to use anything above the remaining $6 billion crashed and burned at the end of last week because legislators simply will not budge on using any more of the fund for anything, you have to start wondering what is going on here.

Well the answer appears to be that they won’t release any more of the Rainy Day Fund because those funds are actually already spoken for, but no one is willing to confess that.

In order to balance the 2012-2013 budget, you see, the legislature had to under fund what the state is obligated to pay into Medicaid by $4.8 billion. Now this isn’t the same as under funding education. They actually can’t do that to Medicaid. What is hoped is that the feds will change the law by the time the Medicaid bill comes due and the state’s obligation will be less.

But if the law remains unchanged…well then there’s the Rainy Day Fund to bail the state out.

So there you have it. It makes perfect sense to me now why the state is doing this to public education: the cupboard is bare even though everyone says it isn’t.

The cupboard is bare because the legislature kicked the can down the road hoping that the feds won’t kick it back at them.

Will the Nightmare End?

State Senator Wendy Davis (D – Fort Worth) has an op/ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram where she summarized the disaster that was the 82^nd Legislature, a disaster that continues in the special session called by Rick Perry so they could, among other things, pass a law that would criminalize body searches in Texas airports.

Her points are well-reasoned and there is a general mood of disappointment that pervades her column. This is how it finishes.

“I think many Texans join me today in feeling deeply disappointed. For the first time in Texas' known history, student enrollment growth will not be funded. The approximately 170,000 new students entering the school system during the new two years will have to be absorbed with fewer resources and fewer teachers.”

“Already ranked 44th nationally in what it spends on education per pupil, Texas' further funding decrease will have a consequence in the classroom, there is no doubt.”

“Perhaps it will have another consequence as well. Just perhaps, in the next election, everyday Texans will let us know that their voices, those of the greater good, are more important than those extremists who currently hold sway in the halls of the Texas Capitol.”

Disappointed? Disillusioned? Disgusted?  Yes, yes and yes. And ready for the legislature to wrap up next week, too.

The Texas Democratic Party has a summary video of the real costs that the GOP super majority visited on us this year.

There Will Be Backlash

I’ve mentioned it on this blog at least a few times that when the 82^nd legislature finally adjourns for the last time here in Texas, things will be far from over for the Republican legislators who voted to cut $4 billion from what they actually were supposed to give to public education for the next budget cycle.

Some Republican legislators are now willing to admit this might be true.

What we’ve seen so far was a reaction from educators and some parents beginning this spring with the Save Our Schools rally that brought over 11,000 protesters to the south steps of the state capitol, followed by smaller rallies and some phone calls. Now people are starting to realize just what I mentioned here, that when parents see what school districts are having to do in order to make ends meet: increased class sizes, decreased resources and support closed schools, new fees for everything, and – heaven help us – renewed efforts to raise local property taxes, they are going to react.

There will be backlash.

Now not everyone is saying this. Some say that the TEA Party is on the rise, not the other way around, and that more and deeper cuts will be de rigueur. But that’s mainly because their only gauge is who has been calling them up on the phone – Tea baggers. No, as this article in the Austin American-Statesman suggests, the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet. That is going to start in August when parents will be paying for the paper their children used to get for free in school. When schools become paperless because all printing will take place at home. It will continue right on through the year as parents pay use fees for every kind of after school activity that were once free. Parents are going to be nickel and dimed and for that honor their children will receive a lower and lower quality education.

That’s when the other shoe will drop, when they realize that elections have consequences and the one that took place last year will have lasting consequences on their children and their children’s future.

And hopefully, next November, Texans will be cured of the amnesia that afflicts them every 6 months or so, and we in education can get back to work.

What Teachers Make

Now that the legislature has voted on, and passed a bill (known to educators as “the Death Star”) that will allow school districts to decrease teacher pay in 2012 over what they are earning next year, decrease teacher compensation with up to six days of unpaid furlough for teachers, eliminate seniority protection, and decrease the nonrenewal notification date to just 10 days before the end of the school year, I have to again ask myself why do I continue to teach?

If this is the level of appreciation teachers receive for all of their hard work, why do any of us?

Teaching is considered a profession, yet as professionals, teachers are already compensated at the lowest rate in the nation compared to other professionals.

I guess its at these times I need to listen to Taylor Mali recite his iconic poem, “What Teachers Make.”

Texas Lyceum Poll: Concern About Education is Up

The Texas Lyceum has been doing an annual poll since 2007 on the issues of the time. It is, you could say a snapshot of what the Texas public has most concern about. Things change so rapidly now that last year’s non-issue becomes this year’s hot-button issue.

And this year’s poll, being released between Tuesday and today, found here, is no different.

This year’s poll, for instance shows that for the first time since it has conducted the poll Texans are more concerned about education than they are about the economy. More concerned about education than they are about immigration.

Texans, it seems, have been paying attention.

I wonder if timing had something to do with this? The poll was conducted over an 8-day interval from May 24^th to May 31^st, just at the same time the SB1/HB1 was being worked on, and the Education budget was getting worked over.

Note the graphic. This is a summary of the hot-button issues that Texans have identified from one year to the next, with the budget shortfall not shown before 2010 probably because Rick Perry said there wasn’t going to be one.

In 2011 nearly double the number of Texans who view immigration as their number one issue see education as the current issue of concern to them. On another graphic found in the PDF the trend is clear over the past three years that an increasing number of Texans think that Texas is on the wrong track (58%), while Texans who see their state going in the right direction still trend south (28%).

Now here is what I am wondering: I wonder how much Texans relate between these two poll questions, and I wonder whether they want to do something about it at the polls next year.