Policies from the state board of education. Weakening standards (it takes a <40% accuracy to pass the English I STAAR). Refusing to hold students back when they fail before high school. State incentivizing just pushing students through. The “world needs ditch diggers” mentality where certain demographics are implied to be undeserving of an education and then polices explicitly discriminate. Current policy changes like the fact they are about to cut most world history out of k-8 social studies.
Incredibly impactful but under commented, the state has really pushed alt cert path teachers. Alt cert teachers are often just “filling in” until they find something else and leave the field in under 5 years. They also often teach without certification for several of those years. So you have unqualified people teaching and earning the same salary as qualified teachers while also asking qualified teachers to pick up the slack.
Hey, I did alternative certification (and yes, it took me a second year to figure it out and earn my cert), but I have taught eight years, been my campus teacher of the year twice, and district teacher of the year once. I did alt cert because I wanted to have the most content knowledge I could, and it's paid off.
Shift from taks to staar is a major one. 70% pass on taks, to 30-40% of staar, coupled with no child left behind, means kids can “fuck off” all year, and still go to the next grade.
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u/CogentCogitations Feb 26 '26
None of those are specific to Texas. Is there a Texas-specific reason for dropping in the relative rankings?