Public Schools are America's "Golden Door"

Friends to Friends

"Thanks for all you do, I am amazed everyday at all the wonderful opportunities the public schools offer our children and as educators we need to get the word out! Thanks!"

Melinda Kianpour, Rockwall ISD

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A Must Read for All Educators!

Leslie and Jane,

Just wanted you to know that I had an opportunity to read your book - Hello! My Name is Public School and I Have an Image Problem! Great job! Great tips! Well done! I recognized a few things as some ideas that I have subscribed to for many years. You did a wonderful job of pulling some terrific thoughts together. I enjoyed and will recommend as a "must read" to others.

Thanks,

Mike Moses

Check out our rock star founder of Friends of Texas Public Schools, Leslie Milder! Her new book, "Hello! My Name is Public School and I Have an Image Problem", just released last week and is available on Amazon.

Co-authored with colleague Jane Braddock, this book is a must read for all educators... the best teacher book since The First Days of School.

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Become an Ambassador for Public Education

Now is the time to plan for bringing our Ambassador Training Academy to your district in the 2013-14 school year! Contact Leslie Milder at lmilder@fotps.org for more information.

Read on...

Friends of Texas Public Schools
Scott Milder
830 Shores Blvd.
Rockwall, TX 75087
smilder@fotps.org
214-497-6411

Public schools are America's "Golden Door"

By Leslie Milder, Founder, Friends of Texas Public Schools

In 1883 a young Jewish immigrant, Emma Lazarus, penned a poem that was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty and many Americans can recite that even today from memory:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning

to breathe free.

The wretched refuse of

your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless,

tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside

the golden door!"

As a social studies teacher I have taught this poem and it's meaning many times. But, as the debate about our public school system rages on in spite of its tremendous success, the meaning for me has changed.

The golden door of today's America is the door to public school. Our public school system is the epitome of democracy. TODAY is the Golden Age of education! Our schools have never been more successful than they are right now. People want to go back "to the way things used to be?" Those people have forgotten. The way things used to be...you mean when only 3% of kids graduated high school (1903) or 50% graduated high school (1955) or when we didn't educate all kids, only some?

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Texas AP Participation and Success Rates Continue to Climb

Texas Commissioner of Education Michael L. Williams and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Chairman Fred Heldenfels IV today joined with College Board Regional Vice President Dr. Richard Middleton to announce that The 9th Annual AP® Report to the Nation finds more Texas public high school graduates than ever before are participating - and succeeding - in college-level Advanced Placement (AP) courses and exams.

Texas ranks 13th in nation in the percentage of 2012 graduates participating in AP.

Over the last decade, AP participation and success in Texas has increased steadily:

The number of public school graduates leaving high school having taken an AP Exam in Texas has increased by 122 percent in the last decade.
More graduates in the Texas Class of 2012 scored a 3 or higher on at least one AP Exam than took AP Exams in 2002.
35.5 percent of graduates from Texas's public high school Class of 2012 took at least one AP Exam during high school, compared to 25.6 percent from the Class of 2007 and 19.2 percent from the Class of 2002.
18.1 percent of graduates from Texas's public high school Class of 2012 scored a 3 or higher on at least one AP Exam during high school, compared to 13.6 percent from the class of 2007 and 11.0 percent from the Class of 2002.

TRUE or FALSE?

Are Texas Public Schools Really Failing?

Answer:
FALSE

Of course not! By every measure our public schools are more successful today than ever in history.

Student performance during the TAKS era, for example, showed dramatic improvements. Percentage of Texas students passing TAKS science rose from 47% passing in 2003 to 91% passing in 2011. Percentage of students passing TAKS math jumped from 44% passing in 2003 to 90% passing in 2011. The percentage of students passing the TAKS English Language Arts exam was 61% in 2003 and reached 95% by 2011.

School administrator performance is equally impressive where our tax dollars are concerned. Only 3 pennies of every education dollar are spent on central administration, including administrator salaries. On the flipside, 61 pennies are allocated to teacher pay, curriculum, instructional materials, and classroom aides. Surprise! Only 3 pennies of the dollar are allocated to ALL extracurricular activities, and that includes football.

Why Gloomy Pundits and Politicians Are Wrong About America's Education System

A eye-opening new paper comparing U.S. students to their international peers by social class finds that the richest Americans are world-class readers, and in math, our disadvantaged kids have improved more than almost any other country.

Here's what everybody knows about education in the United States. It's broken. It's failing our poorest students and codding the richest. Americans are falling desperately behind the rest of the developed world.

But here's what a new study from the Economic Policy Institute tells us about America's education system: Every one of those common assumptions is simplistic, misguided, or downright wrong.

When you break down student performance by social class, a more complicated, yet more hopeful, picture emerges, highlighted by two pieces of good news. First, our most disadvantaged students have improved their math scores faster than most comparable countries. Second, our most advantaged students are world-class readers.