Texas Association of Business calls for tougher accountability standards for schools

TAB wants tougher accountability system:

The Texas school accountability system is not doing a very good job holding schools accountable, Texas Association of Business president Bill Hammond said at a news conference Thursday.

“We can’t have a first-rate education system in Texas with a second-rate accountability system,” Hammond said.

He took issue with the recent decision by Education Commissioner Robert Scott to give school districts another one-year reprieve on tougher dropout rules. That decision kept some districts being labeled academically unacceptable.

And the standards are too low, said Hammond, adding that schools can be deemed “academically acceptable” if only 50 percent of their students pass math.

Texas businesses — Hammond’s membership — are the ultimate consumers of the Texas education system’s product and they are finding the product lacking, he said.

Texas' school accountability system is abysmal. But of course, it's the same tired reprieve from school bureaucrats:

At a school finance summit organized by Scott, superintendents complained that the state is ratcheting up the performance standards but not given the districts the resources to improve the schools.

We've been going through this song and dance with school districts for decades. The people demand better performance, the school whine about money. We give them more money and they continue to perform poorly (or in many cases, perform worse) and whine for more money.

Per student spending in Texas has nearly doubled in the last ten years. The message is clear: more money is not the answer.