Has Texas Opened Pandora’s Box?
By Janice VanCleave
The Texas Commissioner of Educator and the Texas State Board of Education are responsible for all the state content standards.
Having “Personal” in the title of the newly added math TEKS about finances is a clue that parents need to be more involved in the content of the instructions in Texas public schools.
While identified as math standards, the list for the Personal Financial Literacy for Kindergarten students is more like an upper level study for economics.
What does a list of skills required for jobs have to do with math for kindergarten children?
What does income mean to a kindergarten child?
Children in K-8 are only familiar with their own family income.
Its no secret that the government welfare system has gotten out of control. It is no secret that many people receiving welfare payments could and should be working to earn their income. It is no secret that welfare payments for some is higher than income from an entry job. Yes, politicians buy votes by promising higher welfare payments.
Is the intent of the Personal Financial Literacy TEKS suppose to fix the Welfare System?
Yes, there are families that need help, and the welfare system was set up for this purpose. Like anything that is “not earned” the welfare program is being abused. The financial literacy standards added to the Texas math TEKS is not going to solve this problem. If anything, it will make it worse.
Sadly if teachers have students to make a list comparing all the wonderful things about working and earning money vs. receiving welfare, which path do you think young children will think the best choice? Work or not work and receive equal or more money? UMMMM!
Texas has opened Pandora’s Box with the Personal Financial Literacy TEKS. Instead of including these TEKS as part of school standards they need to be posted on the office walls of every politician in Austin as well as in Washington DC. Our students need to know the fundamentals of math.
Are the new Financial Literacy Standards another way to add data to the state DATA Mining CART?
Most of the Texas Public School Districts are using school taxes to pay the personal membership fees of Administrators and school board members into private organizations. The State Board of Education has a lobbyists as its vice-chairman, which is illegal. The Texas education system as a whole needs to teach students by example about financial responsibility.
By definition, unearned income is considered to be that income which is not from wages, salaries, tips, or self-employment business income. Thus welfare is unearned income. Since a large percent of Texans receive welfare, how do teachers instruct 5 year old children about jobs and earning an income when the family income is by definition unearned?
Elementary children should not be stressed over getting jobs, going to college, earning income.
What is the real reason that the Commissioner of Education and the State Board of Education have come up with standards about personal income? Why have they dumped the TEKS and STAAR/EOC tests that cost so many millions of dollars to develop and suddenly introduce the most bizzare set of Math standards ever?
The Timeline for 5th grade math TEKs shows what the Texas Commissioner of Education and the State Board of Education members are not revealing to the public. On top of the line is the progression of what were called the transition TEKs for STAAR. Millions and millions of dollars were spent developing these math standards. The Control for scoring the math TEKS was set in 2012. Thus, the STAAR tests aligned with these TEKS have only been given for two years 2013 and 2014.
Now the Commissioner of Education announces that this transition from TAKS testing to STAAR testing was a minor change. REALLY? If so, why was $200 million dollars given by the Rider 42 grant just to prepare training materials for teachers to make this transition.
The Texas Commissioner of Education and the SBOE are not providing Texans with the real truth.
Why was the Texas Commissioner of Education and the SBOE secretly developing a second set of math TEKS at the same time the transition set of math TEKS were being developed? WHY develop two sets of TEKS during the same time period?
Please ask your state representatives to find out why two sets of math standards were developed.
