 I'd like to add my voice of thank you for, I think this is an important gathering in an important place at an important time. And so Sandy Close from New American Media, thank you for having us, for bringing us here, for sponsoring us. To Dean Sainz, thank you from UTSA's College of Public Policy and to Juan Lafeh Policy Research and Education Center, Juan Flores is the, I think, sort of the spirit of convening us this day. I say this is an important place for two reasons. Juan, Texas, Dean Sainz told us some about Texas, how Texas goes, so goes the country. You might have seen the cover of Time, this last issue of Time, had what I found to be a tad distressing cover and it had the cover of, the map of Texas with all of the state maps in the map of Texas and then the header was the United States of Texas. And the article, the lead article in the last issue of Time Magazine speaks precisely to the issue that Dean Sainz was pointing at in terms of as Texas goes, so goes the country, the article did very little to make the second point that I think is important and that Dean Sainz made and that is as Latinos and African Americans go in Texas, so goes Texas, so goes the country and they made very little of that point in Time Magazine. I hope that they correct that. So it's important from the perspective of Texas and then here we are in San Antonio an old city by standards of how many centuries we've been around and yet a new city in terms of a progressive young mayor and a community that is attempting to reshape itself as a community that cares for all of its citizens including children and so I think it's a wonderful place to have this conversation about the future of children of color. Let's see. So at IDRA one of the things that we do is to take a look at both policy and educational practice in the context of a change model so we can figure out at any moment the detail of information that comes to us or even the issue that comes to us, how is it connected to the change that we want to see and the change by the way is high quality neighborhood public schools for every child in Texas and the country. That is our mission, that is our goal and so this takes you from what do we need and you see in the actionable knowledge that enlightened public policy our topic for today is clearly important. How do we make change happen? The change strategy that I'd like to underscore for you is the coalition building and the community part of this. I believe that it is the power and the public will that is going to make the changes that are necessary in order to improve struggling schools and to hold our public institutions accountable. I think in other words that how do we make change happen that parent and community engagement is not only part of the solution but probably the most fruitful leverage point at this point in the history of education in Texas and the country. Three things about that in terms of the community. Number one is that since about the 1980s early 90s we've been focused on creating competition among schools in order to better our schools. I think we need to get off that track. It is not working, it has not worked. Creating vouchers or charter schools or other such things that are supposed to increase competition really doesn't do it and we need to go to a framework in which we are back to ensuring equity and excellence for all kids. The second part of that is that we need to go to investments and support for education and where that support needs to come is in those areas that you see that research tell us is where we need to change things. Parent community engagement, engagement of kids, teaching quality, curriculum quality and access. And then we need also to look at collaboration versus these sort of top down approaches and in that regard all of the connections. You see a lot of arrows in this change model. By the way the change model is useful for looking at policy, for looking at practice, for looking at research areas that may be fruitful. It is not a rear view assessment of what happened. It is actually a look forward at how we make change happen and for that reason I think it merits consideration. In the packets by the way that I brought for you, the framework is there. So I thought that in terms of today's conversation, I'll focus on just a few of the school data, dean signs shared with us a lot about how Texas population is changing. Schools in particular, this summer national public radio did a segment. You might have picked up a summer, all of it called the Texas Hispanic shift. And they talked about how they concluded that Hispanic two-year-olds rule in Texas, that was their conclusion, Hispanic two-year-olds rule. And so Plenty has been said about how young Hispanics are. But I thought that these statistics really kind of put it forward. 2010 statistics are the ones that really stand out. There were more Hispanic two-year-olds than any other age in Texas. More Hispanic two-year-olds than any other age in Texas in 2010, 197,000 of those. And you know what was the most popular age for whites in Texas? 50-year-olds. And there were 192,000 of them. So there you are. Two-year-olds, Hispanic 50-year-old whites. That in a nutshell is where the state is. That makes it really important that in San Antonio, for example, the pre-K for SA, which is a publicly funded tax-derived effort to provide more preschool education to speak to the issue that you spoke about, was passed. And it was passed with the support of the business community, providing a model not only to the state of Texas, but also to the country. So those 187,000 two-year-olds in 2010, so they're now five-year-olds. So there you are, importance of early childhood education. So in Texas, four years ago, Latino children already became the majority in Texas schools. That was four years ago. White children are now fewer than one-third of first graders in Texas, already, right now. So Latino children really do have the greatest say in our future. It's a matter of educating them, and I'm going to focus on whether the state of Texas is doing this or not. By the way, we don't have to have a lot of suspense around that. The answer is no, they are not. And I'm going to look at four particular issues regarding that. By the way, if Texas could really build a wall around itself, not only along the border with Mexico, but completely, so that there would be no more changes, no undocumented coming from Mexico or those that have already made it inside the country and coming and sneaking into Texas, if there was a wall, if the drawbridge were closed, the result would be the same. Only one in four Hispanic school children in Texas is the child of an undocumented worker, and only a small percentage are undocumented themselves. So this is not an immigrant issue. It is about native born Texan and American children growing up. Does that make immigrants unimportant? No, I'll talk about that in a little bit. But it really is important to underscore that this is about Texas, about native born Texans, about American children, and about where this state and this country are going to head. It's about our shared future, certainly. So Latinos are now more than 50% of students in Texas schools. Another important fact, more than half of Texas student body is poor. So 60% of kids in schools in Texas are poor. That is the same by the way as every single southern state. So it matters the choices that we make about how we educate poor children. It matters that we commit ourselves to fair funding for those kids. It matters that poor kids can live in poor neighborhoods, but they don't have to go to poor schools. All of those things matter. 80% of Latino students are poor in Texas. Over 830,000 children enrolled in Texas public schools are English learners, English language learners. That's an increase of almost 40% over the last decade. And the majority, that is 85% of English language learner students in grades K through 5 and 59% in grades 6 to 10 were born in the US. So when we say English language learners, that does not equal immigrants. So that's another important part of the stories that US journalists visit is to sort of really look at what subset of children we are speaking about. So we can speak with clarity about solutions. So have Texas schools been doing a good job? Let's look at the first question. Is the state of Texas providing an equitable high quality curriculum for all children, right? You remember in the change framework, high quality curriculum was one of the pieces that research tells us is important for high quality schooling. The answer is no. As a matter of fact, Texas is poised to begin massive tracking of Latino students into low level courses. It started already. Yesterday's Valley Morning Star, October 28th, introduced us to Anastasia Ramos in Harlingen High School, who is really already enjoying her automotive technology class. She can earn an automotive service, excellent certificate and go straight into the workforce after college. And they're given, says this report, an opportunity to pursue a trade rather than a four year academic degree. Now we've tried this before. This is not new. Most of the history and the education of Latino and Mexican American children in the state of Texas is a history of neglect and of tracking kids into low level courses. So here we are back again. So says an educator, school districts had their hands tied when it came to offer vocational trades. But our last legislative session made sure that school districts no longer had their hands tied past House Bill 5 and now children don't have to go through a curriculum that prepares them for college. They can go straight into vocation. Tom Paukin, who is running for governor, says that by this teaching to the test top-down system, everybody should go to a university by doing that in the past, which Texas has been doing, preparing everyone to go to college. Trying to. But he says he asserts that we've neglected and almost denigrated the value of vocational education. So anytime that I hear somebody talking about not everyone is going to go to college, they're not talking about their own kids. So there you have it. Now, there's a little slide here that I wanted, I'm going to come back to this one. So the tracking gets kind of complicated. There is a policy brief in your packet that we released this month called tracking endorsements and differentiated diplomas when different really is less. And you have sort of this explained. But what has happened is that kids now can go and take automotive courses under business and industry. They can go to public service and become cooks through culinary degrees, all kinds of things that aren't going to be useful for kids and are going to lead them to low paying jobs. STEM are the ones that are most likely prepared. There is a big debate going on right now about Algebra II because the new HB5 pass program does not require kids to take Algebra II. Well, of course, if you don't take Algebra II, you can't get into college. That's just it. You can't get into college. The commissioner of higher ed said so. The TEA commissioner, the Texas Education Agency commissioner outside of public view has said so. But here we are encouraging kids to not take Algebra II and to instead, as this article says, did I read this part about after high school we want them to do something with their hands? That was an educator in Harlingen High School who is thrilled that educators' hands are no longer tied and they can track kids into vocational ed instead of have to worry about and be accountable for them having to go to college. Last thing on this point, this is really, really important data from TG, which is a higher education group here in the state. They looked at all high school graduates whose parents didn't go to college. The whole pool of them, right? And so, looked at whether they were enrolled in a four year institution. If those students took Algebra I in geometry, only 11% made it to a four year college. If they took Algebra I geometry and Algebra II, only 34% made it. If they took beyond Algebra II, 64%. What Texas wants to bring us back to, and actually has passed legislation, is to that first bar, to that 11%. And these, remember everybody says, your parents didn't go to college, you can't go to college, blah, blah, blah. This is only the kids whose parents didn't go to college. And that is the difference that it makes. So, really big important point about that. The next question is the state of Texas holding on to its students through to high school graduation, a quick answer is no. IDRA has been doing a study of dropouts every year since 1986. I served as the principal investigator of that study at that time. We are today, as a matter of fact at 11 o'clock, we released our newest annual report. That too is in your packet, including the press release. You're welcome to call us about that if you wish. So the answer is no, Latinos in Texas still have the highest dropout rates of all groups. So the short of it is that one in four students in Texas does not graduate from high school. This is 2013, at a time when high school is a bare minimum. The attrition rate, the loss from high schools for white kids is 14%, and it has declined substantially, by the way, since 1986 for white children. Whatever we are doing is working for white children and for girls more than it is for minority kids and for boys. And if you are a boy and a minority, you've got a whole lot of strikes against you. Black students, 26% dropout rate and Hispanic students, 33%. It'll take us till 2036 at this rate of small incremental change. To get there, we will lose another 3 million kids. That's like if we lost Houston and San Antonio put together. More, because cumulatively, since we started studying this, the state of Texas has lost 3.3 million kids that did not graduate high school and whose lives and their children's lives are affected by virtue of that. The third question is the state of Texas providing an equitable education for children who are English language learners. So you probably have the rhythm of this. The answer is no, unfortunately. English language learners continue in underfunded programs that do not produce results for kids. At the secondary level especially, English language programs are very, very weak, as little as 45 minutes of ESL instruction. Get this, just 6% of English language students in the class of 2011 were considered college already graduates, 6% of kids. This is a comparison by grade of all students and LEP students in some circles are called limited English proficient in other English language learners. Notice that the bar goes down as you get higher up into the high school. This is part of the suit that Maldef brought several years ago, was overturned by the fifth circuit, who says, yeah, it's probably happening, but you're putting too much focus on student achievement. I don't know how that could be possible. But David and Jose is here who litigated that case. By the way, the only difference, the reason why the 11th grade goes up for English language learners is that they have dropped out at the 10th grade. That's the reason for that. Is the state of Texas acting as an effective and accountable steward of public funds for public schools? No, the Texas system of school finance is inefficient, inadequate, and unfair. I'm sure David will be speaking to us more about that. Also, efforts to use public money for private schooling further undercut the education of Latino students in the state. Here's what the gap looks like. Poor's 100, richest 100, poor's 100, richest 100 per classroom. These graphics, by the way, are also in your packet. So here we are, lots of changes to make if we are going to change the direction of the state. I want to make one last point, because I'm hearing this lately a lot. The people who are promoting tracking of students in the state of Texas, specifically the chair of the Senate Education Committee and the chair of the House Education Committee, are asserting that they are doing this endorsement approach, this new approach, so that kids will not drop out. So in order for kids not to drop out, we are going to track them into low level courses. That is exactly the wrong approach. How do I know that? In the 1960s, 90% of Mexican American kids dropped out and they were tracked into low level courses. We don't want to go there again. So that is the current state of education in Texas. If we are going to change that, there is a lot of work to do. I commend those of you who are in the business of looking deeply as journalists at these issues. I think your voice is critical and informing the population about what is really going on. And in reversing this trend and others that apparently, according to Time Magazine and according to the demographics, will affect not just Texas, but the entire country. Thank you.