The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Well, hello everyone. My name is Richard Portelance. I'm your host for the Edgate Powers podcast. I'm excited today; we have Keven Ellis from the Texas Board of Education joining us. Just so everybody's aware, we are doing a webinar on December 17th. The information will be linked below in the description. You can join Keven, Hillary Knudson from Whiteboard Advisors, and Lisa O’Masta, the CEO of Learning.com, when we're going to talk about how the shifting perspectives of the paradigm shift that's taking place at the state level on standards, and the skills needed for the future of work. 

So today we're going to talk about how Texas is leading the way and preparing every student for college, career, and civic life. Keven, could you give us a little intro, and then we'll dig into some questions?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Absolutely, Rich. And thank you for having me here today. I'm excited to be here. 

As you mentioned, my name is Keven Ellis. I'm from Lufkin, Texas, which is in East Texas. I served on my local school board here in Lufkin for five years, from 2012 to 2017; I was president of the board during that time. And in 2017, I was elected to the Texas State Board of Education, and I'm just wrapping up my ninth year on the board. I was appointed by Governor Abbott as chair of the board for four of those years, from 2019 to 2023. I’m also currently a commissioner with the Education Commission of the States, and just last week, I wrapped up a term as chair of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). So, again, I’m happy to be here, and I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Rich Portelance

Well, thank you for your service, first of all, and Dr. Ellis, you know, you have a distinguished background before you joined educational boards and, you know, kind of made this part of your passion. So I think it's important that we acknowledge people who, you know, sign up to do these things. It's important that we have representation at the district level and at the state level. So, I appreciate what you do.

Discussion

Rich Portelance

Let's set the scene a little bit. You know, Texas has made it a priority that every student is future-ready, ready for college, career, and military, as your TEA's (Texas Education Agency) mission states. Could you begin by telling us how you emphasize emerged– this emerging… at the state level, what role the Texas State Board of Education played in advancing the agenda? 

Dr. Keven Ellis

Sure. 

You know, I would go back probably about 10 years ago. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board developed the 60x30TX plan. And what that was is that 60% of Texans, ages 25 to 34, by the year 2030, would have a certificate or a degree to support the economic future of our state. Following COVID and changing workforces, things changed, but the Coordinating Board did not back away from that goal; they changed it to have what they called a “Talent Strong Texas”. So they expanded the age that we were focusing on from 25 to age 64, and also added post-secondary credentials of value. Under those metrics, in 2019, we were at 48%, 2022, up to 52%. So we are on track to meet our goal by 2030 to be 60% to have some sort of certificate, degree, or credential value. So, that plan was developed by the Coordinating Board, but higher ed can't do this by themselves. 

TEA, the Texas Education Agency, also has adopted this goal, and the TEA has four strategic principles. Number one, we want to make sure we recruit, support, and retain teachers and principals. We're improving our lowest-performing schools, we're building a foundation for reading and math, and connecting high school to college and career. And I think those two last levers, building the foundation for reading and math, and connecting high school to college and career are really where the state board has a lot of authority over.

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

And when we talk about success in Texas for students, what does it look like in the context of the state? How has the board articulated or officially framed that vision for Texas students?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Well, when I think we're looking at success, we have to measure it. You know, there's a saying that we say here in Texas that “what gets measured gets accomplished”. And so, we've got to look at the data. And some of the things we look at the TEA and at the Texas State Board of Education are things like kindergarten readiness. We're, of course, looking at third grade reading and third grade math; we're looking at eighth grade reading and eighth grade math, and we have a big focus on CCMR, which is our term for College and Career Military Readiness. So, we're looking at high school completion; we’re looking at college enrollment, college completion, and those are the specific metrics that the education agency looks at. We framed our goals on the state board of education in alignment with that. 

Now, we look at things more at the level of working on policy on the state board. I would say our Commissioner of Education, Mike Morath, has more of a daily interaction with local education agencies. But I think when we look at this, we look at it globally. Governor Abbott has prioritized this focus globally by forming the– what we call the Texas Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative. And that's the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and also the Texas Workforce Commission. So, a lot of the goals that have come forth from that Tri-Agency coalition are the goals that the Texas State Board of Education is working on. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And it's interesting that you frame up your goals as including military, so as a driver of opportunity for students, which is terrific. You don't hear that from many other states. 

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, I think on that point right there, I mean, all our students should be ready for either college, or career, or military. We haven't really found any other goals past that; they need to be doing one of those three things. And so that's, I think, an important metric to look at.

Rich Portelance

How does the vision tie to the board's broader goal of student success in the state of Texas academically, socially, and economically as an engaged citizen?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, that's a good question. And when I look at success, I'm looking at our students graduating with opportunities. And we need to have all of those things that you mentioned there to have true opportunities. Obviously, academically, that's what all those metric goals that I just talked about focus on. So, of course we have to have academic success, but we also have to look at things, you know, you mentioned socially; we have to have safe learning environments. This, our state, along with I know a lot of other states around the country, has just implemented a cell phone ban, and ours is complete K-12, bell-to-bell, in between classes, a complete cell phone ban. Anecdotally, that's been very promising, but I'm curious to see how this comes out.  I talked to a lot of teachers who are really happy with it; the students, I think, are getting accustomed to it, and it's nice that, you know, we're hearing them say, “It's nice not to have to worry about what's going on in social media”. There’s actually been a little pushback from the parents; I think the parents are not used to being able to text their kids and say, “What's going on?” So, I think overall, that's going to be a good thing. But again, you know, socially, they have to be in a good place. 

And then economically, of course, we know that college completion increases economic outcomes, but we also have to look at other things. You know, what certificates of value are important for them? And when we look at those, what the cost of those is. Not just the real cost, but the opportunity cost of getting those certificates. So, those are all the types of things that I look at when I think about how we're going to make our kindergarten students in 13 years grow up to be productive members of our society.

Rich Portelance

Sounds like really good goals. I know my wife's a high school art teacher, and they've– here in Connecticut, we put a ban in for cell phones as well. So the kids are putting their phones in a pouch at the beginning of class. There’s a little resistance, but it seems like things are moving in the right direction. It certainly– the attention seems to be coming around where kids are understanding how to focus without having that, you know, live device in their pocket, so it's interesting.

Dr. Keven Ellis

One thing I heard along those lines is that one teacher said our lunchrooms are now noisier. And that's a good thing. Kids are actually talking to each other and not just staring at their phones the whole time. So I think it's going to be a good thing.

Rich Portelance

Yeah, me too. 

So, you know, talking about policy and practice, let's go to standards alignment, because that plays into your TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills), right? How are those academic expectations evolving to reflect the broader competencies we associate with future-ready learners, such as critical thinking, effective communication, and adaptability?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, thanks for that question. And I'm always careful with acronyms, because I know probably most of your listeners are or educators are in the education field, but we of course have some that are specific here for Texas. And as you mentioned, the TEKS, the TEKS are our “Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills”. Those are our curriculum standards that are completely adopted by the state board of education. Our Texas Education Agency doesn't have any authority over those. The state has given that specifically to the state board. So, when you talk about TEKS, that's what we're talking about there. 

But broadly, all of those things that you talked about are woven throughout the TEKS. When we talk about critical thinking, our social studies requires the content and critical thinking skills to make sure that those two things are taught together. We're not just teaching them content, but also how to think critically. You know, when we look at English language arts, we have in there that they need students need to be critical thinkers to adapt to the evolving, you know, nature of language and literacy. You mentioned communication; communication is also important across subjects. We have in our math standards that students need to be able to effectively communicate mathematical ideas, reasoning, and so forth. I mentioned social studies, but we also have communication social studies that there's an expectation. They're able to communicate those social studies skills in various forms, whether that's, you know, oral, visual or written. And even in science, that students are able to communicate their findings. So I think you'll see all of those skills woven broadly across our TEKS. 

Additionally, back probably about five years ago, the board adopted character traits that are to be taught K-12. When we did that, we didn't put them within a certain subject, like we didn't put them in ELAR (English Language Arts and Reading) or social studies. We put them as a separate chapter of student expectations that have to be taught. So, districts have the authority to figure out where they want to teach those. But things specifically, like trustworthiness, responsibility, caring, and good citizenship, are what we looked at when we did our character traits.

Rich Portelance

Those are really important traits. 

And just for full transparency, you know, EdGate is working with Texas on ingesting TEKS, doing alignment work, and working with several edtech companies and publishers to make sure that there's alignment with those, with the content that goes into Texas, as well as to the standards, the TEKS that are in place. So I just want to make sure the readers understand that there are some connections there.

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah. And that's an important point too that I brought up on the character traits is, you know, if you're a publisher and you're looking for what you need for math, you go to our math chapter of the TEKS, and you have that laid out. Or social studies, or science, but also make sure people are looking at these character traits, because districts have to teach those somewhere.

It's up to the district where, but I think that's beneficial if a publisher is able to add those into their programs, because that is a responsibility of districts to be able to do that.

Rich Portelance

Okay, good point. 

Let's talk a little bit about CTE. You've been a national leader in career and technical education for Texas, and the Texas Foundation High School Program (FHSP) with endorsements. How have CTE frameworks and endorsement options helped advance the state's vision of what it means for a graduate to be future ready?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Sure. And of course, with our CTE programs of study, we want to make sure that they relate to a high-wage job, an in-demand job, and a high-skill job. Those are all the things that, of course, Perkins V requires us to do. But I know this board, our board, dove very deeply into that work when we looked at our programs of study, and we're continually doing that as we revise our CTE courses. 

We have hundreds and hundreds of CTE courses. And normally when we revise a subject, say it be math, well, you're just going to focus completely on math K-12. But with CTE, there are so many courses. Years ago, before I was on the board, the board tried to revise all of those at one time, and they literally had notebooks from the floor up to about their chest level, since you had all those hundreds of courses in the programs. And so what we've decided to do as a board is to look at those on kind of a rolling basis. So, every year we're grabbing a chunk of those CTE courses and revising them, and, you know, things change in the field often. So we have to make sure that we keep up with that. But we're making sure that all our programs of study have the appropriate level one, level two, level three, level four courses. 

And then you mentioned the endorsements; that's part of our graduation requirements. So we have the standard graduation requirements, but also endorsements if they meet certain things. And there are endorsements in different fields. And it may be in hospitality, it may be in STEM, it may be in technology, all those different areas. So, it allows students to be focused on an area that's of interest to them, and it also requires them to earn an endorsement–you have to have that fourth math credit that we also know is very critical. 

Rich Portelance

You know, the last time we talked, when we spoke, we were talking a little bit about the different nomenclature that does exist, and when we talk with Hillary later, and we do the webinar, we're going to talk about a portrait of a graduate. Do the future-ready components of what we just spoke about kind of marry up to some of those things? I know you don't have that nomenclature, so we're going to try to make that relationship in Texas of, you know, how you guys talk about that as Hillary and Lisa talk about a portrait of a graduate elsewhere.

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah. Yeah. And that's– that'll be an interesting road to go down to see, because I think honestly we haven't branded something specifically as some states have with a portrait of a graduate or a portrait of a learner or so forth, but I think the goals are still, you know, inside there. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah, I agree.

So, in terms of assessment, and I know you have the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) program. It's one thing to define student success as we just did, and it’s another thing to measure it. How is Texas thinking about assessment, measurement, and accountability in ways that go beyond traditional STAAR testing or conventional academic metrics?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Sure. And again, to level set for those who aren't from Texas, the STAAR test is our state test. And, you know, it's funny, I don't find a lot of people who love the STAAR test. When I'm talking with parents, students, and just people in the community, everybody seems to hate the test. You know, and something I tell them a lot of times, I said, “I don't think you hate the STAAR test. You hate the accountability system that goes with the STAAR test because people get frustrated with that.” They get frustrated with their local community. We have an A through F system, being, you know, all the work that they do, all the work that comes from that school district being narrowed down to a single letter grade like a B, or an A, or a C. So I think that's a frustration, because the STAAR test, the accountability test, or the assessment test are so closely related. But I think we've said the phrase assessment and accountability so many times together that we think it's the same thing, and, you know, it's truly not. The assessment test is very critical in its own right. We need to know whether Johnny and Susie know the material that we want them to know. But the accountability is really looking at what the adults in the room are doing, and are they providing the type of educational opportunities for our students. But all that being said, the STAAR test was actually repealed in Texas just a couple of months ago in the second special session that the legislature had this year. They have replaced it. 

You talked about how we're going to measure student success. Ironically, in the statute, the new tool is called the Student Success Tool, the SST. We'll see if we come up with a catchy acronym for that; we always tend to do that. But a couple of highlights of the new testing system that will be moving forward in Texas is instead of a single end-of-the-year test, they will have it now at the beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year for grades three through eight. Our high school end-of-course exams can also do that, but they're not required to have the beginning of the year and the middle of the year. They are required to be shorter assessments and also adaptive for the students. The end-of-the-year results are required to be available to the school districts within 48 hours. So, many times, we didn't get the results back until during the summer. The kids are gone at that point, and you've missed the opportunity. The bill required a reduction in total testing time. Even though there will be three tests throughout the year, the total time that's tested during a school year has to be reduced. In addition to the actual state assessment that I was talking about, there are also some clarifications in the accountability system when we look at the college, career, and military readiness. We clarified what IBCs (Industry-Based Credentials) can be added, when they can be added or removed, and that they must relate to high-wage and high-skill standards. 

We talked about– you mentioned military earlier; you know, we also have now that Junior ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) will be a graded score on their accountability system for military readiness. And that also all those other CCMRs must be weighted based on correlation with post-secondary success. There are things that relate to CCMR, but they're just not very correlated. And so it'll be weighted based on that, so that when districts are getting points in their CCMR, it's going to be heavily weighted on things that have geared towards success.

And then, you know, you mentioned CCMR again, and I'll provide some of the highlights of that. We have a Texas Success Initiative (TSI) test that's graded on that, to make sure that our students are ready for college without need for remediation. We look at dual credit, AP, IB, associate degrees, the IBC's that I mentioned, and level one or level two certificates are earned. And then again, enlisting in the armed services is something we put a lot of value in.

Rich Portelance

It sounds like Texas is actually being very progressive in terms of what you're doing in order to make students ready to go on to that next step, which I think is fantastic. 

In terms of local empowerment, because it's important that Texas, you know, values what people do at a local level and provides some flexibility, how are districts leveraging that autonomy to interpret and implement initiatives designed to prepare students for futures in ways that reflect their unique local communities?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Sure. In the state of Texas, the law states that any authority not specifically given to the Texas Education Agency is the authority of local school boards. So, local school boards have all authority unless it's been expressly given to the TEA. Years ago, you know, charter schools became more and more prevalent, and charter schools have, you know, the idea behind them is they're incubators of innovation. And so they had, you know, less requirements and less guidelines. And then the argument was made that, well, if it's good enough for charter schools, why is it not– why is that same thing not good enough for our traditional ISDs (Independent School Districts)? 

So, years ago, the state came up with what was called Districts of Innovation (DOI), and essentially, districts could exempt themselves. These do not have to be approved by the TEA. TEA just has to be notified of some of the regulations. Specifically, for example, the calendar, you know, charter schools had more authority over when they could start the school year and when the schools could end. But local ISDs had a very specific set date: the fourth Monday in August. It couldn't start before that. So now, if you apply to be a District of Innovation, you can have more control over your calendar, also in teacher contracts. Now I do know that there would be a lot of districts in Texas who would argue with the autonomy that they're feeling right now from our state legislature, but it is definitely a balance between these two, is that the state, looking for certain goals and what we want to see from our students that are ready to enter the workforce when they graduate and that autonomy for the local school districts. But, you know, it's– for those local school districts, they have that focus on what programs, what courses, what endorsements they offer, the choice of the curriculum that they use, what programs, you know, whether an Ag (Agriculture) program is more relevant for their local community, whether it's a STEM focus, technology, etc., and then how they staff and compensate their educators. And there's a program I'll talk about hopefully sometime today about the teacher incentive allotment, and how we're trying to keep our teachers in the classroom and compensate them accordingly.

Rich Portelance

Just as a quick reminder to everyone that's listening, we will be doing or viewing a webinar with  Dr. Ellis, Lisa O’Masta from Learning.com, as well as Hillary Knudson from Whiteboard Advisors on December 17th. Please sign up. You'll get a chance to hear how some of these great opportunities, these policies are coming to– that the states now have more control over, and how it's shifting the paradigm in education. 

I want to shift slightly to partnerships with industry, which is an important part of all communities. What role do Texas employers, industry partners, and the business community play in shaping the competencies that a graduate needs there in Texas?

Dr. Keven Ellis 

Yeah, you know, I mentioned the Tri-Agency Task Force earlier, and again, that's with the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Texas Workforce Commission, and that agency is focused on pathways. In fact, they came up with what's called the Texas Regional Pathways Network (TRPN), and that's a network that focuses on regional needs. For example, we're not going to have programs in the panhandle of Texas that focus on shipbuilding. You know, what are the local needs of a region, and what are we doing for those students in those schools to help meet those needs? That regional pathway is also looking at credentials of value to make sure that we're having applied academics and effective advising. 

There are so many different options for students when they leave high school to make sure that those students know what opportunities are out there. And then also work-based learning is critical now too. The network came up with a credential library, so there's now a website you can go to that has a compilation of every single type of education program, from institutes of higher education, community colleges, and other areas where you can get credentials associated with any of these programs. So, easy for a student to go through, look at what type of program, what type of credentials they're looking for, and see where that's offered. You know, years ago, of course, you were going to figure out where you were going to go to college, and a lot of times now, you can pick up a college course here and there from almost anywhere. So, having that sort of resource, I think, is important, too.

Rich Portelance

And how do you support teachers, administrators, and support staff across the state to translate some of this vision into day-to-day instruction and effective classroom practice?

Dr. Keven Ellis 

Yeah. And that's so important and something that we focus a lot on. The teaching profession is… you know, it goes without saying, it's obviously critical. It’s a highly, highly rewarding profession, but also highly demanding. It's not easy to be a teacher these days. And, you know, the state focus has been on pathways into the classroom. If we just break down the different pathways in Texas, probably from the simplest, it is just an uncertified teacher. That's the cheapest way to get one, but you get what you pay for. Those uncertified teachers, most of the time, have no classroom experience at all. Moving up the ladder, we have alternative certified teachers, which is still not as– it's less costly. We are almost 70% alternative certified teachers here in Texas. That's not a goal. That's not by design. It's just been a function of where our workforce is right now and where our schools are at. Those alt cert teachers have the coursework, and they have the early field-based classroom experience, but not a lot of other support past that. A little more costly is what I look at as the traditional undergraduate ed prep programs. Again, they have that coursework, they have that early field-based classroom experience, and they also typically get a semester-long student teaching experience. And then,  more recently, we've developed a teacher residency program, which is the most expensive. Again, it has that coursework work, that early field-based classroom experience, but a year-long teacher residency. 

So, I think our mission and goal should be to figure out a way to scale it up and bring that cost down for teacher residencies. I mentioned how many alt certs we have, we've also just in the past year or two, had a huge increase in the number of uncertified teachers. But we know that two-thirds of uncertified teachers are going to leave the profession within five years, versus only one-third of a traditional cert. I just saw a study that just came out from a general education researcher from Texas Tech University named Dr. Kirksey. He looked at ed prep programs when the person participates in that virtually, versus in person; the virtual had a higher rate of exiting the profession at an earlier rate. So, we know all these things are critical. So, what's Texas doing? We passed just this last legislative session House Bill 2, which is about four to five billion dollars of new money into the teaching profession each year moving forward into the near future. Some of that money is going for teacher preparation allotment–what I was just talking about there, the challenges we're having in teacher prep. There's a one-time payment for uncertified teachers to become certified; the state's covering the fees for a lot of these certification programs. The HB2 also has a teacher incentive allotment, which is a way to reward our best teachers, our highest rated teachers, and a pathway to make six figures. We actually have Texas teachers, not Texas administrators, not superintendents and principals, but actually classroom teachers now making six figures in the state of Texas. And they're doing that when we've been able to incentivize whether they're going to a rural school or a high SES (Specialized Education Services) school. There's also a goal for teacher retention, just for teachers staying in the field for five years, where there are finances and bonuses just to stay a teacher. We want to make sure that, you know, we try to decrease that churn that those districts are facing. We've rewarded teachers also in allowing them to have more control over the discipline in their classroom. 

We had a teacher survey, and that was one of the biggest concerns we heard from our teachers is a lack of support and the discipline that they know is necessary in their classroom. And then other things, like math academies, were in that, and additional days in the school year. And what that is, we call the ADSY (Additional Days School Year). Districts automatically get an extra 30 days of school funding to go from the traditional 180-day school year, to a 210. So, any of the students that need that extra time, no questions asked, districts get funded an extra 30 days if they have students that districts feel still need that.

Rich Portelance

Wow. And is there value placed for teachers who have prior experience? Let's say you have someone who has 20 years of industry experience. They come in, they want to become a teacher. How does Texas handle that? And how do you value that person?

Dr. Keven Ellis 

You know, and I mentioned that 70% of our teachers right now are alt cert, and some of it's that. So, when we look at alt cert, the studies have also shown that it's not clear-cut whether a traditional ed prep teacher is going to have better outcomes than an alt cert–a lot of alt cert teachers have just as good outcomes. And that's– that alt cert is what you're talking about. 

If someone was a welder and wants to go and teach welding, if someone was a police officer and wants to teach criminal justice, that's the best pathway for them to get through into a classroom because they all already have that experience. And so that's another area why you're seeing such a high increase in the number of alt certs, because that's the best pathway for them to get in the classroom when you have that expertise.

Rich Portelance

It's good to see the value there. I know my wife was a mid-career change from being a designer for corporations to becoming a teacher, and it wasn't quite as valued here in Connecticut. And I, you know, I wish some of that would change. I know that, you know, being in this edtech space and trying to help out, trying to advise, we're trying to push forward to make some changes, because it is really important to get people from industry. And I'm glad to hear Texas is putting a lot of value on those alt certs, because there's, you know, that experience you just can't recreate at a college level. 

Dr. Keven Ellis 

Right. I agree. 

Rich Portelance

So, challenges in terms of implementation, given the size and diversity of the districts and the students' needs, which have been big, which– what has been the biggest challenge or key lessons learned in moving from a state-level vision to a classroom action?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah. And I truly believe, and to answer that question, you know, local control. Local control is critical. Vision statements, mission statements are important, but vision statements don't teach kids; teachers do. And a big way that we have to reward our teachers is through funding for our schools. Students have different needs and they require different amounts of funding, so that's one thing we do is we have support, for example, for small and mid-size schools. That's just an economy of scale issue: if a small school is going to only have five kids who need calculus, the calculus teacher is still just as costly as if you got a full classroom. So, we have ways to deal with that. For compensatory ed, we have a sliding scale that says it's one thing to teach a child from a low-income background; it's a whole different thing to teach a classroom full of children. So, we have a sliding scale on compensatory ed funding and then also teacher retention. It's hard to recruit teachers to rural areas, and so we've had other programs, for example, like a Grow Your Own (GYO) program that we've pushed hard and looked to find success in.

Rich Portelance

You know, I think there's been some controversy on equity and access with Texas. I'm sure you understand the comment. How is Texas ensuring that all students, whether in remote areas, inner city schools, or underserved communities, have equitable access to developing these future-ready skills?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, without diving too deep into that, I think part of the problem we're having in this country is just how we define terms. You know, and terms like equity and access unfortunately mean different things to different people. But, you know, when I look at equity, for example, I go to special education. Special education in my mind is exactly what equity is. But I think to answer your question, the purpose and ideas, that's why we have locally elected school boards. And the state has to provide funding and resources for those school boards. And important in that is the funding formula. 

If you go back to 2018, Texas had the Texas Commission on Public School Finance, which is what I served on. We had six legislators, we had six lay community members, and one member from the state board of education, and that was myself. And that school finance commission, in 2018, led to the largest infusion of new money into Texas public schools with HB3 in 2019. But the report that we commissioned was titled “funding for students who need it the most”, and I talked just a second ago about compensatory education and how we developed a sliding scale that the more kids that you had from low-income backgrounds, the more compensation districts got for educating those kids. I also mentioned special education. We focused on things like improving– just flat out improving funding for them, improving the screening for that, and having multidisciplinary support teams for them. So those are other areas that we work with funding. 

I already mentioned the Additional Days School Year, all those types of things. But, you know, the state provides the resource, and the local districts have to focus on what's critical for the students they serve..

Rich Portelance

And in what ways do you see technology, digital learning, and these emerging tools, like artificial intelligence, fitting into the Texas picture of preparing students for college and career?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, and I'd answer that question saying almost everything we do in education, it's about finding a balance. And I would also say that, you know, those things you mentioned, the technology, the digital learning, the AI, it's not the future; it's right now. You know, this is what we're dealing with right now. 

Now, I'm not ready to put our Texas students in front of an AI learning system. In fact, we had a proposal with a charter school that, for two hours a day, they'd be in front of literally an AI learning system, and they didn't call their teachers “teachers”; they called them “facilitators”. I don't think I'm ready for that yet.

On the flip side, we can't go back to pencils, papers, and chalkboards. So again, it's all about a balance. And, you know, when I think about balance in an area like this, I'll go to a math discussion we had, and Hillary will be very familiar with this because we've talked about this. In math, there's a concept of can students just do the problems? Can they accurately and fluently solve math problems? And then, the other side is they have to make sure that they conceptually understand what they're doing. So, there's this balance between fluency, accuracy, and conceptual understanding. Well, right now, we can pick our cell phone up and put it over a math problem, and that phone will solve the math problem for me. I don't have to know how to do it, that phone will do it for me. If all we do is teach our kids how to solve math problems, we're teaching them something that can be done very simply with their phone. So, they have to know how to solve those math problems, but they also have to understand what that math problem means, what the answer means, and what the process means. 

So, I think going back to my first statement is, all these things, there's a balance. We have to make sure that we use these tools that are here now, again, not the future, but we have to make sure that we still keep the traditional learning that students just have to know in the meantime.

Rich Portelance

I would agree. Critical thinking is a key ingredient to any kind of success in education. If the student doesn't understand how to think critically, then they're not going to know how to apply anything. So, it sounds like Texas is making the right strides. 

Part of, you know, the discussion is the policy levers that Texas or any state really has, and to build some of the systems that are in place. What are the state levers there at Texas, such as funding for formulations, graduation plan designs, accountability incentives, etc.,  and partnerships that have been most effective in advancing some of the future-ready agendas that you have? 

Dr. Keven Ellis

You know, first and foremost, I'd say reading academies. That was a big push the legislature focused us on a couple of years ago. It was a three– teachers had three years to complete this program. It was just recently wrapped up last year, but every teacher, not just reading teachers, but every teacher, K-3, had to go through a year-long intensive training on phonics. And it was tough because it put a lot of pressure on them to get this done, but I think overall, it's going to pay off.

And additionally, we made sure that it got pushed into the ed prep programs. You know, if we trained all our current Texas teachers on the science of reading and on phonics, but then our ed prep programs weren't doing that, we'd continually have this infusion of new teachers in the state that weren't trained on that. So, not only does every teacher K-3 go through a reading academy, but it's also required to be taught in the ed prep programs. 

One thing that I’d love to talk about that I think has been very effective too is high-quality instruction material. And I don't think any other state is truly doing HQIM like Texas is, putting an incredible amount of resources into determining what high-quality instruction material is, and then incentivizing districts. What I love about what Texas did is that there are two ways to effectuate change; you can do it with a carrot, and you can do it with a stick. And what I mean by that is a carrot is an incentive and a stick is a punishment. And the way Texas did it is they provided funding. That's the biggest carrot of them all. And if Texas districts are using high-quality instructional material, there's additional funding for them. Professional development is key in that HQIM; we've done that or– I already mentioned the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment and the Additional Days School Year. Those are all things that have been very productive in advancing the goals that we have for our future-ready students. But, you know, I say there's no silver bullet. I don't know who I stole this phrase from, but I've heard it said, “There's no silver bullet in education”. And the reason that there's no silver bullet in education is that we're not hunting werewolves; we're trying to raise our youngest children at 5 years old, so that by the time that they graduate high school, they're ready to become productive members of our society. And that's not an easy thing to do, but those are some of the things that we're focusing on. 

Rich Portelance

Well, they're good things to focus on. And you know, you're talking about success; let's give some kudos or shoutouts to the districts that are, you know, making some measurable change. Can you point to a few, and what can other districts learn from these successful implementations?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Sure. There's one in particular here. I live in East Texas, and just, oh, maybe a month or so ago, three or four weeks ago, the commissioner toured the state after the most recent accountability ratings were released, and he focused on touring schools that performed exceptionally well with a high population of economically disadvantaged students. And Gilmer ISD, a district a little bit north of me, was one of those that he toured, but there were eight or nine across the state that he wanted to focus on, and he traveled to each of those to do this.

So we look at those districts; we try to look at the things that they're doing right. When we fully solve for this, I'll make sure to let you know, because I think truly that's what every state board of education in the country, what every school district, what every principal, what every teacher's doing across this country to try to find those right tools, those right metrics to look at, that we have that success. So, I'm not sure exactly what the formula is that's going to lead to that for districts across the country, but I can tell you one thing that I know that typically leads to poor outcomes, and that's poor leadership. We know how important leadership is, and poor board leadership will almost guarantee poor outcomes. So, we’ve got to continue to focus on the positives we have, and make sure that we're providing leadership for our students with the adults in the room.

Rich Portelance

Just a couple more questions, Keven, and I want to look ahead on some of this, but I just want to remind the audience that we will be doing a webinar with Keven, Lisa O’Masta from Learning.com, and Hillary Knudson from Whiteboard Advisors on December 17th. Please click the link below and sign up; it's going to be a great conversation. We'll have Dr. Ellis back to talk about some of these points, and then we can balance it out with other perspectives. 

Keven, if we're looking ahead to the next phase of work for Texas, what's ahead for the future-ready learning agenda?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, I think, you know, when we look at that, I've really touched on these, I think, already, but just to highlight them from the board's perspective, there's a huge focus on HQIM. That's a huge focus of what we're doing, and we spend a lot of our time– in fact, in our meeting here in two weeks, we're going to be going through the reviews for the 2025 instruction materials and voting on those, which ones will be considered HQIM. So, there's a lot of time and effort we're spending on that–that's a big state board of education priority.

Also, I'd like– we’re doing a lot with math, advanced middle school math. There was a bill that was passed that said that 40% of the top in mathematics, either on their local test or on the state test for Texas fifth graders, must be placed on a pathway to complete Algebra 1 in eighth grade. So, the board has focused on coming up with new curriculum standards, not just for the eighth-grade algebra, which we already had, but now we've got to teach what was in sixth, seventh, and eighth-grade math now in sixth and seventh grades, so that they can take Algebra 1 in eighth grade. 

I talked about the redesign of STAAR for quicker feedback; I think that's going to be critical. And then again, the funding support for teachers are all the things that we're going to be prioritizing.

Rich Portelance

Yeah. Excellent. 

You know, in closing, your personal perspectives, as someone who has served both at the local and state levels, what inspires you the most about this vision for Texas and its potential in impact for your learners? 

Dr. Keven Ellis

You know, I'd say it's top to bottom, north, south, east, west; it's everybody. It's our state leadership, it's our legislators, it's my state board colleagues, it's TEA staff, it's district administrators, it's teachers, it’s parents, and it’s students all being willing to put in the hard work it takes to do, you know, what we're talking about today. And one of the biggest differences, you know, I mentioned I served on a local school board and now the state board of education, is when I was on a local school board, you get to put your arm around a specific student and know that you're helping that student right there, and you lose that a lot when you get on a state board. But on the flip side, we're getting to make policy decisions that affect our 5.5 million students in the state of Texas, and that's just incredibly important work to be focusing on right now.

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

Final takeaway for you, Keven. Is there any one message that you'd like educators, policy makers, and edtech partners to understand how Texas is preparing this next generation of graduates for life, work, and citizenship?

Dr. Keven Ellis

Yeah, I'd say to focus on– the one thing is just to focus on everything. You know, you have to– you know, I mentioned special ed, compensatory ed, and English language learners. We have to focus on our standards, on our curriculum, on our literacy, on our numeracy, on our teacher recruiting, and on our teacher attainment, because this work is not just 8-to-5, Monday through Friday, September to May–it's all day, every day, year after year, and we do this, Rich, because our students are worth it, and that's why we're all working together for one goal.

Rich Portelance

Well, I'm Rich Portelance for the EdGate Powers podcast. Dr. Keven Ellis, thank you very much for your time today. We really appreciate this; it was insightful and informative, and I look forward to talking to you more on our webinar coming up in a couple of weeks. 

Dr. Keven Ellis

Looking forward to that. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Rich.

Rich Portelance

Thank you, sir.