Ector County ISD is in the state spotlight this week with Wilson and Young Middle School teacher Kailey Tate testifying before the state Senate Education Committee and Superintendent Scott Muri participating in the state legislative conference Friday.
During his media call Wednesday, Muri said Tate, a sixth-grade English language arts teacher, had an opportunity to testify before the Senate Education Committee Wednesday about Senate Bill 9.
“One of the items embedded in Senate Bill 9 is an opportunity to create a fully-funded teacher residency program throughout the state of Texas,” Muri said. “As our local community is well aware, ECISD, in partnership with the University of Texas Permian Basin, currently operates a … paid teacher residency program.”
“Kaylee was one of the teachers who successfully completed that and is now teaching at one of our schools. Last year, she was a resident and spent a full year learning from one of our very best teachers. … This year she has been hired at Wilson and Young Middle School to serve the sixth-grade students in the English language arts program. We’re incredibly proud of Kailey and her work; incredibly proud of her accomplishment (Wednesday). Getting to testify before the Texas State Senate is quite an honor. She did a great job not only telling her story of (her) experiences in ECISD, and specifically through the teacher residency program, but more specially about this opportunity that we have in Texas to provide fully funded residencies for teachers across the state.”
Muri noted that Texas is experiencing a teacher shortage and more opportunities have to be developed to cultivate and develop teachers within that pathway.
ECISD has created a variety of pathways for teachers and other needs such as diagnosticians and speech therapists.
There also are high school students participating in a teacher pipeline.
This provides a chance for students interested in the profession to earn a high school diploma and an associate degree at Odessa College.
“When they graduate from high school, they’ll be halfway home to becoming a teacher in ECISD. We are working with our state legislature to encourage additional funding for these pipelines,” Muri said.
He noted that teacher residents are better equipped than student teachers for that first day of school.
“It’s all about the length of time and the quality of experience that those candidates have,” Muri said.
The teacher residency is the students’ senior year of college, fully funded, and they are paid for the service they are providing, he said.
“Think of the apprenticeship model as a big umbrella and teacher residencies are a piece that are underneath that big umbrella. The teacher apprenticeship program creates the structure and the funds are provided by the federal government. The federal government has added to the workforce commission the role of teacher, so now funding is provided by the federal government for those interested in becoming teachers and that’s through that apprenticeship umbrella,” Muri said.
“A teacher would participate in a teacher residency program, a year-long residency that is a part of that big overarching apprenticeship umbrella. You can have teacher residencies standing on their own. That’s what we currently have, but we will soon, thanks to the Permian Strategic Partnership, have the overarching umbrella of apprenticeships. We will establish that with local colleges and universities to create (a) program that will allow anyone who participates to have access to funding for their college experience. That piece is forthcoming. But the residencies will fit underneath that larger umbrella,” Muri said.
Muri will be part of a panel discussion Friday at the Texas Legislative Conference in New Braunfels. He will join economist Ray Perryman in a panel discussion about sustainable economic growth in Texas.
“My opportunity is to talk about education and how education impacts the economy in the state of Texas, and then specifically the sustainability of the work we’re doing not only in public education but just the nature of education and its contributions to ensuring we have a sustainable economy,” Muri said.
He said the discussion is about the investment the state makes in education and how education plays a critical role in the state economy.
“Education is an economic driver in our own state. … The research is very clear — the higher the education level that one attains, the more opportunities to earn a higher income. So quality education equates to higher income (and) more opportunities to earn a larger wage, so education is equated to economic sustainability. The conversation is really not about funding education as much as it is about the value of education and the economic situation of the state of Texas,” Muri said.
Vouchers are a political topic that public education is dealing with today.
“There is some pending legislation that speaks to vouchers and there is a proposal to bring vouchers to the state of Texas. Certainly as a system that is not something that we would support. There isn’t evidence that talks about its effectiveness. It certainly removes dollars from public school children. We wouldn’t support something that is detrimental to the children that we serve in our own community,” Muri said.
