Pocket Edition of Texas Public Scool Statistics published by TEA

GOP cuts to education budget will hurt young Hispanics the most

The Texas Education agency this week announced the publication of the pocket edition of the states public schools' stats for 2009-2010. Personally, I was surprised to find out that Hispanics account for 48.6 % of the total students in Texas. Whites are next at 33.3 % and African Americans make up 14% of Students in the Lone Star state. When compared to last year's stats, the percentage of Hispanics students increased by 3.5%, African Americans increased by 1.1 % and the whites decreased by 0.1 %.

Another very interesting figure is that the combined number of early childhood (pre-K) and elementary students make up half (50%) of the entire student population in the state. This shows that Texas schools tend to be  very young and very Hispanic. Unfortunately, the republican led state legislature has indicated that they are willing to slash the budget for education and increase the class size limit in grades Pre-K to 5th from the current 22 to an expected 25. These two factors combined are bound to have an overall negative impact on the quality of education for our youngest students.