Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath joins Dan Patrick for a conversation about the challenges and changes facing Texas public schools.

Morath shares the personal experience that led him to leave the private sector for public education before discussing school accountability, teacher compensation, literacy, classroom discipline and the performance of Texas schools.

They also talk about cell-phone restrictions, controversial books in school libraries, and the Bluebonnet curriculum—including its treatment of American history, literature and biblical references.

In This Episode

• Why Mike Morath left a successful software career for public education
• What Texas' A–F school rating system is intended to measure
• Why some Rio Grande Valley schools outperform expectations
• How Texas is changing teacher compensation and performance incentives
• The continuing challenge of students graduating without adequate literacy skills
• What happened after cell phones were removed from classrooms
• How controversial books ended up in some school libraries
• What Texas has changed about library-book oversight
• What Bluebonnet Learning teaches
• Why the curriculum includes historical and biblical references

Morath describes his career change as stemming from seeing a teenager he mentored struggle to complete a basic job application because of insufficient literacy skills.

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