The Texas Business and Education Coalition (TBEC) announced that 268 public schools across the state had earned recognition on the 2006 TBEC Honor Roll.

“Schools get on our Honor Roll the old fashioned way,” said Jack Lowe, Chairman of TDIndustries in Dallas and TBEC’s Business Co-chair, “they earn it. For us the bottom-line is results. These schools help all students do well in all subjects.”

TBEC identifies the Honor Roll schools by analyzing three years of performance data for all Texas public schools. A school must have a high percentage of students meeting state standards on the TAKS tests in all subjects for three consecutive years, with an emphasis on how many students score at the state’s highest standard – commended – on all tests. Selection criteria account also for each school’s student demographics, the number of subjects tested and the grades served.

“This year’s Honor Roll Schools have achieved performance levels higher than any one could anticipate when the TAKS testing began four years ago,” said Mike McGuire President of Chemshare Corporation in Port LaVaca who heads up TBEC’s Honor Roll committee. “The success of these schools demonstrates that setting high standards and raising expectations for all students is an effective tool in raising performance.”

Every two decades or so, here in the United States, we panic about our schools. Like a fox crossing a barnyard, this panic sets education critics to squawking and sends educators searching for ways to overhaul the system.

What sparks such panic every time, it seems, is the perception that America is losing ground to another country in a competition

In the late 1950s, the other country was the Soviet Union, and the competition was the "space race." The Soviets shocked the United States in 1957 by launching Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. Four years later, they scored again by putting manned flight into space before we could.