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For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
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1 That's about 240,000 students -- no. Actually that's
2 about 300,000 students. But we think some of them are
3 going to be in the 20,000 that would go. But that's
4 about 300,000 Hispanic students that right now we don't
5 think are going there. They constitute about 240,000 of
6 the 300,000 missing students.
7 So this campaign in many ways is going to
8 target the Hispanic segment of the population, not
9 exclusively. We believe that it's very important that
10 we reach the African-American population that isn't
11 going. And as you can see we're not any more close than
12 where we want to be in terms of white participation in
13 higher ed.
14 When you look at California, 6.1 percent,
15 this is pretty ambitious when you talk about it, but
16 it's not going to be any more close than where these
17 other states are, but it's moving in the right
18 direction. It's going to be an enormously challenging
19 and very, very difficult job to accomplish.
20 So the strategy in the plan in essence said
21 we want to ensure the students and their parents know
22 and the legislative embraced it and passed a law and
23 said do it. Go and reach the parents and the students
24 and let them know about the value and availability and
25 that we should really target people from historic
36
1 backgrounds that didn't go to college.
2 But I have to tell you as we really got
3 involved in doing this we said, you know, awareness is
4 great and knowledge is great, but if you don't move
5 someone to action, if you don't accomplish for them the
6 notion that they have to go from saying, well, yeah, I
7 know about higher ed, so I'm going to take the right
8 courses in the 6th grade to prepare me for the 7th grade
9 to prepare me for the 8th grade to prepare me for the
10 9th grade, then it won't work. It cannot just be the
11 notion that you've raised their awareness.
12 So we've taken motivation and said it's a
13 critical factor. We can't leave that out. And besides
14 students and their parents, there are all these other
15 influencers that are out there. There are teachers.
16 There are faculty members at colleges and universities.
17 There are community leaders, people at their churches,
18 all sorts of people that interact with students on a
19 regular basis who need to embrace the notion that
20 they've got to offer their support to these students so
21 in essence the students will know what is expected of
22 them and hoped for them is that they will go on to
23 college and that they will get a better education.
24 The legislature gratefully gave us five
25 million dollars to get started. Our board has created a
37
1 foundation that will help support the campaign. This
2 enabled us to say we can hire a campaign staff. We can
3 hire an external research and marketing company that
4 will help us develop the campaign.
5 If you talk to the original senate sponsor of
6 this, he will tell you he wanted it modeled with: Don't
7 mess with Texas, but it's the wildly successful
8 anti-litter campaign that was targeted to early
9 20-year-old males who throw trash out of their truck
10 windows; and what I started saying on that was it's
11 infinitely easier to stop a 20-year-old male than it is
12 to get a third grader to make wild educational decisions
13 throughout ten years of that third grader's life.
14 So we have to think differently about this.
15 We cannot just say it's a marketing campaign and we're
16 going to have great slogans and we're going to have
17 catchy jingles. This really has to be a different
18 approach to how we do things because what we're trying
19 to do is motivate students to make really good choices
20 even when those obstacles pop up in their way and even
21 when they don't understand algebraic equations. We have
22 to give them the opportunity it takes to get over those
23 obstacles.
24 So marketing is a very important component,
25 but without some sort of grass root level, without
38
1 ground troops, if you will, in local communities who
2 embrace the campaign who said, you know what, it's
3 really important that I make sure that those students
4 that I interact with, whether it's at my church or
5 whether it's a teacher in that public school or whether
6 it's anywhere that student interacts that they, you know
7 what? I've got people behind me. I've got people
8 rooting for me. I got people that are going to help me
9 get what I need to succeed.
10 And I've sort of likened this to sort of the
11 promoporta approach to education. Promoportas are
12 health care workers that are locally based -- we have
13 them all along the border in the border towns in Mexico
14 and where one person is trained to help someone make
15 decisions about their health care and understand the
16 needs, when they need to go to the doctor and they go to
17 the hospital, and they go to their neighbor and they
18 tell the neighbor and they know the person wouldn't lie
19 to them.
20 What we're trying to do is the same sort of
21 thing for higher education, is neighbors helping
22 neighbors understanding the benefits in supporting their
23 kids and their parents, when parents are such a
24 critical, critical factor in this because students get
25 so much direction from the parents. So we want the
39
1 parents to be embraced by this campaign in the same way
2 that the students are.
3 So we're partnering with anyone we can find.
4 There is no stone we have left unturned. We are not
5 reinventing the wheel. We're saying what's out there,
6 what's working, what are you doing in your community and
7 how can we leverage that, how can we expand it, how can
8 we make it work on broader scale, because we know there
9 are things working and we just have to find them and we
10 have to support them and find a way to translate them
11 into the whole campaign.
12 So what's the campaign goal? Well, what
13 we've done is find those missing 300,000 students, the
14 ones that wouldn't be there, and so that's the focus
15 that we've got. It's those 300,000. It's not everybody
16 in the state of Texas, although we want everyone in the
17 state of Texas to embrace the campaign and offer the
18 support to those students.
19 So what will we do through this campaign? We
20 want to ensure that people know and understand that they
21 need to prepare because we want these students to
22 graduate from high school, prepared to succeed in higher
23 ed, and they need to know that there is some financial
24 considerations, but we also want them to know there are
25 things that help them overcome it, and then we want to
40
1 motivate students to believe that it's desirable,
2 attainable and affordable and to make choices and take
3 actions throughout their entire lifetime that support
4 those outcomes, so that students know that they're on a
5 path to go.
6 And then obviously it's to get on to the
7 grass root level and build their partnerships and get
8 everyone to embrace the notion that everyone has a
9 responsibility.
10 How are we going to do it? We're going to
11 start with research. I don't want to pretend that we
12 know exactly who the target audience is. We have hired
13 a firm Newstand headed by Dr. Karl and the marketing
14 firm that is part of (inaudible) and what we said to
15 them is we do not presume to believe that the Hispanic
16 market is a monolithic market that you can say one
17 message that resonates with both the recent immigrants
18 to Texas and the individual whose family came before my
19 family came in 1835.
20 Some way we have to find a way to segment
21 that market and create messages and target that audience
22 in a way that resonates with those different segments.
23 And the same is true of the African-American
24 market, because they are also a target for this. And
25 then we need to find out what works.
41
1 I keep reminding myself I am an almost
2 50-year-old white female who probably has not a clue as
3 to what a 15-year-old Hispanic male might find
4 interesting motivational. I keep in mind that I am now
5 the target audience and therefore I should not worry.
6 Maybe it doesn't resonate with me, but we're looking at
7 everything along the pipeline.
8 Where are the branches, where are the seeps,
9 which I find is kind of an interesting way that research
10 people are characterizing, where is the leakage along
11 the way. And we're going to develop some messages and
12 they keep telling us it's going to be edgey.
13 Well, I said that's great, because you're
14 dealing with a lot of people that are very edgey by
15 nature. So it could be an interesting outcome. And
16 then we're going to brand the campaign.
17 Don't Mess with Texas was in many ways
18 successful because the brand, everyone in the state knew
19 what it was. The notion that you want to build this
20 positive brand so people right now may be opting out and
21 say college isn't for me are saying, uhm, college could
22 be for me and make it a lifetime choice.
23 I'm learning a of about marketing that I
24 didn't know about before. So we've actually come up
25 with a brand that we're beta testing.
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1 It's very important that everyone know as we
2 go around we have not really actually done all the
3 fundamental field testing that needs to be done on the
4 target audience.
5 What we're trying to do is the umbrella brand
6 for the whole thing that is being developed, and that is
7 to say Extend, in other words, reach out, do more,
8 stretch and look beyond what you may think your horizons
9 are for right now.
10 When we say Choose Your Tomorrow, it's very,
11 very important because the notion is that it is a
12 choice, and sometimes these students may think the
13 choice has already been made for them and what we want
14 them to know is really it is their choice.
15 Maybe they don't have any models around that
16 say to them college is for me. What we're going to do
17 is help create those models and what we're going to say
18 is you have a choice to make and we want it to be an
19 informed choice and we want you to make the choice and
20 not have someone else make it for you.
21 And so we take, you know, feedback from
22 people, anyone who is interested in letting me know what
23 you think about this, but the important point is that
24 we're trying to do something that we've never done in
25 the state of Texas before.
43
1 As someone told me the other day: You know
2 what? We may fail. And I said: Well, obviously you
3 might fail. We might not succeed as well as we would
4 hope, but right now we know we are failing and to do
5 nothing and to try nothing and to say it doesn't matter
6 is not an option. So I would rather fail spectacularly
7 having tried to do something that would make a real
8 difference in people's lives than to have not ever tried
9 at all.
10 Thank you very much. I think Steve and I
11 would be happy to answer any questions.
12 MR. HANNA: Thank you, Terri.
13 We do want to open the floor up to questions,
14 and also as we are I see our fearless director coming
15 up. I want to thank Leslie for being with us this
16 morning.
17 I think we have -- do we have microphones?
18 Anyone who would like to go ahead and start and then I'm
19 going to sit here where I can recognize folks so they
20 can come to the mike.
21 MR. CANCHOLA: Teri, do you have a county
22 system of superintendents in the state of Texas like
23 they have in Arizona?
24 MS. FLACK: No, sir, we do not.
25 MR. CANCHOLA: Of the high schools -- and I'm
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1 assuming Texas as a big state, probably 25, 30,000
2 schools, how many principals do you have that are
3 Hispanic?
4 MS. FLACK: I don't know that answer either.
5 I'm not -- I'm on the higher ed end.
6 MR. CANCHOLA: I guess the point I'm trying
7 to make, this program, which is a great program, you got
8 to start at the top and the leadership is what brings
9 everything closer. I've never seen anything fall from
10 the bottom of the pot.
11 And until there are opportunities, the
12 wonderful thing I see in Texas and Mexico and Arizona,
13 which didn't happen back in Illinois, we have an
14 abundance of overqualified, over achiever professionals
15 in this areas. I don't call them teachers. I call them
16 educators, and you're blessed and I don't understand why
17 there is an upward mobility for these people.
18 If our growth as you show it and the census
19 shows it, why aren't there opportunities for these young
20 Hispanics and drive this program? Because if it's going
21 to be a success -- and one of the problems I see in
22 Arizona and luckily it's starting to change, some of
23 these people with 30, 40 years, they're either dying or
24 retiring or moving on.
25 Until you get counselors in there, Hispanics
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1 who tell our kids when they come to high school, you
2 ought to be in mechanics or in a workshop, there really
3 isn't anybody there who could reach out to our kids and
4 convince them and take the time other than a job, this
5 program isn't going to work.
6 MR. MURDOCK: You're absolutely right. If
7 you look at Texas, elementary and secondary,
8 particularly superintendents -- I spoke this last month
9 with three different groups of them -- they are
10 overwhelmingly Anglo. No doubt about it.
11 What is changing, though, is that in those
12 groups there is also then principals that I've been
13 talking to and others are and those are increasingly
14 Hispanic and non-Anglo. So you would expect as the
15 evolution occurs, if the opportunities remain, we would
16 see an evolutionary change, a generational change, if
17 you will, that will at least increase the representation
18 of Hispanics among superintendents and other leadership
19 positions.
20 It's smaller than it should be in terms of
21 the demographics of the state for sure. Hopefully we're
22 going to hit the records on that in the generation
23 sense.
24 MR. CANCHOLA: How do you network? You have
25 a network that says, hey, Mr. Deputy Principal or
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