There are 8,998 public schools in Texas. In those public schools there are 4.6 million students and 310,000 teachers. Nationally, Texas is listed as #24 out of 50 for the "Smartest State" rankings.

Unfortunately, these figures listed above have very little to do with Willacy County Schools.

At any given time, about 500 public schools in Texas are listed among low performing schools, and Lyford High School, Raymondville High School and Myra Green Middle School are among the worst performing schoos lin the state.

So, rather than being a top performing school, our schools are among the 5.5 percent that are in the dog house with the Texas Education Agency.

On Dec. 15, 2009 the TEA released a list of the worstperforming schools in Texas and three Willacy County schools made that list. These are the campuses where 50 percent or more of the students failed TAKS in any two of the last three years or were rated "academically unacceptable" in 2007, 2008 or 2009.

There is no consolation in knowing that several other Rio Grande Valley Schools also made the failing list. These include Edcouch Elsa High School and Elementary, La Villa High School, PSJA Memorial High School and Santa Rosa High School.

Under Texas' Public Education Grant program, students at all of these schools can apply to transfer to another district in 2010-11. The TEA has written a letter to all superintendents of low per-forming Texas school districts. They have been ordered to notify all parents in their respective districts by letter, before Feb. 1, 2010, about the options they have to apply on behalf of their children to another school district.

* The information in this article was e-mailed to the Chronicle/News by Ralph Cortez (edwatchdog@att.net) and included copies of documents from the TEA and a Dec. 15, 2009 letter to superintendents whose schools are among the low performing districts.