About Steve Swanson
Steve Swanson is an education advocate and volunteer as well as the founder of ImproveTexasSchools.org, which provides information and analysis based on data furnished by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and Texas ISDs in response to Steve’s public information requests. He has been making those requests for six years. A structural engineer, retired business executive and former vice president of Austin-based American Constructors, Inc., Steve has a long history of active involvement in the education arena.
His current focus is on improving our public schools by helping education leaders learn and use existing ISD policies and state laws that relate to meeting the needs of all students and to making effective use of ISD’s, and their community’s, resources. His goal is to help Texas govern education so that all students are provided with the optimal conditions for meaningful learning --- learning that boosts their achievement levels.
In order to achieve his goal, Steve conducts research, testifies at local education-related public hearings and before the Texas legislature, and meets with elected officials and education administrators. Also, he has presented his ideas and research on Texas’ governance of education according to the Texas Education Code to University of Texas doctoral students who aspire to become school superintendents, and he has spoken to attendees at Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) and University of Texas conferences on community-based leadership and action in education. Steve also shares his knowledge and ideas via this website, emails, and his blog.
Very early in his volunteerism, Steve’s eyes were opened to the lawful opportunities that have been missed by ISDs and the TEA and the impact of missing those opportunities on students, as well as on teachers, parents and taxpayers in general. Specifically, it became very clear to him that education leaders, including school boards, superintendents, lawyers, and TEA, had not been trained in their opportunities - responsibilities found in state law and school district policies.
His earliest volunteer experiences were as a parent who was actively involved in his sons’ school and sport experiences and as a participant in an AISD-sponsored mentor-protégé program in 1996. The goal of the program was to improve opportunities for small, minority and women-owned businesses in the construction industry to improve their opportunities to build schools in the Austin ISD.
After his retirement, Steve continued volunteering. In 2008, began volunteering at Johnston High School, which was closed by the Texas Commissioner of Education – a victim of the state’s “drill and kill” testing. (The school was reconstituted and renamed Eastside Memorial High School at the Johnston Campus.) Among other things, Steve worked with the school’s PTA, served on its campus-level planning committee and participated in education related community events. In addition, he accompanied high school students to school board meetings so that they could speak out against the school board’s plan to address problems at the high school by turning schools into IDEA-run charter schools.
Steve’s extensive volunteer experience also includes:
Volunteering at Austin’s Oak Hill Elementary School, Clint Small Middle School and Pearce Middle School as well as at public schools in Westlake (Eanes) and schools districts in Austin, Leander, Dallas, and Kendleton.
Being a member of an Austin ISD Community RoundTable, an Eanes ISD Campus Leadership Team, and a Leander ISD Improvement Committee.
Serving on a variety of joint subcommittee task forces (Austin City Council, Austin ISD Board of Trustees, and Travis County Commissioners Court). The task forces focused on such critical issues as: youth leadership development; helping students who have problems with the law or who are truants stay in school through the use of restorative justice rather than sending them to correctional facilities; helping financially-challenged students stay in school by providing them with opportunities to work and earn academic credits at the same time; and improving the effectiveness of the AISD’s student mentoring program.
