Teaching Accountability
Dear friend,
The recent revelations at the El Paso School District should concern us all. While the investigation needs to take its course, we are once again reminded of the perils of standardized testing as the principal predictor of students’ and schools’ success.
Teaching to the test at best and manipulating results at worst — in ways that vary from outright changing results to moving students around so they miss the test — is a problem across the country. In Texas, officials refuse to release data that might point to suspicious test results.
These issues point to transparency and accountability.
According to The El Paso Times, the EPISD performed internal audits that showed dozens of students at Bowie were advanced a grade without explanation and did not take the tests. While the audit stated that there was no evidence this was to evade accountability, the result was that test scores as reported were up but the question remains whether or not the students were cheated.
I ran for office on the bedrock belief that education is key to progress.
We are all the poorer when we fail to make a strong public commitment to civic institutions. El Paso’s best long-term job creation strategy is to invest in our students and families to make sure that new opportunities are within the reach of all.
Standardized testing can provide a single benchmark with which to measure achievement. But a committee of the National Academies of Science that spent 10 years reviewing test-based accountability systems reported to Congress in 2011 that “there are little to no positive effects of these systems overall on student learning and educational progress, and there is widespread teaching to the test and gaming of the systems that reflects a wasteful use of resources and leads to inaccurate or inflated measures of performance.”
This is one reason the Texas Association of School Administrators passed a resolution, supported by area districts, that states in part: “The over reliance on standardized, high stakes testing as the only assessment of learning that really matters (…) is strangling our public schools.”
It calls on the Legislature to reexamine the current test-based accountability system.
While we’re talking about accountability, let me remind everyone the Legislature cut $5.4 billion from education in the last session while pushing for more tests.
As the Houston Chronicle pointed out, it takes employee time to administer tests. STAAR test days occupy 45 of the 180 Texas high school instructional days, not counting prep time or other test days for the SAT and other standardized tests, the paper reported.
We need to fix the school finance system, which has some districts so strapped for money they cannot even join in the effort to force a remedy.
We need transparency and accountability on both ends of the equation, because ultimately, it’s our kids who are being cheated.
Other items of note
• Yesterday, during a Senate Committee on Transportation & Homeland Security hearing, I objected to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples calling our Texas-Mexico border a “war zone.” His use of such incendiary language is irresponsible and creates a climate of fear around our border communities and hurts local economies. His mischaracterization of our border communities comes just months after El Paso was recognized, for a second year in a row, as having the lowest crime rate in the country for a city its size.
• The District 29 Citizens Legislative Town Hall meetings continue. I was at the University of Texas at El Paso yesterday, and next week I’ll be in the Northeast and East Side. [Click here for schedule of Town Hall meetings] The meetings are occasions to participate in community dialogue, build connections, and learn from one another, as well as to focus on the legislative process.
• I support the Planned Parenthood lawsuit against the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, which cut the group out of its Women’s Health Program. The decision, which I believe illegally targeted a qualified health provider, cost the state tens of millions of dollars in federal funding, and disproportionately harms minority women.
• The U.S. Department of Justice continues to oppose the Texas Voter ID law in court, and Wednesday argued there is substantial evidence of discrimination. I agree.
I invite you to follow me on Facebook and Twitter and to stay in touch with events and issues through the website.
Sincerely,