TribLive: Williams on Accountability and Testing
At this morning's TribLive conversation, Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams addressed the hottest topic in public education in Texas today: the state's standardized testing regimen.
Comment Policy
The Texas Tribune is pleased to provide the opportunity for you to share your observations about this story. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask that you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or wandering away from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of the Tribune, and your user name will be displayed. Thanks for taking time to offer your thoughts.
Comments (7)
Dave Cortez via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Repost: "Today our education commissioner said he would support local control on teachers carrying concealed weapons, an hour or so later a teacher talked a student out of shooting more victims by "engaging in conversation." http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/10/16449709-student-shoots-two-at-california-high-school-sheriff-says?lite
Michelle Michon via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The ALEC backed GOP/ Tea Party has nothing good in store for our state. Keep the guns OUT of our schools!
Michael Dobbs via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Whatever!
Wayne Beamer via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Thanks Dave... Reposted!
Texas Parents Opt Out of State Tests via Texas Tribune on Facebook
So disappointing to hear the commissioner talk about maintaining the current STAAR regime. He's not interested in reducing high-stakes/standardized testing. He actually believes in the validity of these worthless exams. He told us he thinks they do a great job of measuring critical thinking skills.
Allison Holland
critical thinking skills are being abolished in lubbock public schools, most high school education is faith based not just in the fake science classes. it dominates the english classes where real novels are almost never read. questions in other classes are rarely tolerated because no questions are important enough to break the classrooms obedience to the rule of what is said. if it doesnt make sense too bad. if you have too many questions it is seen as a threat and if you are in an ap class you will be subjected to the steady process of elimination. if you are dyslexic they force you out because as ms. justice, the ap english teacher told me, " I dont want to have to teach two classes." if you are from a home that is unsteady they put you on the minimum track. that means no college to be expected. they do this so there will be no flunking of classes and they can move you right on out. charter schools are profiting while education has all but disappeared for those unable to remain in ap classes. the kids are dumber and dumber and believe what ever they are told. texas has no health plan for women because too many women dont understand that other states care for women. they dont know that texas wages are among the lowest in our union. they dont know that fracking is dangerous. dyseducation plays into the hands of those who wish to profit from misinformation and those who have been convinced that it is more patriotic to disdain the idea that to be american means to care for our land and our people. this is seen as wimpy. not texan. so texans will remain ceded from reality and truth because our people, our texas children, have been made stupid because its cheap, its invisible and charter schools are on occasion owned by wives of legislators.
Margie Hastings
While I understand that accountability is necessary, what the commissioner is failing to take into account, is that there are new standards that are being put in place that are going to create almost a year's gap in learning with regular students, not to mention what it is going to do with our at-risk students.
Another item that I take issue with is the monopoly that has been created. This is no longer about education, it is about big business. Pearson creates these tests and creates the curriculum, as well as most of the supplemental materials that go along with it. How is this even legal? Real estate has entered the market now too, because the higher the test scores, the more valuable the real estate. Make no mistake-- testing isn't about children anymore.
Want to make it about children? Strip the evaluative nature of it. Use the data as it was originally designed- to create informative educational decisions about children. We are failing our kids, and graduating "educated idiots" who have just been trained to pass a test- yet lack the skills necessary to succeed in the real world.
We need to wake up and start making decisions based on what is best for kids, or we have a nation, or at the very least our state at stake.