Texas Senators Slam State's Testing Regime
State senators took turns publicly condemning Texas' student assessment system — the implementation of which one lawmaker called a "colossal failure" — at a Tuesday Education Committee meeting.
They had wide-ranging questions for officials from the Texas Education Agency and Pearson, the private company that holds a $468 million test-development contract with the state, on topics from the exam-scoring process to the tests' accuracy in measuring student comprehension.
"Either the teachers and the schools are doing a poor job of teaching the curriculum or you all are incorrect that these tests are accurate tests," said Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston and the ...
Comments (21)
Jo Beth Jimerson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I'm not sure if it's too hard--maybe we should try it out on a successful group of adults--like legislators--and publish their scores to get that conversation started? Can't cost that much to administer the Algebra I exam (and 11 other EOC exams) to 181 lawmakers!
C.g. David via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Legislators, educators, and journalist should be held accountable. We need new leadership in all those area. Do Not Blame Teachers for your failures.
Omar Pena
you know what would be great, is if one of these senators actually spent time in a classroom. It does not take a PHD to figure out that the current system places incentives and penalties on items that forces a behavior that does not produce results to benefit the students. I would happy to introduce them to a teacher if they want to invest the time,
Robert Adams via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Teaching the test is not working, life requires more skills than what you can put on a test. Teach thinking!
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If teachers and schools focus on content then the students will pass the content tests.
R L
The Texas Tribune should be seeking info from Texans for Education Reform as they will have some serious influence on what direction is taken in this area. I am looking forward to hearing more about their positions. The previous vested interests of the unions and the 'education establishment' have not served us very well.
Steve West via Texas Tribune on Facebook
So is the Governor of Texas...COLOSSAL...
Lisa Crider via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I think the Texas government needs reform. STAT.
Proud Texan
RL - Why would a tort reform group have any credibility in education reform, especially when they employ the former State Senator who is largely responsible for the current testing and accountability that is being widely condemned and on its way to extinction?
Why don't we leave the discussion to actual experts, educators and parents who really know what is happening and needed in public schools.
Keith Schneider via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Matthew Cowan- I have read many of your comments and I have not figured you out yet. Sometimes your comments are logical, but other times you present yourself as either ignorant or just stupid. For example, do you really believe, "If teachers and schools focus on content then the students will pass the content tests."? You do realize the paradigm is much more complicated, right?
Derick Smith via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Keith - Matthew is full of a lot of rhetoric and irrelevant tangents. This time his comments are totally contrary to the suspected problem. The test maker. The 'I know a lot less about education than I want you to know' Dan Patrick recognizes the probable inconsistency between curriculum. Once again Matthew doesn't understand the real dynamics of an issue. The teachers were not given the STAR test teachers manual until a week or 2 before the test last year making it impossible to tailor their curriculum to this Test. This makes Matthews comments an impossibility for the scores that ended up not counting because of this debacle. This testing company cannot be trusted to do this supposed job of testing more problem solving and demphasizing objective skills testing. The new test is lop sided and cannot be said to accomplish this idea of an overall assessment of skills kids should have at a certain grade level. This still requires teachers to try to teach a test that doesn't do what is expected and doesn't let schools develop a custom curriculum for what kids in the classes of good teachers really need. Which makes Wendy Davis comment "lawmakers should consider whether they had "set our students and our teachers up for failure in the way this was designed" more compelling. It becomes more clear that certain Tea Party bigots like Patrick want to destroy Public Education with failed ideas like vouchers to line the pockets of potential donors and cater to churches and push through knee jerk reaction to the failed TAKS test in an attempt to say they addressed the problem. Patrick predecessor was just as much of a joke as he is. Keith please share this website and event in Austin this weekend. http://savetxschools.org/
Phillip Sanders
This is what is wrong with Pearson and standardized testing:
Pearson advertising for STAAR test graders on craigslist.
http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/20662399/craigslist-ad-solicits-staar-test-graders
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Keith, I am aware of the paradigm. I have seen far too many times lessons and drills coming from administration that focuses on taking the test and not the content. My statement was placed into a simple concept for people to follow, like Derick Smith who more times than naught fail even at that.
I remember one teacher I worked with. She had been teaching for over 55 years. Taught at least 3 generation of kids. Her comment on the test issue when it was first becoming an issue was that she was not worried about the test because she taught the kids the material. She believed if the kids know the material than the test itself will reflect that. An her test scores bore that philosophy out. Then again she was "old School". It seems that teaching profession to a large degree has lost that simple concept.
Ann Miller Witherspoon via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I've provided access to the released 8th grade social studies questions to our legislators in hopes they would care to take just those 15 questions...haven't seen or heard of any taking me up on it.
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
LOL Poor Derick Smith is still clueless. He still has not answered "Why is there testing from the state in the first place?" That is because he ignores his history. Why does he do that? It is because he wants to avoid acknowledging where responsibility and accountability belong. He is too busy trying to blame Sen. Patrick and the tea party for the woes of education when he never gets to the core of the issue.
Now he wants to blame the test. A teacher can create a curriculum during the year as they go through the manual thus they can teach the material that matches what is on the test. IT is done by many. Textbooks doe not come in on time and you have to develop a set of lesson plans based upon a book you have never used. Sometimes you are only a week ahead of the students. Furthermore, teachers do not teach in a vacuum. They do work collaboratively with other teachers in the school or even region. Math is math, Physical science is physical science. English is English. Subjects that do not require the reinvention of the wheel. IS it the ideal way? No but not impossible or improbable. Based upon your description of event, it is not ideal. The state can see the problems and can adjust to them. It does not mean you throw out the test.
I can see you have never been part of any standardized testing development. The test can always be altered to reflect the strengths and weaknesses in it after it is given. When students take tests, they are reviewed after the test are given. They see where students are having issues with and will evaluate if the question is fair or confusing and if the answers are correct or need clarification. They can determine to throw out the question or allow multiple correct answers. That can be reflected in the students final score.
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Ah yes, the Save Texas school group. The group backed by the union groups. Not surprising that districts sign on to it. Their solution for education, more money and less accountability. Typical
Derick Smith via Texas Tribune on Facebook
There goes Matthew again with more hot air claiming some mass collaboration for a failed testing scheme to try and make the legislatures and a political Education commission look good in the face of underfunding and the legislature trying to put out a fire with hot air. Matthew is foolish for even responding to my post. He has grossly ignored reality and misstated what took place with the STAR test last year. No teacher could have developed a curriculum without any guidance at all because the teachers guide did not come out until a week before the test. His old school example had nothing to do with the reality of what happened last school year. Matthew wants to try and hold up some sort of credibility the Tea Party while failing to recognize how poorly these failed testing schemes were put together. TAKS failed Matthew and it's gone. STAR is lopsided and will be replaced soon. Matthew wants to act is if it's just ok to have all these problems and that teachers should focus on lopsided content when teachers want to develop weekly lesson plans that make kids successful not teach them to take a lop sided test. Many teachers will be in Austin Saturday because they see this problem and others like the Koch Brothers creating some propaganda group to promote the failed idea of vouchers. What you will see in Austin is a response to real problems with Teachers who are being ignored and blamed.
Dormand Long
We could just proceed along as we have been going.
If you are willing for the US to drop to second or even third tier in global competitiveness in trade, as
our trajectory is headed, that is our plight.
Our public education establishment has failed to prepare our primary and secondary students for the rigorous college work that is essential to prepare students for the advanced critical thinking positions that world class employers are in dire need of filling.
Microsoft would hire 1,600 advanced IT knowledge workers TODAY if they were magically available.
The CIA and the NSA are equally as desperate to hire higher level thinkers for positions of retirees leaving,
Texas hospitals send recruiters around the globe to hire away registered nurses essential just to keep the doors open. Oxygen is the only asset more essential than RNs at a hospital, which can get by without the administrators and without the physicians. If it is short on nurses, the doors close, as we saw last week in Terrell, as the only hospital for this small city no longer is open,
Instead of stealing RNs from developing countries which cannot afford to lose one single nurse, rational public policy would realize that we could organically produce nurses from the Southern Dallas area with enlightened thinking.
Enlightened thinking to produce registered nurses from Southern Dallas would include the following:
a ) preschool readiness programs taught by college graduate liberal arts creative types, with mastery of a musical instrument as the most vital element, supplemented with early learning to read via the Montessori building block, the Bob Books early phonics readers.
b ) primary schooling with no exposure to standardized testing or teach to the test but rich in the arts including Shakespearean acting,
c ) robust summer reading programs at the branch libraries
d ) robust team sports teams in swimming and in soccer with great coaches who teach skills, not pressure to win
e ) no standardized testing, but very robust writing of essays and papers, using as an example the exemplary writing development program at The University of Puget Sound,
f ) teachers with degrees in their fields, especially in the lab sciences.
g ) interning in hospitals to learn the culture and the procedures
h ) other curriculum to meet the entrance requirements of the nursing school of Collin College.
The nursing school of Collin College received one of 19 Circle of Light in Schools of Nursing awards last year from the national nursing school accrediting authority, It is the FIRST and the
ONLY Texas nursing school to be so honored. Its graduates have their pick of where they want to work, as their performance on the registered nurse professional certification examination is far higher than other schools,
For a better comprehension of what is essential in human capital development as well as poorly Texas has performed in this vital public policy area, I recommend reading the classic white paper
from The Hudson Institute's Director of Research, Edwin Rubinstein, a frequent contributor to Forbes Magazine "The College Payoff Illusion" to see the differentiation between being degreed and being educated. We have far too many with degrees who are incapable of the demands of the workplace. http://rs.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2147
Business each and every year has to spend billions and billions of dollars to teach employees the very basic math and English essential for the work place that should have been mastered in high school.
We have work to do and changes to make if we want to be competitive in the competitive world in which the other countries that have been effective in educating their young are eating our lunch in trade, such as South Korea, who is dominating in areas the US one led in such as autos, appliances, and electronics, with their products given the highest ratings by Consumer Reports,
Phil McCracken
I think Senator Patrick's question, no matter how self-serving and disingenuous, hits at the underlying issue here. He asks, "Either the teachers and the schools are doing a poor job of teaching the curriculum or you all are incorrect that these tests are accurate tests..." The test is accurate; it has been built to the TEKS, the same TEKS all teachers should base their lessons upon. The test questions have been vetted by an extensive network of Texas educators. Classroom teachers had the assessed curriculum, test blueprints and sample questions available for months before a single test was given. So, it's clear the problem isn't the test. The problem, which Senator Patrick was far to craven to address, is the fact that teachers don't have the resources they need to teach for these more rigorous tests. Fix the school finance problem and you will see test scores rise. We are at a critical juncture right now, when legislators must choose between what's right, and what's easy. Weaklings that they are, they'll choose easy. But it's our children that will be harmed by lowering the bar.
Matthew Cowan via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Ah yes, more of Derick's vapid assertions. He still is clueless as to what the problem is. Why, perhaps it is the fact that he does not teach. I did not misstate what took place with the STAAR test. I simply stated that it is not impossible or improbably for teachers to adapt and overcome. The FACT you can not understand that shows that you really do not understand the subject.
You say that TAKS failed but you fail to mention why. Again you also fail to mention or acknowledge why there is testing in the first place. That is because you ignore the reality of history and what the school district have done. But of course your retorts are just about Sen. Patrick, the Koch brothers or some other silly conspiracy. Items devoid of relevance to the problems with the education system.
Gwynne Ash via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Matthew, you disparage unions. Please describe what rights teachers' unions have in the state of Texas. Please also describe the rights teachers have to develop their own scope and sequence based on the TEKS in most school districts. Explain how curricula in Texas are devised and implemented. Identify how many instructional days (of 183) are used for benchmark and other testing. Please also describe the validity and reliability data for the STAAR test.