Will Texas Lead the Nation Away from Child Abuse Through Testing?

When I was teaching in Louisiana in 2000, the state gained the dubious distinction as the first in the nation to use a single test to determine a child's future in the elementary grades. Since then, more than 10 states and New York City have joined the unethical and abusive practice.

Now it looks as if at least half of the "test and punish" national obsession may beginning to crack, and it is a beautiful irony that Texas, the inspiration for the educational genocide of the past nine years, may lead us back toward some semblance of humane education assessment. First, this from FairTest:

Issue: Mar 2009
The Texas Association of School Administrators has released a report offering a sweeping plan for reforming their state’s education system. “Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas” calls for fundamentally altering the way society thinks of public education’s purpose and changing priorities from preparing students for the workforce to preparing them for success in life. A key recommendation is to shift from high-stakes standardized testing to multiple measures of student learning.

“For assessment to be of any value, it must move from the present ‘autopsy’ model to one that more resembles a ‘daily check up,’ which continuously identifies student strengths, interests, motivations, accomplishments, and other information necessary so that teachers can design the learning experiences that will best meet each student’s needs.” The ideas in this report can inform the ongoing debate over high school exit exams, the No Child Left Behind law, which was largely modeled after Texas’s high-stakes testing program, and other state assessment practices.

The Texas superintendent’s report is available here.

Now it seems the Texas Legislature is getting into the act with matching bills that would alter rules on elementary student advancement. The new legislation would essentially repeal the child abuse through testing that has taught hundreds of thousands of children failure at an early age over the past eight years. Here is a crucial section from HB 3:

SECTION 7.
. . . .
(a) Not later than the first day of the school year, a school district shall determine the requirements for student advancement from one grade level to the next. In determining whether a student may be promoted to the next grade level, the district shall consider:
(1) the student's score on an assessment instrument administered under Section 39.023(a), (b), or (l);
(2) the recommendation of the student's teacher;
(3) the student's grade in each subject or course; and
(4) any other necessary information, as determined by the district.

And here is a nice op-ed on the subject from the Longview News-Journal:

LONGVIEW NEWS-JOURNAL
Tuesday, March 10, 2009

We don't imagine a long line of folks gathering at the state Capitol to defend the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS. Bills filed in both chambers in the past week (Senate Bill 3 and House Bill 3) would eliminate the test. Right now, the test is scheduled to be phased out for high school students in 2011-12, but would continue for children in lower grades. Eliminating the test at all levels would force classroom attention away from teaching to that test — required for graduation and even grade advancement — and toward better preparing students for either college or the workplace.

It should be clear what we're doing in Texas isn't working particularly well. The state ranks fourth from the bottom in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and dead last in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma. A recent study by education and counseling professors at Sam Houston State University found less than one third of all Texas high school graduates have adequate preparation for college courses, based on Texas Education Agency standards. Similar studies show workplace-bound high school graduates woefully unprepared.

The new legislation, according to the Houston Chronicle, would eliminate the requirement that students in grades three, five, eight and 11 pass the TAKS to proceed to the next grade level. It would also create two types of diplomas: one for students headed to college, and another for students seeking training in high school for a particular career or trade. That dovetails nicely with local efforts to develop a local workforce by encouraging school districts to expand and improve what used to be called vocational programs.

Not every student is college-bound. Indeed, most aren't, according to statistics. It stands to reason that Texas schools need to do a better job of helping those students be prepared to join the workforce — especially in these tough economic times.

As Senate bill sponsor Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, put it, "We have counted on testing and testing only. And it's caused a lot of angst in the schools."

The present system isn't working. Campuses are primarily judged by the state as to how well their students perform on the TAKS, and how much improvement has been made. Under Shapiro's bill, and its House companion, filed by Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, campuses would be recognized for improvement in a number of areas — from student achievement to preparing students for the workforce.

Student testing isn't going away under this measure. But it will cover more than minimum skills, and it will do what it's supposed to do — measure a student's academic improvement from one year to the next. That would be a considerable improvement over the present system.

As Shapiro further said, "All of the foibles, all of the fallacies in the system here just became glaring."

We suspect many teachers and parents would agree. We certainly do.

"the TAKS Nazis we have morphed into"

When speaking truth to power falls on deaf ears, civil disobedience becomes the inheritor of moral outrage.

From the Houston Chronicle, commentary by teacher, Paula Whiteley:

TAKS has to go, and here's why. TAKS is not measuring student performance. It measures how much money yourstudents' parents have in their bank accounts. Year after year, test performance predictably peaks in affluent areas across the state. The Suburban enclaves post great test scores. Then the uUrban schools — with children whose vocabularies and experiences cannot begin to compete with children whose parents have advanced degrees and six-figure salaries — then play catch up. There will be a vast difference in test scores between children with educated parents with expansive vocabularies, and students whose parents are struggling to put food on the table and hold down menial jobs.

So, after years of unfair competition and high-stakes testing, the inner-city schools, in a word, cheat. Of course, they don't all do it, and but for the ones that do, I don't blame them a whole lot. Last year, there was a list of some about 800 possible instances of cheating in Texas. It was just the tip of the iceberg. The reason I say that is because I have had personal experiences where students have asked, "Ms. Whiteley, are you going to hold up one finger for "A," 2 two fingers for "B," etc., as we take the test, like the last teacher did?" That was many years ago. Today, there are multiple versions of the test within the same classroom.

But, don't kid yourself, with high-stakes testing costing administrative jobs in affluent and urban schools, you're naïve readers would be naive if you don'tthey didn't believe there will be cheating. From the subtle approach of a teacher whispering, "Check that answer once more," to full-fledged erasures at the campus level in a private office, cheating happens, and will continue to occur as long as TAKS remains an educational martinet.

TAKS is driving our classrooms in Texas. It is what we teach, often to the detriment of social studies and science, which are not part of the TAKS test until fifth grade. Just ask an elementary teacher in third- or fourth grade how much time is actually spent on science or social studies. Those two disciplines go by the wayside in order to have more reinforcement of math and reading, to shore up those vocabularies that haven't been nurtured at home. Minutes earmarked for social studies are actually used to drill math skills that were neglected for one reason or another.

Let's use a nautical analogy: Imagine that you havethere are twenty 20 students. They are either safely on the deck of the TAKS ship, with no danger of failing, or they are flailing in the water, reading in the third grade onat a kindergarten level. (Don't gasp — every teacher in Texas has Children Left Behind that don't read on grade level. They're not widgets, they're kids, and despite all of Berkeley'ssome research, they develop at different rates.)

There are a finite amount of minutes in the classroom. Five students are very bright and need challenging and extensions. Six students, however, do not read anywhere near grade level and will definitely not pass TAKS without daily intervention. A lack of attention to the flailers in the water might cost the school's principal a job. Those are our choices in Texas. Now, which do you think a teacher would choose?

There are established tests that measure a child's yearly progress to hold teachers accountable. For instance, student growth from a first-grade to a third-grade performance level can easily be measured. TAKS won't measure that growth, however. All the teacher and district know is that the student, who made two years' gain in one, failed third-grade TAKS.

We are jumping through flaming hoops in Texas, losing good teachers. Most now leave teaching after less than five years. Texas teachers are sick to death of this test being crammed down our throats. There's a better way than the TAKS Nazis we have morphed into. It's time to draw a line in the educational sand and take our state back.

Whiteley has been a teacher for more than 30 years and currently is a bilingual third-grade teacher at Rosehill Elementary in Tomball. Her Web site on teaching and education can be found at noteacherleftinsane.com.

TAKS the Ruination of Education in Texas

An important piece from the Brownsville Herald:

Forum: High-stakes testing must change

By Rachel Benavidez — The Brownsville Herald

October 16, 2007 - 11:43PM

If Andreu Sutterby could change anything about standardized testing, it might be the way that it’s drilled and administered — or he’d do away with it all together.

“Teachers teach to the TAKS and that can get pretty boring,” Sutterby said of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test, required of third through 11th grade students.

The 13-year-old suggested a more relaxed preparation and testing schedule consuming only one semester of the school year, “then you can teach whatever you want,” he said to applause Saturday at a public forum on the No Child Left Behind Act.

Sitting at the end of an eight-person panel of experts, educators and parents, the Vela Middle School student shared his observations on standardized testing.

Schools “see students as scores,” Sutterby said. “It considers them a liability if they don’t do as well.”

The group was assembled at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College for a public forum on NCLB legislation, which is being considered for reauthorization in Congress. The discussion focused largely on “negative effects” of high-stakes testing.

President Bush signed the NCLB Act into law in 2002, requiring standardized testing for all children and to “promote school reform.”

The act enables public schools to receive federal funding and creates accountability standards meant to ensure that those funds are producing “real results” and quality education, according to research on the Latino Education Policy in Texas, conducted at UT in Austin.

The act ties funds for public education to states’ performance on standardized tests for students as early as the third grade and effectively heightens the movement of high-stakes testing, UT graduate student researchers concluded.

Teachers are required to prepare students for the rigors of the exam that determines whether they are promoted to the next grade. The 11th grade exam determines if a student graduates, regardless of their academic standing.

The complaint among educators and test takers has been that the classroom curriculum becomes mandated by the test, leaving room for little else. When a student does not pass, they are removed from extracurricular activities and drilled on the subject.

“They’re killing everything we want to do because they want us to take the TAKS,” Sutterby said and drew laughs by playfully declaring that “TAKS kills brain cells.”

The test does not kill brain cells but according to panelists at Saturday’s forum, it does squash creativity, individuality and a teacher’s freedom to incorporate students’ strengths and evaluate with multiple measures.

Sharon Nichols, an assistant professor of educational psychology at UTSA and co-author of “Collateral Damage: How High Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools,” was the featured speaker at Saturday’s event.

“My work has shown that high-stakes testing is not working,” Nichols said. “In fact, it’s doing a lot of damage.”

Though she recognizes tests are “important,” they should not be the only measure of accountability.

“We are not anti-testing by any means,” she said in an April 25 interview with PILOTed magazine. “We are against testing if the only use of the test is to determine consequences; that is inappropriate.”

At Saturday’s forum, Nichols compared schools to factories in which teachers are “factory workers” and students are “products” in a high-stakes testing environment.

“Compassion is being undermined — our teachers’ ability to care about students,” she said.

Kathy Gomez, a first grade teacher in Brownsville, said our youngest students are being neglected in favor of those in higher, TAKS-testing grades. “I have first graders who come to my classroom not knowing how to read in English,” Gomez said.

“We want our children to learn how to read,” she said. “We want the supplies and the funding to do so.”

A first-year teacher at Rivera High School also complained of the constraints testing places on classroom learning, especially for math and science.

“Not one day goes by that we don’t hear the word ‘TAKS’,” she said from her audience seat. “We have oversized classrooms, sometimes up to 45 students. We don’t have enough desks and we just got enough chairs. We can’t conduct class, much less labs. These students can’t practice what they’re learning,” she said.

Nichols said she hears stories like this “over and over again.”

“Administrators need to hear as many of our stories, of what’s happening, as possible,” she said.

Nichols met with a group of BISD administrators and educators Friday, including area superintendents and deputy superintendent Beto Gonzales who she described as “open” to her research.

“It was wonderful to have been invited to the table,” she said. “We didn’t always agree but we had an open dialogue … about what’s working and what’s not working.”

UTB-TSC and the Center for Civic Engagement helped facilitate the meeting. The Center is a partner in the Brownsville 2020 project, which identified the quality of public school education (K-12), as a top concern among respondents to a community survey.

Brownsville students have historically scored higher in reading and writing than math or science portions of the exam, according to the Texas Education Agency’s data. The district’s accountability rating for the 2005-06 and 2006-07 school years was “Academically Acceptable.”

Texas uses accountability ratings to indicate the overall performance of each school and district, according to TEA. The ratings are based on TAKS and SDAA II (State Developed Alternative Assessment) test results, dropout rates for seventh and eighth grade and school completion rates for grades nine through 12.

Districts were rated Academically Acceptable in 2006 if 60 percent of students passed the reading, writing and social studies portions of the TAKS; at least 40 percent passed in math and at least 35 percent passed in science. In 2007, the standards increase by 5 points in all subjects and will incrementally increase through 2010.

Meanwhile, standardized testing is “driving good teachers out of the system,” according to Peter Farruggio, an assistant professor of bilingual education at UT-Pan American in Edinburg.

Farruggio says NCLB institutes a system of “test and punish … with no additional resources for low income schools — that means the kids that you and I teach.”

Farruggio has helped organize parent groups and parent-led protests against standardized testing in California’s public school system. “People have had it up to here with the testing,” he said.

“Yes, the battle is fought on many fronts, but it’s going to require grassroots organizing … That’s the foundation of this country.”

The Association of Brownsville Educators is taking a more formal approach, drafting a detailed recommendation to improve NCLB legislation that regulates testing standards.

Alberto Alegria, president of the Association and a teacher at Besteiro Middle School said simply that, “it’s time for change.”

The group is asking that the law reduce class size requirement, use more than test scores to measure students’ learning and invest in highly qualified teachers.

“All children have a basic right to a great public school,” Alegria said.

Near the end of the meeting, Reba Cardenas-McNair, a local developer, joined the discussion with an observation on the quality of job applicants produced by local public schools.

“I can’t hire Brownsville graduates” even for clerical positions, she said, because their resumes often have grammar and spelling errors.

“I’ve had to hire Los Fresnos graduates,” Cardenas-McNair said and complained especially about the confusion between the words “their” and “there” among applicants.

“Because of an overemphasis on standardized testing, there’s been a lower focus placed on teaching writing,” Farruggio said, explaining the common error.

Panelists encouraged Cardenas-McNair to consider job candidates on other merits. “They need to know how to be professional, speak to clients,” one offered as an example.

“Yes,” Cardenas-McNair replied. “But they also need to know how to spell.”