Texas Taliban Mandates Bible and Bill Bennett in Schools

Texas has a long history of repeated attempts to turn the public school curriculum into an indoctrination tool in support of Christofascist values promoted by the John Birch Society of the late 1950s—which had such profound influence on Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and the MAGAts that are now seeking to replace our constitutional republic with a fascist theocracy. 

The recent approval of a mandated book list for all K-12 Texas public school children is the latest, most brazen, and stupidest version of those many attempts to mold the next generation toward acceptance of the intellectual, ethical, religious, and social values of the late Jim Crow Era.

The religious indoctrination effort is underpinned by an unprecedented requirement for specified Protestant bible readings and/or bible lessons through elementary and high school.

The ethical training component comes in the form of required reading of neocon hypocrite, racist, and admitted habitual gambler, Bill Bennett, whose Book of Virtues and Children’s Book of Virtues serve as texts. (For some background on Bennett, see "The Bookie of Virtue" by Joshua Green writing for the Washington Monthly.)

Almost ten percent of all U.S. public school children attend Texas public schools.  Therefore, textbook companies are quick to yield to the monetary incentive to offer texts nationally that will sell in Texas as well. So if you think the retro pablum in the Texas required list of books will be limited to Texas, think again. 

By the way, the only significant differences between the new Texas requirements and what I was expected to read in school (1955-1967): we did not have a right-wing gambling addict teaching us ethical know-how, we didn’t have to read the bible (Protestant or otherwise), and we DID get to read Romeo and Juliet in 11th grade.  

Voucher Laws Supercharge Corruption and Thievery of Public Funds

The Texas Tribune and ProPublic have an important investigative piece on how private school bosses in Texas appropriate and misuse public funds to grow their businesses, hire their relatives, buy products and services from cronies, and take extravagant vacations—all without breaking any laws.  

The voucher scammers' “legal" diversion of public funds expands the form of illegal leeching done by charter schools with zero public oversight to enforce laws governing public school finance. With taxpayer funds now going to private schools where state education statutes do not apply, there are not even any laws to ignore.

And so voucher laws further undergird the unspoken theory and practice of viewing public monies, whether for education or otherwise, as unrestricted sources of welfare, not for the needy, but for the needless.

Texas Orders Up a New Test to Solve Problems Created by 32 Years of Testing

Texas has been been doing more of the same standardized testing and expecting different results (see Einstein's definition of insanity) for 32 years now, and the children of the Lone Star state are as poor, malnourished, and miseducated as ever.  One in four lives in poverty, just as one in four Texans has no health insurance. Poverty rates jumped by 9 percent in the last U. S. Census, while the national average was a 6 percent rise.

State officials of the Higher Education Commission describe Texas ACT scores as "pathetic," and based on NAEP, the gold standard in the test score derby, Texas continues to languish near the bottom of the state rankings, despite a three decade long testing frenzy that has brought Texas children the TABS (1980), the TEAMS (1986), the TAAS (1990), the TAKS (2003), and, alas, the STARR (2011).

As any sane person would expect from generations of non-stop testing that labels, segregates, and stigmatizes the poor, these same poor students who make it to college get there less prepared to think, write, and read--and more likely to blame themselves for their lack of preparation.  No excuses, remember!

The Texas solution to unprepared teens and college dropouts?  A test, what else, and a big contract for the College Board to get more data to solve the problem that the fixation on "data" created. 

. . . .Debates over lagging performance at community colleges and four-year institutions can devolve into finger-pointing between the higher education and K-12 camps, each blaming the other for students’ poor performance at the postsecondary level.

Because colleges are not good at gauging which remedial courses students need, some experts say, students fall through the cracks or give up because they are not progressing toward a degree. They cite the number who are “underplaced” in remediation — because they did not take the placement exam seriously when they got to campus or they have spent time out of school — and quit out of frustration or boredom.

Others point out that deficiencies in students’ secondary education are often the reason they are in remedial courses.

In an effort to provide better data for the discussion, the state in June approved a contract with the College Board to develop a statewide placement assessment, which all institutions would be required to administer to incoming students who did not meet the benchmark scores on state standardized exams or college admissions tests. The new assessment is intended to provide a uniform view — different colleges offer exams from different vendors — and detailed diagnostics to give a better idea of what postsecondary students are missing. That in turn would allow colleges, if needed, to offer a three-week review of trigonometry instead of a yearlong review of introductory math. And for high schools, the diagnostics could offer a closer analysis of where they are coming up short. . . .

Over 230 Texas School Systems Pass Resolution to Rein In High Stakes Testing

It's only fitting that the most sustained and widespread effort to stop the abusive testing frenzy would come from Texas, which is, after all, the birthplace of testing on steroids and the home of the only former American president who cannot travel abroad for fear of being arrested as a war criminal. 

The post below is by TASA's Jenny LaCoste-Caputo:

Testing resolution continues to gain steam

In her blog for Education Week Diane Ravitch once again focuses on the revolution that's caught fire in Texas and resonated with so many school leaders, teachers, parents and students.

Ravitch posted a blog post Tuesday titled "Stalking the Vampire in Texas" where she not only talks about the Resolution Concerning High Stakes, Standardized Testing of Texas Public School Students, but also touts TASA's visioning work and the attempt by superintendents across the state to transform public education in Texas.

The blog reads in part:

The Texas revolt was seeded by the efforts of nearly three dozen district superintendents who began meeting in 2006 and produced a joint statement about their vision for the future of education. The superintendents recognized that the state's relentless focus on standardized testing was not advancing their vision of the future. Their vision has inspired their colleagues, including Commissioner Scott.

Ravitch quotes liberally from Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas, links to it on TASA's website and urges her readers to read it in its entirety.

At last count, we were at 232 districts that have let us know they've passed the resolution and many more have it on their agendas in April. Remember, there is no deadline. Our goal is to get as many districts to pass the resolution as possible, so communities across the state are speaking with a loud, unified voice. At least one chamber of commerce has passed a similar resolution, and we're planning to draft a sample resolution for chambers and perhaps other groups soon. 

Beginning Wednesday, we're also going to begin posting the districts that have passed the resolution by region and come up with some "what now?" steps for districts to take once they've passed the resolution.

Please follow us on Twitter @tasanet and like us on Facebook for more updates on Mission: School Transformation.

Texas Commissioner Robert Scott Takes on Testing-Industrial Complex--Gets Standing O

By TASA's Jenny LaCoste-Caputo:

Commissioner Scott delivers no-holds-barred speech at Midwinter

Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott delivered a surprising speech to the thousands in attendance at TASA’s 2012 Midwinter Conference Tuesday afternoon, invoking a pull-no-punches tone and sharing his frank opinions on the state’s accountability program, his frustration with bureaucratic meddling – both the feds’ and the state’s - and even the names of a few folks who make him mad enough to want to stay in an incredibly difficult job that makes him lose sleep and miss meals.

Usually, Scott delivers a Power Point presentation full of AP participation rates, NAEP scores and graduation results to the crowd of district administrators. He started off by telling them he was dispensing with that today and instead told them about the book he’s reading: Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit, a book critical of the role of federal involvement in K-12 education.

He said his frustration isn’t limited to the federal government, but also with himself for being complicit in the state’s overreaching influence in local school districts.

“I believe that testing is good for some things, but the system we have created has become a perversion of its original intent,” Scot said to applause. “The intent to improve teaching and learning has gone too far afield.” 

He discussed the cuts made by the Legislature last year and said while he was glad that things didn’t end as badly as first projected – at one point lawmakers were considering a $10 billion cut to public education – he realizes that the cuts that were made were personal.

“They were personal to me as well,” Scott said. He had to lay off roughly a third of his staff at TEA because of cuts made to the agency. “For the fact that I was not able to get back every dollar, I apologize, but I did my best.”

Scott also said he’s completed a review of Education Service Centers – something districts have feared would be the target of massive cuts and potential closure – and he’s found them in a “remarkable” state. He said they remain vital and he’s very pleased to announce that none of them will be eliminated. He did say that boundary lines may be redrawn and he’ll be looking for input about ESCs and the services they provide from superintendents and other district leaders.

Scott addressed end-of-course exams and the 15 percent requirement that has stirred controversy of late. He said he’s met with his attorney to see if there’s any way he can waive the 15 percent requirement this year but he’s been advised he doesn’t have the authority.

“I would waive it if I could,” he said, to another round of applause.

Scot said he believes our system is on the cusp of change and the backlash to testing is reaching a boiling point. He talked about Senate Bill 1557, which will create the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium and give some districts the chance to design a new assessment system that is a more accurate portrayal of what’s going on in the classroom, and measures the skills important for a 21^st Century education. The bill is the result of work by TASA’s Visioning Network, which this week launched Mission: School Transformation as the work moves from vision to mission.

The goal of the mission: Student-center schools, future-ready students. Hundreds of conference attendees are sporting bright buttons with that message.

Scott said if he’s looking a little under-rested and under-fed these days, it’s because he’s been in “fight mode” for four and a half years, so much so that the thought of resigning crosses his mind. 

“And then Arne Duncan says he feels sorry for the children in the state of Texas…and then the Irish in me comes out,” Scott told the crowd. “And I say not just ‘No’ but ‘Hell, No, I’m gonna fight.’”

The commissioner also called out Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, who publicly criticized Scott last week saying that TEA has been “derelict” in not issuing uniform grading guidelines for the new accountability system. He also said school districts are “gaming the system” and that students will follow by “gaming the system.” Scott fired back with a news release that said that power rests with local school boards.

In the end, Scott said, he stays because he’s fighting for the children of Texas.

“We’ve got to keep climbing and we’ve got to keep fighting,” he said. The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Guest Post: No Excuses for obfuscating abysmal attrition data with complex calculations

By John Thompson

MacArthur Genius grant recipient Roland Fryer did some complex calculations in "Creating 'No Excuses' (Traditional) Public Schools" to estimate student performance gains during the first year of Houston's "Apollo 20." The massive pilot program extends "No Excuses" instruction to neighborhood schools. Fryer, however, omitted a simple statement of its most important data for that type of experiment. In contrast to "No Excuses" charters, low-income students were not going out of their way to volunteer for 21% more hours of instruction and much more rigorous enforcement of academic and behavioral standards. Some of those charters have had attrition rates of 40% or more. So, an evaluation of whether Fryer's model could be scaled up for neighborhood schools requires an estimate of how many students opted out during the program.

Fryer reported that over 7,000 students were enrolled in nine schools, and that all results were based on the sample of students who remained in school long enough to take the spring tests. He did not reveal how many students took those tests. Or if Fryer did, I could not find it.

Fryer found large gains in math for the two grades where Houston could afford more than $2,500 per student for personalized tutoring, but overall results were disappointing. Middle school students largely declined in reading while high school kids increased for a total effect on reading that was statistically insignificant. Results for "double-dozing" math and reading classes also were discouraging.

Fryer acknowledged, however, that even those modest increases are questionable if his statistical models could not account for challenging students opting out. But he was not very transparent in reporting the students' attrition rate. Back when I was in school, we could turn to the tables at the back of an academic paper and discern that sort of essential information. So, I checked out Table Two on page 71 and looked for something like, "N = x." All I found, however, was that Fryer reported 8,693 "observations" on students who began the school year with Apollo and took two spring tests.

So, I checked out the district's interim report, dated January 2011, which said that 7,385 students were in the program. The Houston Chronicle reported in the fall of 2011, only 6,156 enrolled at the beginning of the second year. But still, it was impossible to tell from Fryer's work whether attrition affected his results. The district's interim report, however, said that the students who entered the Apollo program were 86.6% economically disadvantaged. According to Fryer's report, the sample of students who remained until testing was 61% economically disadvantaged. In other words, Fryer started with nine high-poverty schools, but his conclusions seem to be based on a sample that were not far from average poverty for public schools.

Fryer's report is preliminary and it is categorized as a "working paper," but his "back of the envelope" estimates of return on investment are just as perplexing. He worries that the most effective treatment, where each highly-recruited tutor worked intensively with two students, would be difficult to scale up. Even so, Fryer asserted that the return on investment would be 2-1/2 times as great as the returns that James Heckman found for high-quality pre-school. Heckman, however, evaluated gains that were sustained over time, and clearly Fryer did not. Apparently, Fryer's estimate was based on test score increases, which he compared to increases studied by Alan Krueger due to reducing class size. Even if Fryer is a true believer in data-driven instruction, however, it is hard to understand that how anyone could assume that one-year boosts in math scores, after a diet of interim tests every three weeks, as well as benchmark tests, would be life-transforming.

That gets us to back to the key issue. Fryer claims that if all five characteristics of "No Excuses" schools are implemented with fidelity, then the legacy of poverty can be overcome. What else would it take to scale up his model? "Apollo 20" required the removal of 310 teachers and nine principals. The district replaced 100 instructors with Teach for America teachers, and 60 veterans with a history of increasing test scores. Those transfers received two annual $10,000 bonuses. Replacing nine principals required 200 interviews and one third of those who were hired have since been replaced. A national search attracted 1,200 applicants for tutors. Of the 287 who were hired, thirty left. All three groups were subjected to intense training in "No Excuses" values and techniques and were subjected to detailed and expensive oversight.

It is hard to imagine where Houston, or any other district, could find enough of the type of educators that their experiment requires. The key metric, however, was not the attrition of those carefully-selected adults, but that of the students. The big question is how many high-poverty neighborhood school students stuck out the year, and whether test score gains were inflated by the loss If anyone can find that answer in Fryer's work, or explain why he did not volunteer that information so that everyone could evaluate his evidence for themselves, I'm all ears.

Dr. John Thompson was an award-winning historian, lobbyist, and guerilla-gardener who became an award-winning inner city teacher after crack and gangs hit his neighborhood. He blogs at thisweekineducation.com, and huffingtonpost.com, and is writing a book on 18 years of idealistic politics in the classroom and realistic politics outside.

Duncan To Find Another Texas Miracle Later Today, or Is That An Educational Derivative I Smell

The intrepid turner-arounder, Arne Duncan, will be in Houston today, the home of the first Texas Miracle that got all the edu-fun started 10 years ago when the miracle some years later turned to mirage as the media finally ferreted out the details of Rod Paige's inspired (by Wall Street) leadership and phony numbers game. By then, of course, Rod had made the big time in Washington, left his crooked path of destruction, and departed before the bad news got too bad, leaving Margaret Spellings in charge of the store.

This heads-up on the latest Houston mirage to be celebrated later today by the Secretary in search of a miracle comes from Texas Ed, who left this insightful comment at Bridging Differences (ht to Monty Neill):

This is slightly off-topic, but gets at some of the issues related to those currently in power. Sec Duncan is visiting a "turnaround" school in Houston this Friday. Houston ISD is touting Sam Houston High School as evidence that reconstitution is successful. Indeed, the school was closed under a low-performing rating and achieved recognized status two years later. Good for them, right? But wait--here is what REALLY happened.

The school was low-performing because too few African American students could pass the state math test. After the shuttering and re-opening of the school, the school was now two schools--one a 9th grade center and the other a 10-12 school. Formerly, the school was 9-12. When the school was split, the number of African American students was less than 30 in each school which, in Texas, is too small to be considered i the accountability ratings. Viola--the school is now acceptable even though the combined African American scores would have made the school low-performing.

Further, a new initiative called the Texas Projection Measure (TPM) was applied to increase the rating from acceptable to recognized. The TPM uses a statistical analysis to see if students who did not pass are on track to pass at the end of that level of schooling. So, in this case, 48% of the students passed under the old rules (which would have triggered a low-performing status), yet 68% "passed" using TPM. Now the school, is recognized.

But, under the old rules, the school would STILL be LOW-PERFORMING. This is the type of Enron smoke-and-mirrors that our CEOs leaders are using in education like they used in business to provide "evidence" that their theories work.

Texas Becomes Laughingstock Once Again: State Board of Ed Determines History Is a Liberal Conspiracy

If you can't find any reputable biologists teaching the creation myth as science, you are about to run into an even more prominent shortage: historians who will ignore the existence of the Establishment Clause, Thomas Jefferson, the word "democratic" next to "Republic," and even "capitalism" (now replaced by the less toxic "free enterprise system").

But then who needs historians in Texas, since the cranks in control of the State Board of Education have decided to make up their own historical "facts" and teach them to the next generation of Texans--thus assuring that stupidity will live on in Texas, at least until global warming makes the state with one of the largest percentages of climate change deniers finally uninhabitable.

Textbooks have had much too much influence on teaching for much too long. The actions this past week by the majority of wingnuts on the Texas School Board could signal the end to such hegemony, since it is clear that most the country will treat this bad joke for what it is: the pathetic thrashings by scared and angry white conservatives who "want their country back" (as in back to the pre-Civil Rights era). From the NYTimes:

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.

The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”

In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.

“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.

Corporate Corruption Comes to Pre-School in (Where Else) Texas

In 2003 Susan Landry was appointed by Governor Rick (the-Market-Solution) Perry to head up a statewide effort called TEEM (Texas Early Education Model). Besides the more obvious goal of privatizing Headstart, TEEM aims to bring the same rigid chain gang instructional methods and materials to Texas preschools for the poor that have become standard fare in the elementary testing camps that house older children of the poor across Texas. That's right--scripted pre-school, cognitive decapitation, and testing for our tiniest brown and poor children.

And for Landry's efforts to control the behaviors and learning potential of 52,000 little ones far into the future, she is paid $269,535 per year (more than twice the Governor's salary). Landry and her staff have also soaked up at least another $500,000 in royalties from outfits like Sopris West and SRA/McGraw-Hill, who supply the "learning" materials for Landry's outfit. Here's a clip from a nice piece of reporting from the Houston Chronicle on the latest edu-industrial waste site to be exposed:

AUSTIN — An experiment to better prepare low-income youngsters for school has cost taxpayers more than three times the typical pre-K curriculum and raised questions about payments to educators who commercialized the program.

Staff members at the State Center for Early Childhood Development have received about $500,000 in royalties from vendors and book publishers whose products are used in classrooms participating in the Texas Early Education Model, or TEEM.

Critics fear that the $80 million program is little more than an effort to market research and products through a variety of commercial vendors.

"This preschool scheme is not about preparing these little ones to be ready for school," said Jay Spuck, a retired Houston-area school administrator and former teacher. "It is about advancing a political agenda of implanting corporate interests into nursery schools."

But the staffers say they only receive royalties from pre-K products sold outside the TEEM program.

The Texas Early Education Model evolved from a 2003 state law to improve pre-kindergarten coordination among public schools, Head Start programs and child-care centers.

The approach, which champions training teachers and early literacy instruction, was developed and studied as part of a highly competitive federal grant program conducted by the Institute of Education Sciences, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and The National Science Foundation, founders say.

"I really expect these kids to show effects of this program long term," said Susan Landry, director of the State Center. "It is probably not an inoculation against everything bad in education, but it gives them a fair shot. They get to start on the same footing. These kids are writing their names, they are writing letters, and they are so proud of it." . . . .

So far the results have been, shall we say, pathetic. This is from an independent evaluation submitted to the Texas Education Agency in 2007:

There was considerable variation both between and within communities with regards to student performance and teacher outcomes. For about half of the communities, students in the treatment groups improved more than students in the control groups, and for the other half of the communities students in the control groups improved more than the students in the treatment groups on the student outcome measures (e.g., mCLASS subtests). TEEM did lead to overall improvement for teachers, although there was considerable variation, with teachers in both control and treatment groups obtaining both positive and negative difference scores on the
teacher outcome measure (i.e., Teacher Behavior Rating Scale.)(p. 2).

Which brings us to the whole issue of testing children as young as 3 years old an ongoing experiment: Unethical, immmoral, and abusive, all at public expense. And even though Roland Good's name is not on it, TEEM uses the same 60-second testing methods and PDA technology that Good manufactured for his DIBELS empire.

Here is a small chunk of a lengthy report by Landry's own staff (An Experimental Study Evaluating a State Funded Pre-Kindergarten Program: Bringing Together Subsidized Childcare, Public School, and Head Start) that details some of the regimented training to prepare teachers for their regimented teaching. And remember: No middle class children allowed:

Child assessment. Assessors were trained during a four-day workshop by a Ph.D. level trainer that included didactic training and practice after which assessors participated in a graded certification process. Standardized certification procedures evaluated general administration procedures including following verbal and behavioral scripts detailed in administration manuals, administering practice items, establishing basal and ceiling items, recording children’s responses, and managing children’s behavior. Following obtainment of full certification, assessors were evaluated again during the initial stages of testing while they worked with children enrolled in the project. Specifically, project coordinators sat next to an examiner and observed administration of each subtest. If any difficulties were noted, then follow-up training/supervision was provided (p. 18).

Leininger vs. Public Education

From the Waco Tribune:

Editorial: A school voucher sneak attack

Friday, March 14, 2008

Supporters of public schools really need to keep an eye on the Texas Legislature and surreptitious efforts to undermine school funding by shifting dollars to private and church-run schools through school vouchers.

Comment on this story
Vouchers represent direct cuts in school funding. Though money “follows the student” to a private or church school, meaning one less student to educate, public schools’ costs like heating, cooling and more stay fixed.

A coterie of schemers supported by campaign bank-roller James Leininger constantly tries to find ways to get a foot in the door in Texas for school vouchers.

Proponents often press for “pilot” programs aimed at big-city urban school districts where the challenges presented by poverty and lack of parental involvement are most pronounced.

They blame public schools for lack of achievement and downplay the parental role. A recent study of 1,000 low-income 12th-graders by the non-partisan Center on Education Policy found that when comparing apples to apples — comparing students whose parents were comparably involved in their education — public schools performed better than private schools.

That’s not what the voucher lobby wants you to believe.

Another thing it doesn’t want people to understand is that even when offered vouchers, most parents stick with their public schools.

Unfortunately, this week when the High School Completion and Success Initiative Council met, a body appointed by voucher proponents Gov. Rick Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, some members tried to turn their advisory role into a mission to bring about vouchers for “drop-out prevention.”

Fortunately, State Rep. Rob Eissler, chairman of the House Public Education Committee, made an impromptu appearance to tell the advisory group that vouchers were not germane to the committee’s mission under the language of the bill that created it. The council backed off.

Without question, the council has an important mission: Advise on how public schools can better prepare students for higher education and to see how standards of both can intertwine.

It is clear that teaching focused strictly on passing state standardized tests doesn’t do the trick. College-bound students need to shoot higher or vast numbers will need remedial classes, as too many do today. And these days every student needs continuing education to thrive in the changing marketplace.

As with the whole of public education policy, there’s enough to examine and improve without sidetracking discussion to the tendentious and dubious idea of siphoning dollars from public schools to private ones with vouchers.

Stick to the agenda, please, and leave Mr. Leininger’s agenda out of it.