For several years, the state of Texas has been widely cited as a model of standards-based education reform. Some called the educational progress occurring in Texas a miracle, even Texas’ educational accountability was even touted as a model that ultimately usher in the “No Child Left Behind Act” (NCLB) in January 2002.
The claims catapulted Houston’s superintendent, Rod Paige, to Secretary of Education and made Texas a model for the country. Much of the Texas education miracle was based upon the scores found in the state’s mandated test — TAAS and it was the high scores that politicians used to trumpet the “miracle.” In December 2003, the New York Times compared the scores of 75,000 students in Houston who took both the TAAS and Stanford Achievement Test from 1999 to 2002.
But an examination of the performance of students in Houston by The New York Times raises serious doubts about the magnitude of those gains. Scores on a national exam that Houston students took alongside the Texas exam from 1999 to 2002 showed much smaller gains and falling scores in high school reading.
Compared with the rest of the country, Houston’s gains on the national exam, the Stanford Achievement Test, were modest. The improvements in middle and elementary school were a fraction of those depicted by the Texas test and were similar to those posted on the Stanford test by students in Los Angeles.
Over all, a comparison of the performance of Houston students who took the Stanford exam in 2002 and in 1999 showed most did not advance in relation to their counterparts across the nation. More than half of them either remained in the same place or lost ground in reading and math.
In 2003, the TAAS was replaced with the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS).
One would think, school districts around Texas, especially in Houston, would have learned a lesson once people realized that the “Houston Education Miracle” was nothing more but an illusion based on Enron style math. However, such is not the case. Recently, The Daily Morning News reported that Texas Education Agency (TEA) officials has just released the names of 669 schools that were flagged with suspicious TAKS scores discovered by Caveon, the test security company hired by TEA to look for TAKS cheaters.
Houston has the highest number of suspicious schools, 83, in the state, next is Dallas with the second highest, 49, suspicious schools. In other cities through out Texas, El Paso has 20 schools, Austin has 12, Fort Worth has 11, and San Antonio has six.
This is not the first time, in December 2004, the Morning News released an exclusive report from an investigation of school scores on the state’s TAKS test, a report that rattled the nerve center of Texas education.
Comparing classes’ past year test performances with the following year’s scores, The Morning News’ found 25 Houston schools with highly unusual class performances and more than 400 suspect schools among the state’s 7,700 public schools. More often than not, the students came from low-income areas that normally score near the bottom but within one year had soared to the top. One of Texas’ most celebrated schools, Houston’s Wesley Elementary, had been used by Dudya as a shining example of at-risk urban children who were able to overcome the odds and surpass their wealthier suburban neighbors.
The Morning News uncovered inconsistencies in scores and a faculty conspiracy. A former teacher from Wesley, Donna Garner, told The Morning News teachers were “expected to cheat.”
“You’re expected to cheat there,” said Donna Garner, a former teacher at Wesley who said her fellow teachers instructed her on how to give students answers while administering tests. “There’s no way those scores are real.”
The only difference from the first investigation, more schools are getting caught cheating. If there is anything the Texas miracle story can teach us, it is the hazards of high stakes testing. How long will it take for us to understand that every child is being left behind?
For schools where Caveon found suspicious score patterns schoolwide (click here)
For schools where Caveon found suspicious score patterns in one or more classrooms (click here)
The Dallas Morning News 2005 Series
I’ve found NY schools for the most part are very good. Of course, we pay higher taxes for them. In the South, to avoid desegregated schools it is common practice for white parents to send their kids to private academies (I know my own brother does this since he’s lived in Georgia and Arkansas) so no one wants to pay any taxes for the public schools. In short you get what you pay for, and racism is a large factor in what people are willing to pay for.
Racism is a major part, but it is now a problem in your more affluent suburban schools. When I was interviewing for a job, we got into this discussion, and it really blew my mind when this guy told how his daughter is unable to get a real education at one of the “better schools” outside of Houston ISD because principals are coming down on teachers to teach to the test so their students can pass the TAKS.
I was looking at the list and my mouth dropped at the schools I recognized as being one of the “better schools.”
If you have the money to send a child to a private academy, I would do it in a heart beat, at least here in TX. They are excempt from taking the TAKS, so there is no worry about have a child being taught to the test through out the school year.
Sure, take your kids out of the public schools, leaving only the financially poor in the public schools. Or parents who see that schools are teaching to test (due to NCLB) should put pressure on politicians to amend or eliminate that stupid law completely.
It really comes down to a private/public school conundrum.
It is easy for those who can afford it weigh their options between public and private while the financially poor continue to suffer. Speaking here in TX, the current state accountability system is unwittingly reinforcing the focus on relatively low standards. One of those consequences is that those who were able to get by through school and move on to college end up taking remediation classes. And that is where the conundrum comes, its a dilemma that brings our politics smack up against our instincts.
Sure we all condemn the elitism of private schools and talk about egalitarianism and the importance of putting pressure on politicians to amend or eliminate the law. But the truth is, parents are forced to decide the future of their children based on a Texas public school system rife with problems and knowing the problems that will come ahead, therefore, parental instincts take over. I can see why, every parent wants the best for their child.
Now that is not to say we should turn our back on the public school system. The question that should be asked why are middle class parents forced to to make a choice? IMO, I think you can still make the arguement for public school reform while sending your own child to a private. The arguement needs to be reframed. A parent should not be forced to make these type of decision, they should feel comfortable knowing that their child will be getting the same quality education regardless of the type of school you are going to.
I would not be so certain that private schools were better. The data on that subject do not support the idea that private schools are better at educating children. My advice, from being in many such schools, whether charter, religious, other kinds of private, etc.: caveat emptor – buyer beware!
Having taught in Texas schools, I can say that parent pressure does work at the local school level, to reduce the amount of time spent teaching to the test.
Other strategies would be to get the state standards to apply to all children in the state. If all children had to take the tests, then people would apply pressure to get the test taking out of the central focus for the schools. In some states, even home-schooled children have to take the equivalent of the TAKS, and in many states, children in any organized (that is, anything but a home school) also have to take those exams.
As another point, when the Texas exams were first instituted, I was teaching in east Texas. The state provided people to administer and monitor the tests. I could be in the room to help with crowd control, but I had no chance to cheat, period. That’s the way it should be. Asking teachers to give tests where the results are going to be used to evaluate their performance is asking a lot. Frankly, I’m surprised that the number of erasures and similar scores for entire classes isn’t larger. The pressure to cheat and easy possibilities for cheating are enormous.