Texas Education
Texas Education: How well did your high school perform on state tests?
Part 1: How well did your school perform on state tests? Note: If you did not attend high school in Texas, you can also pick the high school attended by a family member or one near where you live. If you attended high school in another state, select the Texas high school near where you live or where you have a relative attending school.
Go to https://schools.texastribune.org/districts/Links to an external site.
Now, look up the statistics for your school district. Now, look at the top of the page for the box where you enter your high school. Enter your high school.
Now, post your response to your high school\’s ratings: How did your high school\’s ratings compare to the overall school district ratings? Do you think that the state tests prepared you to perform well at HCC? Explain. Did your high school\’s ratings reflect your experience there? Explain.
Part 2: If you cannot see the article, I\’ve put the file below. Read: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Opinion-I-co-wrote-the-law-that-morphed-into-15441055.php?cmpid=gsa-chron-resultLinks to an external site.
Part 3: Remember that you must also respond to another student\’s post.
Paart 4: Do you support or oppose the author\’s position. Explain 1 reason for your position.
Opinion: I co-wrote the law that morphed into STAAR tests — to help teachers not bludgeon them
Paul Colbert
July 28, 2020Updated: July 29, 2020 3 a.m.
Links to an external site.Links to an external site.CommentsLinks to an external site.
Rosa Castillo sprays disinfectant in the air of a classroom as Pasadena ISD prepares for the start of school.
Rosa Castillo sprays disinfectant in the air of a classroom as Pasadena ISD prepares for the start of school.
Kirk Sides / Staff Photographer
On Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that students in grades 5 and 8 will not be held back based on STAAR test results. Although the governor took a step in the right direction, he did not address the bigger problem. Standardized testing should be used primarily as a diagnostic tool to help teachers and students at the beginning of the year, not at the end. This was true before the pandemic and is especially true now.
The state plan to resume STAAR as a high-stakes test to grade schools is wrong for a host of reasons:
Parents and students hate the high-stakes testing programs because the tests cause incredible pressure and take the joy out of learning.
Teachers hate high-stakes testing because it creates pressure to “teach to the test,” destroying the creativity and professionalism that makes for a good learning environment and taking the joy out of teaching.
A tremendous amount of time is wasted on test preparation and practice tests throughout the school year.
Some districts misuse the tests as a major component of “performance pay” systems that in their worst formats discourage teachers from working cooperatively with each other.
Taxpayers are also concerned about the huge costs associated with developing and administering the tests.
The last thing students need now is to have the coming year dominated by misguided efforts to drive up scores at the expense of actually learning. That disruption has not been uniform. The more than 1,000 school districts in Texas had varying degrees of skill and resources to manage the shift to distance learning. A far greater impact has been the wide disparities among our more than 5 million students in access to both the equipment and the skills to use it effectively. In many districts, significant percentages of their students have had little or no schooling since March.
As a result, students will enter the coming school year at different levels of preparedness that far exceed the normal differences. The solution is to return to diagnostic testing at the beginning of the school year. Teachers and administrators will need the road map that diagnostic testing can provide to effectively meet the needs of their students.
This is not a radical change. I co-authored House Bill 72, the reform legislation that created the initial statewide student testing program in 1984. We needed a system to identify differences in educational background because of Texas’ high student mobility. Uniform statewide testing also provided a comparison for identifying effective education programs that could be replicated.
Tests were administered at the beginning of the year for diagnostic purposes. After I retired from the legislature, testing was moved to the end of the school year and turned into a bludgeon rather than a tool, becoming a hindrance to good education rather than a help.
Returning testing to the beginning of the year resolves the above problems and several others:
Diagnostic tests don’t generate the same sense of pressure that high-stakes tests cause.
No time is wasted during the year in test prep and practice testing.
The pressure to “teach to the test” is removed.
Diagnostic tests don’t lend themselves as easily to misuse and provide no incentive to cheat.
The costs are much lower because it eliminates the need for high security and constant test change.
But there is another reason for the change that is at least as important. Students respond to high-stakes tests — the STAAR tests and final exams — by “cramming.” The goal is not learning in any meaningful way, it is to temporarily memorize what you need to spit out a few days or weeks later.
Schools face a “summer slide” — students forgetting or losing what is acquired during the school year because of lack of continued use — even without a pandemic. This is particularly prevalent with educationally disadvantaged students, who in summer are in a home without computers, with fewer books and parents with lesser academic attainment who lack the skills to reinforce what the student learned. English language learners return to homes in which little or no English is spoken. A significant percentage of Texas students are both.
We still need a uniform statewide testing system for the reasons we did in 1984. Returning testing to the beginning of the school year will measure real education — what students retain. It will give schools and policy makers a true understanding of the education gaps that are out there. We see huge differences in college readiness, but not year-to-year because of the false picture that tests like STAAR paint. Hopefully, this will force the adoption of policies and programs that are necessary if we are to produce a workforce for the modern economy and an educated citizenry.
Colbert served as education budget chair in the Texas House from 1985-1992.
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