Media – Page 28 – Texas Business Leadership Council

Kress: The facts on school accountability

Date: September 2012
Category: Media

Austin American Statesman

By Sandy Kress

Saturday, September. 29, 2012

Just the Facts, Ma’am!

John Young, a frequent Statesman columnist, takes to these pages often to criticize accountability in education.

Though I could, I won’t respond in kind with sarcastic attacks and rhetoric. Rather, I will simply use the facts to show that accountability has worked wonders in our state.

If facts bore you, go back to your coffee and the comics. My purpose here is to show that accountability works by detailing the amazing gains our youngsters have achieved academically since the onset of accountability.

Because many think state tests can “be taught to” or “gamed,” I won’t rely on them but instead will use results from scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a sampling that can suffer no such defect.

I will focus mostly on results for minority students, though white students’ scores have also risen nicely and are at all-time highs.
As I cite these facts, I will note when advances are so significant they amount to a grade level gain or more. This makes the data easier to understand. So, when you read this, think about what it would mean for your child or grandchild to be performing a full grade level or better than where he or she is currently in school.

Texas began its accountability system in late 1993, providing for high standards of learning for all students in the state, annual state assessments to measure progress, and consequences for success or failure. So, let’s see what’s happened to our students in Texas since 1992, the year before it all started.

In fourth-grade math, black students generally in 2011 are — stunningly — more than three grade levels ahead of where they were in 1992 (a gain from a score of 199 to 232). Fourth-grade Hispanic students are up an amazing 2½ grade levels in math (208 to 235). The gap between these white and minority 4th graders has narrowed by between half to a full grade level.

In eighth-grade math, blacks students are 3½ grade levels ahead of where they were in 1992 (243 to 277). Hispanic students are up by this same remarkable amount (249 to 283). This is truly historic, yet no one seems to know or appreciate it. The white-minority gap has narrowed by almost a grade level. Hispanic students today are just slightly below where whites were in 2000.

The bottom line of the eighth-grade data is that minority children generally are within range of being ready to study algebra in high school. We’ve never been even close to that goal in our state’s history.

In fourth-grade reading, blacks and Hispanics both are a grade level ahead of where they were in 1992 (199 to 210 and 200 to 210). Unlike math, NAEP assessed reading in the spring of the accountability system’s first full year, 1994. Student gains have been even greater since that assessment.

Data for eighth-grade students in reading only go back to 1998 and are flatter. But black and Hispanic scores are up about half a grade level, at all-time highs, and closer than ever to white scores.

Accountability works!

Where we have not made as much progress is with older students. We’ve improved graduation rates, but not by much, and our percentage of students graduating ready for college or career is still pitifully low. But that’s where House Bill 3 comes in. For the first time in our state’s history, the legislature has gotten serious about expecting more from our high schools. And, if we stay the course, we will achieve the same sort of gains for our older students that we’ve garnered for our younger ones.

Folks like John Young want to rip up these new reforms as well as the foundation upon which they were built. It appears that many others agree with him. All I ask is that this column be put in a time capsule. If accountability is shredded in this next legislative session, let’s look back years from now at educational progress data over the next 20 years and compare those results with these huge gains over the past 20 years.

Since the pressure to narrow achievement gaps for disadvantaged students would be seriously reduced, I predict that our progress will stagnate and the gaps will grow again. We will deeply regret that we were swayed by moaning from friends of the status quo and their nasty and unwarranted attacks on accountability.

Bernie Francis: Testing, Accountability Crucial for Minority Students

Date: July 2012
Category: Media

Dallas Morning News

Bernie Francis: Testing, Accountability Crucial for Minority Students

By Bernie Francis

July 23, 2012

Amid the noise and attacks on public school accountability and testing in recent months, I fear we’re losing sight of a common goal: improving Texas’ education system.

As a business owner, I see the looming crisis in our state. If we do not increase the number of Texans who successfully obtain technical training, certificates, associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees, our economy is doomed to underperform. Jobs and employers will flee the state.

We cannot hope to increase the completion rates of post-secondary education without first ensuring our K-12 education system is delivering on its promise.

Graduation from high school should mean a student is armed with the knowledge and skills to get a good job or be trained or educated for a better job without remediation.

As a former chair of Texas State Technical College, I can attest to the need for improved post-secondary readiness. I saw firsthand the broken contract with high school graduates, vividly reflected in the size of our remedial education budget. We must reduce the need for remediation and decrease the failure that often accompanies it.

In a recent Viewpoints op-ed, Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken weighed in on education reform, focusing on what he deems is a broken system of testing and accountability.

Having served on Pauken’s local workforce board for many years, I have the utmost respect for his analytical acumen on most topics.
However, my African-American and business background makes me sensitive to the damage a lack of school accountability has done to our supper tables.

You see, it wasn’t until 1975 that the Dallas Independent School District began testing all black students; therefore, historically speaking, we’re still basking in the “newness” of getting feedback on our kids’ academic progress, as well as data needed to facilitate improvement.

Throwing out the current testing system passed by a bipartisan majority in the Texas Legislature would be a grave disservice to African Americans and Hispanics who have benefited the most from a system of fair, scientific testing.

It means a great deal to me, for example, that since we established our accountability system, African-American and Hispanic eighth graders have improved three full grade levels in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. For the first time in the history of our state, kids of color are generally ready to study the gateway course of algebra in high school.

Now that the state is moving accountability to high school to increase post-secondary readiness, this would be the absolute worst time to toss out accountability.

Let’s be clear: Accountability is about more than testing, a point where those who harbor objections over testing can agree with me. Accountability is a larger system of grades, teacher assessments and standardized testing that track a student’s academic progress. Objective, statewide testing of our students along the path of K-12 best assures that teaching and learning for all students are aligned with state standards.
As a byproduct of our accountability system, Texas has seen graduation rates dramatically improve. The Digest of Education Statistics shows a full 9 percentage point jump in graduation rates since Texas began the accountability system in 1994.

I’ve been on the front lines of working passionately for education reform in Texas for many years. I know how far all our children have come, but I know how much we still must do to ensure that Texas’ education system delivers for students, for taxpayers and for job creators like me.
It’s time to move away from unproductive rants of “drill and kill” and “test learning.” Let’s find common ground and work to make Texas’ accountability system stronger, not weaker.

Bernie Francis of Carrollton is CEO of Business Control Systems and is the chairman of the Texas Business Leadership Council’s Education Task Force. His email address is bcsbernie@aol.com.

Get Rid of the System and You’ll be Failing Our Kids

Date: July 2012
Category: Media

Austin American Statesman

Get Rid of the System and You’ll be Failing Our Kids

By Bill Hammond, Local Contributor

July 22, 2012

Texas has long been a leader in assessment and accountability in its public schools.

Yet, what we’re seeing today is nothing short of a full-frontal assault on proven standards with demonstrable results.

Efforts to malign the state’s assessment and accountability standards as “drill and kill” testing that “costs too much” and is a “perversion of their original intent” is nothing more than rhetorical warfare, full of flair but devoid of facts. The fact is that accountability works and should be expanded, not dismantled.

Consider the National Assessment of Education Progress data that show Texas’ black and Hispanic students are achieving at more than three grade-levels higher in math than they were in 1992, when public school accountability and testing measures were first introduced.

Across the board, Texas’ fourth- and eighth-grade students — black, Hispanic and white — have all made significant progress in math, outpacing national averages. Testing results show progress in fourth- and eighth-grade reading, as well.

Assessment and accountability are essential to postsecondary readiness, and postsecondary readiness is absolutely vital to the future of our state’s economy.

That’s why organizations such as ours, along with many others in the business community, want state leaders to advance, not retreat from, the effective accountability measures that were established with broad-based, bipartisan support from the Texas Legislature.

The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness give Texas taxpayers, parents, students and educators the ability to fairly and scientifically measure whether we are succeeding in providing access to quality education and preparing our children to be postsecondary ready, whether that’s college, technical or trade school or other credentialing programs.

Yet education bureaucrats appear to want to move away from a system of “trust, but verify” to simply, “Trust us, just take our word for it that we’re using tax dollars wisely and effectively to deliver a quality education to every Texas student.” That’s simply not acceptable.

The STAAR accountability system will extend the progress already seen in lower grade levels to high school, helping to ensure that our state’s students are well-equipped and prepared for future careers.

In addition to providing a more rigorous education and accountability system, STAAR end-of-course exams would actually reduce the cost and administrative burdens associated with additional state-mandated testing by allowing end-of-course exams to be administered as finals.

The state’s accountability system since its inception in the early 1990s has produced substantial progress.

STAAR and the earlier state assessments are cost-effective, scientifically proven tools to assure students, parents and taxpayers that Texas public schools are equipping students with essential skills and pertinent knowledge.

Last month, the Texas House Public Education Committee convened a public hearing to discuss the state’s new assessment system for public schools, including testimony from some very vocal opponents aggressively working to do away with the system. The tragic irony of that testimony and that public hearing date was not lost on me. It was Juneteenth. And, on a day that we commemorated the abolition of slavery, we also heard talk of dismantling and devolving the STAAR assessments and standards.

Texas’ black and Hispanic students stand to lose the most if education bureaucrats and their allies are successful in their rollback or abandonment of the state’s STAAR accountability measures for Texas public schools. Given the great progress that we’ve seen with improved academic performance among black and Hispanic students, I’d argue, too, that we’re facing a real civil rights issue.

We need every child to succeed. Doing away with our system of accountability for our public schools is morally bankrupt.

Hammond is President and CEO of the Texas Association of Business.

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