In Part Four of his closing argument in behalf of Edgewood Intervenors in the 2004 Texas school funding trial, attorney David Hinojosa of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) argues that accountability systems still allow Texas to fail children in many ways.
Our Texas accountability system is failing our children and is resulting in further lost opportunities for our children.
Texas has adopted the TEKS curriculum, which is more challenging, and our districts agree. Texas has adopted a recommended program as a default graduation plan for high schoolers, and our districts agree.
Our accountability system, however, does not include the measure of many of the other elements of an adequate education, for instance, extra-curricular and co-curricular activities. The State argues that when you offer those programs, you do so at your own discretion, your own money and that such is not needed to provide a meaningful opportunity to succeed.
The State argues that programs and activities such as Texas high school football are not needed, as well as ROTC, debate teams, UIL teams, but if districts choose to engage in these programs, they do so at the expense of providing what they claim to be an adequate education, and that these programs play no part in providing meaningful opportunities.
Yet the undisputed testimony in this case, even by former Galena Park superintendent and now Texas Education Commissioner Neeley, was that extra-curricular and co-curricular activities build leadership, build character, team work, pride, they help reduce dropout rates for some student groups, they allow students to compete at higher levels, they provide opportunities through scholarships, opportunities to enter into certain colleges and to be competitive with other states’ students on a national level.
Further, the evidence showed that while the accountability rating system, itself, proclaims to hold schools and district accountable for every single child in their district, the facts in this case proved otherwise.
The State’s accountability expert agreed that if a student passes in their test scores for a given subject area test, that person is proficient in that subject. And if the student fails to get the minimum cut score for that subject area, then that person is not proficient. Their expert then agrees that campuses and districts that earn a rating of academically acceptable are providing those children with a quality education that is enabling those children to take advantage of meaningful opportunities to succeed.
Even with 75 percent of the kids in the district failing science tests, it doesn’t matter. To the State, those districts are acceptable and are providing a quality education. And for a school district of the state to reach an academically acceptable level, only one-half of the students need to pass the minimum test scores in reading, writing, but the true story isn’t told with those passing rates. It’s with these passing rates. For instance a minimal level of student passing rates for all students in a grade level is only 25 percent for science. The school or district can actually obtain an academically
acceptable rating with a far less passing rate.
The example shows that if a school district last year had 25 percent of a student group that met the minimum sized requirements in its completion and dropout rate criterion, and then this year followed up with a 16 percent passage rate, nine points below standard, that district would still be deemed academically acceptable. That’s what’s acceptable to our State. That’s what they define as an adequate education.
Required improvement wasn’t even measured in the prior accountability system, yet it exists under our current system. What does this tell us? That a district can fail to meet the bare minimum test standards, yet still be deemed academically acceptable, that a campus or a district can be ranked academically unacceptable for two years on the par level, yet be deemed academically acceptable by our state.
The State has also added another provision that was non-existent in the prior accountability rating system, referred to as the exceptions provision. Under this feature, if the district or school has 16 or more assessment measures and is within 5 percentage points of any subgroups, that district is deemed to be academically acceptable, so they can shave 5 percent off of the minimum standards for Hispanics passing science, shave 5 percent of the African-Americans attempting to reach the 35 percent passage rate, 5 percent of economically disadvantaged subgroup passing social studies at only 45 percent, and you would still be academically acceptable in our state.
The minimum size requirements: Even though the State purports to hold each school and district accountable for all of the students in all subjects, the minimum size requirements allow many districts to escape being held accountable. For example, if a district has 28 fourth grade African-Americans and less than 20 percent pass any subject area for that group, you will not have a rating for African-American because its doesn’t meet the minimum size requirement.
The evidence also shows that a group must be at least 30 to 49 students, and of those 49 students, they must comprise at least 10 percent of all the students to be evaluated for campus, district and subject. For example, if you have 35 Hispanics tested in a district on a subject and you have 370 students tested in the subject area in the district, the performance of the Hispanics would be dismissed in the accountability rating system for the subgroup of Hispanics. Even though the school district such as that had only 15 percent of the 35 Hispanics meeting the standards, the district would still be rated as academically acceptable in our state of Texas.
Mobility also affects the true story in the accountability system. There are still other students who are excluded from the accountability rating system, and there’s a list from the State’s accountability specialist. She admitted that low income and minority school children, as well as migrant school children are more mobile within a given period than other children. She admitted that all children who take the TAKS within a particular school district are not necessarily in the district’s accountability subset. They must be enrolled in the district or campus as of October 3lst, 2003, and they must take the TAKS test in the same campus or district for the 2004 test which has happened.
So if a child moves to another district after October the 31st, and they test in another subject in another district, that child would be excluded from the accountability subset and the results would not affect the accountability rating for the district that the child left, and the same goes for the district that the child attended. And the same holds true now — which is also new under the accountability system. The same holds true now for campuses within the same districts, that even if a child moves after October 3lst of a given year and goes to another campus within the district, it’s not going to be reported. It may be reported in the district results, but not within the campus results.
I just want to touch upon the completion rate. Within the completion rates that are set by Texas, if you graduate, you earn a GED or you continue in the fall of the next year, you’re still deemed a completer. I asked the dropout fact witness for the State, “Well, what exactly has that continuing student completed in order to be in the completion?” she basically said nothing. But yet they’re still called a completer, distorting our completion rate. GED recipients are still to this day — although they’re supposed to be phased out — are still deemed completers.
And then speaking of the leaver code that Mr. Wood has referred to earlier, it’s true that a child can leave back to their country and if the district goes to that house and their neighbor s
ays, “Oh, the child left back to the country. They said they needed to go back and work in the field,” or something, in the factory.
“Are they going to school,” the district asks.
“No, they’re not going to school.” “Okay. Then we can mark them under this leaver code.” And they’re not deemed a dropout. Even though they dropped out, they’re still not a dropout under the Texas system.
And the completion rates are also subjected to required improvement. So you could have a district in successive years have a 55 percent completion rate and then a 70 percent completion rate, meaning that 35 percent have dropped out, because otherwise they’re deemed a leaver and they’re dropped from the cohort, you can have that many dropouts, and in our state of Texas you would still qualify to be an academically acceptable district.
And this annual dropout rate used the grades of seven to twelve, and the State figured out, “Well, that’s probably not too accurate. Let’s go ahead and change it to completion rate,” even though that, of course, is not too accurate in and of itself. And they set new standards. And 2 percent is academically acceptable for grades seven and eight. These are kids who are at the age of 12 to 14. And 2 percent can drop out and that is okay, because that’s academically acceptable in Texas. And that is also subjected to the required improvement, so the district doesn’t necessarily have to have just only 2 percent. They can have up to 6 percent one year, 4 percent in the next several years and still be academically acceptable in Texas.
We will have the under-reported student — those under-reported students, the districts just have no record of them. If you have more than 500 under-reported students, you might not be able to get an academically acceptable. So if you have 500 under-reported students, students who just left, you don’t have documentation for them, they’re basically lost, they’re part of the disappearing children in Texas, but districts with up to 500 under-reported students under the new regulations which are being phased in — it used to be up to a thousand.
Now the new ones are getting tough. Now they’re saying you can only have 500 students. There’s no accountability rating system for alternative education standards at this time, so districts can place their children in those facilities and their rating will not be affected.
There’s no accountability rating system for our LEP children at State standards, even though NCLB holds schools and districts accountable, within our own state educating our LEP population, they have no accountability rating for LEP children.
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