State’s STAAR Test Will Be Unmitigated Disaster For Credibility Of TEA, Legislature, School Districts, Vendor Pimp Corporations, Consultants; Analysis Of KISD Semester Tests Show Ticking Time Bomb Of Pending Disgrace For Them

Stupidity on steroids.  That’s the only way to describe what the evil empire of the public education industrial complex led by the Texas Education Agency has done to itself by the way it is rolling out its new accountability test - STAAR.  When the TEA is forced to announce the results of testing this spring, the bottom line will be the unmitigated disaster these results will impose upon exposing the past two decades of deception, half-truths, lies, and grave damage these forces have done to the cause of  integrity in public education accountability.

LINK TO MY TOP 10 BULLET POINTS’ COLUMN PUBLISHED IN MY BLOG TODAY

STAAR includes a series of end of course examinations for high school students in Algebra I, Algebra II, geometry, biology, chemistry, and others.  When the TEA last published EOC tests in Algebra and Biology  during the TAAS era,  the state produced a  math test with just sprinklings of occasional pre-algebra or low-level algebra and a junior high science test that barely even referenced biology.

But understand this.  It does not matter whether the TEA lies like it did in the past with watered-down end of course exams (like the STAAR will bean EOC) or whether the state produces a genuine grade-level examination in each of its EOC subjects this time around.   At this point, it genuinely does not matter what they have done because for the first time in almost three decades of phony accountability testing, the public will once and for all get to peer behind the green curtain.

I am going to write a lot about this subject over the next weeks and months.  Do you remember that great scene from the movie Patton when another George Scott peering through his binoculars looked over the impending battlefield and uttered those great words:  “Rommel you bastard, I read your book.”

If the mucky-mucks at the TEA or their assorted whore vendors had bothered to consult with the genius Dr. Billy Reagan, former superintendent of Houston I.S.D. in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the current brand of arrogant fools at the TEA would never have launched end of course testing as they are about to do it.  Dr. Reagan implemented a pilot program for EOC testing in HISD back in the early 1980’s.

Had the quirky (that’s polite) billionaire Ross Perot not commandeered the early reform movement in Texas, the plan that Dr. Reagan launched in 1983 could have saved the integrity of the American public education system.  In the three years of the developing effort, Dr. Reagan and his team learned through trial and error &  success and failure virtually everything they needed to know about how to launch Texas on a genuine effort to achieve genuine accountability for the broad range of students.

Now, let me advise the TEA and its vendor-pimps: your strategy defies stupidity.  As a senior researcher for the old Tax Research Association of Houston and Harris County, I read the book on Dr. Reagan’s strategy.  I took the opportunity to have literally hundreds of hours of discussion with him on that and numerous related issues. He’s still alive and kicking and he could have been such an enormous resource.  But, you are fools who have come to believe in your own lies, your own sense of self-superiority, and your own invincibility.

Let me advise the TEA and its vendor-pimps who have prospered in the public trough: “You bastards,(like George C. Scott in Patton) I have been reading your book for 20 years and you have outsmarted yourself this time.  Wonderfully, there’s not a damned thing you can do about.

I mentioned Katy I.S.D. in the headline of this column.  As I said, I am going to write much on this subject.  But, I’ll start explaining the reference to Katy I.S.D. semester exams in this column leaving the detailed explanations to come soon.

My other projection is that the Katy I.S.D. school board, Supt. Alton Frailey, and Frailey’s curriculum gurus will almost certainly share in the state’s humiliation.

As an aside, if I were to have written a ‘bad’ script for Katy I.S.D. to prepare for this initial STAAR test, I couldn’t have written a dumber one than Katy I.S.D. pursued the past two years in particular.  I guess commanding the Center of Truth distracted Frailey.  One would have thought that a school board with the wise Joe Adams on it would have thought this through.  But of course, Joe Adams has one year of experience 20+ times so he wasn’t really able to provide any leadership either. 

When the results of the STAAR test are announced later this year, it will take me less than 30 minutes of actual review to understand what the state has done.  It will take longer to know EXACTLY how they did it, but it will be short work to define the scope of the disaster confronting the TEA.

Now, what did I mean about that reference to Katy I.S.D.’s semester exams? Trust me for a bit for now because these numbers have real meaning in terms of STAAR. We’ll discuss these tidbits in more detail and context soon, but did you know that:

1. 47% of Katy High School students made an F and 9% made a D on their final exam in Algebra I in the first semester of the 2010-11 academic year.
2. 43% of Morton Ranch High School students made an F and 13% more made a D on the their Algebra I exam in the same semester.
3. 34% of Taylor High School students made an F or D on their Algebra II exam and 41% of the students didn’t even take it because they were exempt.
4. 40% of Katy High students, 39% of Taylor High Students, and 43% of Morton Ranch students made an F or D on their geometry examination in the same semester.
5. Out of 110 students at McMeans Junior High in the same period, not one single student made a D or F in Algebra I and 74% made an A and 24% made a B.
6. 40% of Katy High, 39 of Taylor High and 43% of Morton Ranch students made an F or D on their second semester Geometry test in the same semester.
7. That because of exemption policies, there are subjects to be tested on STAAR in which 50% to 80% of the students in Katy I.S.D. didn’t have to take a semester exam in their course work.

These are important tidbits but I’ll be stringing numbers like these and more into a cohesive explanation of their relationship to STAAR in future columns. This detailed analysis will include reporting of  regular, GT, GT/AP, classrooms and other distinctions. I won’t leave you hanging because my commitment is to help you understand what the state’s underlying scheme has been.

But let me leave this particular column with four thoughts about others that should share in the impending humiliation because they each could have done something to make the cause of accountability in Texas a far, far better story:

1. The State Board of Education: If the so called conservatives on the board would worry less about Darwin and sex and more about academic integrity, we would not be reaching this point.
2. The Texas Legislature: If the members did not put their brains in neutral as a trade off for basking in the glow of illegitimate public relations with their local superintendents and school boards, we would not be reaching this point.
3. The State’s Major News Media: With rare and noble exceptions (and none out of the Houston Chronicle education reporters), the state’s news media has failed miserably in meeting its journalistic duties over the past two decades.
4. The Institution of the School Board: The local school board has become a shell of its former glory and just a shill for groups like the Texas Association of School Boards, Texas Association of School Administrators, and powerful corporations and consultants who prosper in the public trough of a multi-billion dollar industry.

There are genuine signs that new board members in Katy I.S.D. are making a real effort to pursue reform.  Dr. Bill Proctor and Terry Huckaby need your help this May.  That means defeating the incumbents if they run or defeating their efforts if they choose not to run. Let’s keep this going.