Category: ISD/State Reports

By George Scott

Project Director, Academic Equity Advocates

You will need to access the first link immediately below the opening paragraphs to access the pdf of Part 10 of this series – the final part.

On a very personal level, I have summarized some of the key moments in my career that convinced me and validated my belief that the Texas public education testing and accountability system – in the private sector – would constitute genuine consumer fraud.

Beyond that, I have provided links to independent reports not yet provided as well as a series of news reports during the era. These are quick links that provide extraordinary insight into what’s happened in Texas public education over the past three decades.

PART 10: Key Career Experiences; External Links To News Media Reports, Other Data Over Past 3 Decades!

Here are some links to support documents.

Separate Reports From Esteemed Texas Psychometrician, Texas Testing Expert, and Texas ISD testing administrator Dr. Neal Carl Shaw Eviscerating Integrity of the State’s System.

New York Times Front Page Feature Story Entitle “A Miracle Revisited” Tracking the Initial Testing Era.

3 Separate Major Feature Stories from The Houston Press on Texas Testing & Accountability System That Raised Grave Questions on System’s Integrity

The American Prospect’s Featuring Profile of “Too Good To Be True?” Published as Texas Was Getting Ready to Transfer to TAKS System

Bill Buckley’s National Review Story Quoting TRA President George Scott Was Beginning of the End for Independent Nonprofit Research Group

By George Scott

Project Director, Academic Equity Advocates

You will need to access the first link immediately below the opening paragraphs to access the pdf of Part 7 of this series. In Part 7, establish that the TEA was officially warned as early as 1995 that its entire math testing program was grossly below genuine academic grade level at every grade tested.

Very early in the process in 1995, Temple ISD’s Dr. Kathleen Coburn’s academic leader and team warned the TEA that its assertion of grade-level integrity in its entire TAAS math testing program was factually flawed. In effect, the courageous, district-level school administrator became the first official ‘whistleblower’ that proved the testing scheme had been manipulated by false assertions of grade level.

As you will learn in a subsequent report, the TEA’s institutional decision to strategically misrepresent the academic integrity of grade-level in its testing schemes was dramatically proved and admitted (de facto) by the TEA itself when the TEA transitioned to its second testing era – TAKS.

The TEA’s deception and transition to TAKS will give you new depth of meaning of Sir Walter Scott’s famous phrase: “Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive.”

The report – funded by the federal government but actually published by the Texas Education Agency – eviscerated any notion that the entire math testing program was grade-level substandard. A full copy of her report is available and demonstrates the magnitude of the deficiencies.

Subsequent, The Tax Research Association (the group of which I was then president) retained a prestigious independent group of analysists from Mathematically Correct in California to perform a rigorous question by question study of successive years of TAAS math testing. Methodically rigorous, the study confirmed in the later 1990’s what Dr. Coburn’s team told the TEA in 1995.

PART 7: TEA Warned Early About Substandard Academic Grade Level of Entire Math Testing Program Subsequently Validated

Here are some links to support documents from our External Reports page that are meaningful to this Part 7 presentation.

Early Report in 1995 By Dr. Kathleen Coburn’s Temple ISD Team Skewered TAAS Math Grade Level Integrity

Nonprofit Harris County Tax Research Association Retained Nationally Respected Independent Experts in Late 1990’s Validated Grade-Level Deception