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