By George Scott, Project Director
Academic Equity Advocates
Academic Equity Advocates’ mission includes explaining some three decades of Texas’ public education accountability system of which student academic testing in Grades 3-8 and end of course in high school which includes reading, math, science, social studies, English I, English II, Algebra I, U.S. History, and Biology is integral.
It’s a big task because our thesis is the raw data evidence shows conclusively that there has been pervasive academic deception for the full three decades of formal accountability testing from TAAS to TAKS to now STAAR? So, if the purpose of testing is not to produce analysis of student performance at credible levels of grade-level integrity, then what is it?
It’s because there are judicial, statutory, and administrative factors that made testing of students essential to the process that is literally rooted in the end of slavery and so called separate but equal systems. Was Texas meeting the academic needs of all students and closing achievement gaps between various student populations? The only empirical way to evaluate those issues was to develop tests to measure performance, progress, or regression.
Here’s a brief overview to put student testing in its historical context. It is this context that MUST REMAIN a central focus in understanding how testing in Texas got to where it is today. If you lose sight of this context, the decisions along the way won’t make any sense because so many of the decisions were academically depraved.
1972: Federal Judge William Wayne Justice: Civil Order 5281 (Not Still in Effect)
“The Texas Education Agency shall institute a study of the educational needs of minority group children in order to ensure equal educational opportunities of all students. curricular offerings and programs…shall include specific educational programs to compensate minority group children for unequal educational opportunities resulting from past or present racial and ethnic isolation…”
In effect, the 1970-72 era federal decisions known as Civil Order 5281 remain the ‘godfather’ of student accountability testing although student testing is not even mentioned in the order.
While segregation and separate but equal school systems for minorities were effectively over by 1970, the ravages of slavery and those separate school systems were still felt. Decisively, Civil Order 5281 drove the final nail into the coffin of that racist past.
Before the decade of the 1970’s was over, the Texas Education Agency had begun testing of students as part of Texas’ response to “compensate minority group children” for unequal educational opportunities and racial and ethnic isolation.
However, even the nomenclature of two eras of testing in the 1970’s and 1980’s were TEA’s institutional admission that neither of the tests – TEAMS (Texas Assessment of MINIMUM Skills) and TABS (Texas Assessment of BASIC Skills) – even approached grade level integrity. Test results were NOT correlated to any academic accountability system.
By the start of the 1990’s, the front doors of state and federal courthouses became a more omnipresent threat to Texas. In 1989, the TEA field tested what it would call a genuine and rigorous grade-level test known as TAAS (Texas Assessment of Academic Skills).
The TEA began implementing that test in 1990. In 1993 or some two decades after Civil Order 5281, the Texas Legislature formally produced its first statutory commitment to formally begin academically “compensating minority group children”. TAAS would be the empirical data-enforcer of the accountability system.
1993: The Texas Legislature Passes Senate Bill 7
“All students shall have access to an education of high quality that will prepare them to participate fully now and in the future social, economic, and educational opportunities available in Texas. The achievement gap between educationally disadvantaged students and other populations will be closed…”
Student performance results on TAAS were not only reported by ethnicity and demographic profile, school districts and campuses received ratings based upon student academic performance.
1993: The Texas Education Code
“SATISFACTORY PERFORMANCE: (a) The State Board of Education shall determine the level of performance considered to be satisfactory on the assessment instruments…”
Importantly, the Legislature empowered the State Board of Education to determine the performance standards of passing the test would be as well as the authority to develop the tests using private contractors. That became and remains today a fundamental factor in whether the TEA has ever actually used honest, credible, grade-level as a deciding factor. In accountability standards: Quick answer? It has not been.
1993: The Texas Education Agency Formally Issues “Accountability” Report Acknowledging Statutory Burden of Constitutional Duty
“…The achievement gap between educationally disadvantaged students and other populations will be closed. Through enhanced dropout prevention efforts, the graduation rate will be raised to 95% of students who enter the seventh grade.”
With the TAAS tests and accountability system fully operational, civil rights groups and attorneys challenged the constitutionality of Senate Bill 7 in both state and federal courts.
As Academic Equity Advocates goes forward in this project, remember the next three paragraphs:
In one of the gravest injustices that did so much harm to so many minority children since 1993, civil rights attorneys and organizations chose to fight the new law on DISCRIMINATION rather than CONSTITUTIONAL SUFFICIENCY the law theoretically required. In effect, civil rights advocates failed history and thus failed the children they pretended to represent. It’s a human tragedy that keeps rolling on…
By January 2000 when the federal court ruled as noted below, the full scope of TAAS’s grade-level academic dishonesty was known and provable. It was a secret hidden in plain sight.
Yet, civil right attorneys and groups degenerated back to their predictable and liberal theology of discrimination rather than demand that the State take whatever actions needed organizationally and financially to credibly enforce grade-level integrity and actual closure of academic achievement gaps for disadvantaged, at-risk students statistically dominated by children of color.
1994: The Supreme Court of Texas Validates S.B. 7’s Constitutionality
“…The Legislature defines the contours of its constitutional duty to provide a general diffusion of knowledge by articulating seven public education goals. These goals emphasize academic achievement. Most notably, the Legislature envisions that all students will have access to a high-quality education and that the achievement gap between property rich and property poor districts will be closed…”
2000: Federal District Court Affirms TAAS Is Not Discriminatory
“…Because of the rigid, state-mandate correlation between the Texas Essentials of Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and the TAAS test, the Court finds that all Texas students have an equal opportunity to learn the items (test questions – emphasis mine) presented on the TAAS test WHICH IS THE ISSUE BEFORE THE COURT…” (emphasis mine)”
LINKS TO SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
Federal District Court Decision Part A
TEA Report – Acknowledging Achievement Gap Mandate Part A