By George Scott * 281-818-7872
Project Director, Academic Equity Advocates * ghscott2050@aol.com
About one month ago on March 11, the superintendent and seven individual members of the Katy I.S.D. School Board were asked to produce extensive student-by-student academic performance in strict compliance with privacy provisions where no individual student who even theoretically be identified. There are no federal privacy issues for individual students at risk in this common approach to data accumulation used by statisticians allowing more sophisticated analysis.
In the intervening month, AEA has not received a single communication from the district or individual board members indicating a willingness to provide the data. It is reasonable to assume the superintendent, the board members, and thus, the District will not respond.
This overview will give you access to very extensive, ‘macro’ data involving Katy I.S.D. on last year’s STAAR testing for 5th grade through end of course testing. We release this data for context that will come next when the current 2023-24 STAAR tests results are available. That testing starts this week throughout Texas.
I am NOT expect ranking and file readers “AT FIRST GLANCE” to easily internalize why the specificity of this data is sought, and why it is so important. That can and will come later.
There are six links to data here:
FIRST: The full data request as submitted.
SECOND: The data requests showing campus-by-campus and subject-by-subject STAAR performance by Katy I.S.D. student in last year’s STAAR tests in 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and end of course testing.
KISD 5th Grade Reading & Math STAAR 2022-23
KISD 6th Grade Reading & Math STAAR 2022-23
KISD 7th Grade Reading & Math STAAR 2022-23
KISD 8th Grade Reading & Math & Science STAAR 2022-23
KISD End of Course All Subjects STAAR 2022-23
In the second column published on today’s home page, there was a section written primarily for civil rights attorneys and groups AND local, state, and national media explaining the overview of why the data is sought and the role it could play in advancing genuine reform in public education in Texas.
This is particularly true in the context of the State’s threats to hurt the institution of public education (discussed in other columns) with the imposition of private vouchers in the next session of the Texas Legislature.\
Here’s my suggestion for this column.
- Review the data that Katy I.S.D. has been requested to voluntarily provide to local parents and taxpayers.
- Review each of the data files provided to you from last year’s STAAR testing. PAY PARTICULAR ATTENTION to the percent of students PERFORMING BELOW GRADE level using the State’ own standards among the different student populations and campuses.
- Read today’s second column in full or at least reading the following portion of that column that deals with the Katy I.S.D. data request.