Volume 16, Issue 8
April, 2008
MCALLEN AFT NEWS
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
TEA’S ACCOUNTABILITY INCUBATOR
TO AFFECT YOUR SCHOOL
The commissioner of education has an Educator Focus Group made up of school superintendents, principals, and other administrators who are called upon each year to work with TEA staff on proposed changes in the state's test-driven accountability system.
The group this year is working in the shadow of an interim Select Committee on Public School Accountability charged with a wholesale review and possible rewrite of the accountability system. But that fact has not kept TEA from using the focus group to generate significant proposed changes in the state's testing system that would be imposed before the select committee has time to make its report and recommendations.
Friday, April 4, 2008, Texas AFT took TEA up on an invitation to comment on these accountability proposals for 2008. The bottom line is that Texas AFT is calling for a halt to the introduction of new accountability trip-wires while the select committee is deciding whether and how to simplify the accountability system and reduce the excessive emphasis on standardized testing in our schools.
Texas AFT has concluded that "the effect of acting on premature proposals to adopt new accountability indicators would be to complicate still more the already tangled web of state and federal accountability indicators [and] . . . would erode further the credibility of an accountability system already under justified criticism for inducing an excessive emphasis on standardized testing as the be-all, end-all of public education."
Below are more excerpts from Texas AFT comment that should give you an idea of what's at stake.
Below are more excerpts from Texas AFT comment that should give you an idea of what's at stake.
"The proposals in some areas are offered as if there will be no changes in state law emerging from the work of the current Select Committee on Accountability. Yet in other areas the proposals expressly cite that committee's ongoing accountability review or the prospect of new legislative action as justification for waiting to introduce certain new accountability requirements at this time.
"Thus, for example, a delay in the contem- plated addition of a 'commended' label 'is recommended until more is known of the future plans for the account- ability system,' in view of 'the impending work of the Select Committee on Accountability and the upcoming legislative session in January 2009.'
"Yet the proposal sets this reasoning aside in calling for the use of grade 8 science in the accountability system starting in 2008, a year earlier than state law requires and before the Select Committee's impending work is completed and its recommendations are known. The rationale for this action comes down to an argument for inertia--i.e., it should be done because it has been recommended previously by the Focus Group, even though at a time when the whole accountability system was not under legislative review, as it is now. Adopting this proposal would unnecessarily prejudge the outcome of the interim accountability review now under way and legislative decisions yet to come in the 2009 session."
"The proposal also forces the pace in 2008 on combining standard TAKS with TAKS (Accommodated) results for students with disabilities, though not compelled to do so by statute, and without waiting on the recommendations of the Select Committee. The dual rationale offered for this move is inadequate. First, to combine these measures merely because it 'maintains the same number of measures in the state accountability system' is to elevate form over substance, apparently for cosmetic reasons, because otherwise the addition of grade 8 science as an accountability measure would increase the total number of accountability indicators.
"The proposal also forces the pace in 2008 on combining standard TAKS with TAKS (Accommodated) results for students with disabilities, though not compelled to do so by statute, and without waiting on the recommendations of the Select Committee. The dual rationale offered for this move is inadequate. First, to combine these measures merely because it 'maintains the same number of measures in the state accountability system' is to elevate form over substance, apparently for cosmetic reasons, because otherwise the addition of grade 8 science as an accountability measure would increase the total number of accountability indicators.
Second, to say that 'inclusion of TAKS (Accommodated) with TAKS parallels the use of the combined TAKS/TAKS (Accommodated) results in the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) system' presumes a policy judgment that conforming state to federal standards is an end in itself--a policy judgment that the legislature has yet to make as part of its review of the misalignment between state and federal standards.
"In similar fashion, the proposal to include ELL (English language learner) measures in state accountability maps out the development of such measures from now through 2011 without regard to the potential for further legislative action in this area in the meanwhile...[T]he assumption appears to be that ELL students should be evaluated on a separate indicator because that is how the federal accountability system does it.
We would submit that this rationale is insufficient.
"Regarding the introduction of such new accountability indicators, Texas AFT believes that the pendency of the Select Committee's review process, and the potential for enactment of significant changes in the accountability system by the next legislature, justifies a strategic pause at this time, before the imposition of any new requirements not clearly mandated by the legislature.
"It is simply premature for TEA to move ahead with proposals to tailor state accountability requirements to parallel federal treatment of students with disabilities and English language learners in the accountability system.
The Select Committee right now is charged with addressing the misalignment of state and federal accountability requirements, which results often in contradictory and confusing ratings of school and district performance. This issue should not be peremptorily decided by TEA while the Select Committee deliberates.
"There remain serious, unresolved legal questions about how to reconcile federal laws requiring appropriate, individualized decisions on accountability measures for students with disabilities, pursuant to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, with the comparatively indiscriminate use of standardized tests for these students demanded by the U.S. Department of Education under the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (a/k/a the No Child Left Behind Act).
The latter federal law is now up for reauthorization again, and it would be a mistake to proceed hastily to conform state accountability requirements to the dictates of federal officials under a law that may well not be continued in its current form. This point applies equally to proposed changes in the treatment of English language learners for accountability purposes. "Texas AFT does not here suggest a delay in the ongoing implementation of higher passing scores or passing rates intended to ratchet up the rigor of the state's standardized tests and school ratings. Our recommendation of a strategic pause in the imposition, by administrative action, of new accountability requirements relates to those elements of the proposal that involve discretionary administrative action to stretch beyond the follow-through that is genuinely required to implement decisions already made by the legislature and SBOE."