TAAS EASY AND GETTING EASIER, NOT STUDENTS SMARTER \doc\web\98\09\taas.txt From: "Donna Garner" To: "ClearingHouse" Subject: [education-consumers] TAAS Press Conference Date sent: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 07:57:10 -0600 Send reply to: "Donna Garner" ===================================================================== Tax Research Association of Houston and Harris County 5373 W. Alabama, Suite 208 * Houston, Texas * 77056 Telephone: 713 - 863-5110 (voice mail) * Fax 281 - 578-0914 Email GscottTRA@aol.com ============================================ Press Conference Briefing Scheduled 9a.m. - 11a.m. * Monday, Nov. 9th 4 Seasons Hotel * Downtown Houston * Fairfield Room The TAAS Test Program & the State's Public Education Accountability System Report Questions Academic Rigor of TAAS Tests 10th-Grade Exit Test Draws Particular Scrutiny Have TAAS Reading Tests Become Easier? In a report that will generate statewide attention, the TRA will announce the findings of four distinguished researchers who have analyzed the last four academic years of the TAAS testing program for reading and math in Texas. The findings have ramifications. TRA asked reading and math experts from California and Massachusetts to evaluate actual TAAS reading and math tests from 1995-1998. Two of the many intriguing questions which emerge from the research include: 1.) What implications are there if student academic performance on math TAAS tests has increased over the past four academic years, but the tests are not on grade level and target below grade level skills? 2.) If student academic performance on reading TAAS tests has similarly improved, what do those increases mean if the tests themselves have become easier? These and other questions will be addressed. Please note that the press conference WILL BEGIN promptly on time since participants have early afternoon airline schedules to meet. Please plan to be present between 8:30 and 8:50 if at all possible. For further questions, contact TRA president George Scott at the above telephone numbers or email GscottTRA@aol.com ===================================================================== EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE networking and information for parents and taxpayers on the internet Subscriptions & Archives: http://education-consumers.com or You are currently subscribed to education-consumers as: arthurhu@halcyon.com TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send a blank email to leave-education-consumers-989462S@lists.dundee.net ===================================================================== For less mail, click on the following link and choose 1) a daily digest, 2) a daily list of subjects, or 3) no mail (read postings on Web) http://lists.dundee.net/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=education-consumers For more help & info: http://www.lyris.com/help or Date sent: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 17:00:32 +0000 To: jimmyk5@swbell.net From: "Dave Mundy, Managing Editor" (by way of Jimmy Kilpatrick ) Subject: TRA Report By Dave Mundy Managing Editor Katy Times Texas students have been passing the state-mandated test -- the TAAS -- at increasing rates during each of the past four years, resulting in increased public support for the education system and the elected officials in charge of that system. A group of researchers say those passing rates don't mean much, however -- because the TAAS isn't very difficult, and has gotten progressively easier. The Tax Research Association of Houston and Harris County, in conjunction with the Acres Homes Citizens Chamber of Commerce, issued devastating reports Monday about the academic rigor of the TAAS, the lynchpin of Texas' highly-acclaimed school accountability system. Among the key findings: * The TAAS reading test has grown progressively easier and tests students across several grade levels of ability, with most test questions far easier than the grade level tested; * The TAAS math test has also grown relatively easier to pass Ñ according to one researcher, "it was simple to begin with" Ñ and at the exit level, tests students primarily on subjects they should have known in fourth, fifth and sixth grades; * In order for the tests to have started simple and gotten simpler, "there would have to have been policy" to do so; * Testing at a low level harms all students, but particularly harms minority students who think they are achieving when they really aren't. TRA President George Scott, a Katy resident, told a news conference at Houston's Four Seasons Hotel Monday morning that the report was not intended as "an attack" on the state's education bureacracy, and was intentionally issued after the Nov. 3 elections to avoid being labeled political or partisan. What prompted the seven-month-long study, Scott said, was the fact that although Texans were seeing higher scores on the TAAS, they weren't seeing more students successfully passing higher-level courses -- which should have been a natural result of higher scores. "Texas has a recognized accountability system," Scott said. "Some aspects of this accountability system have gotten off-track." The TAAS reading tests from 1995-98 were reviewed by Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Stotsky helped draw up Massachusetts' state curriculum standards and is helping create that state's first statewide test similar to the TAAS. The TAAS math tests were reviewed by three members of California's Mathematically Correct group -- Cal State-San Diego's Paul Clopton, UCLA's Wayne Bishop and Cal-State Northridge's David Klein. California recently rewrote its state standards in a "back-to-basics" movement after the state's student math performance fell to dead-last in the nation following a performance-based curriculum. The critique of the TAAS's rigor belies glowing reports of increased student success statewide. Stotsky said student achievement may very well have increased -- but it would be difficult to judge that using the TAAS. "If student scores have been rising, it's not really clear that they're getting better," Stotsky said. "It could have been artificial improvement." Stotsky's analysis concluded the 1995 TAAS reading test was at about the appropriate grade level, but has been progressively getting both shorter (fewer sections) easier (more reading selections from lower grade levels). The mathematicians trotted out a number of examples of questions on the exit-level test which were well below the grade level (10th) being tested -- including some they called "solveable by any second-grader." "The exit-level exam is almost identical in depth to the eighth-grade exam," Clopton said. "You're testing students for high-school graduation at about a seventh-grade level." Bishop also analyzed the state's end-of-course Algebra I exam, a test most notable for the fact that most of those students taking it -- especially at the high-school level -- fail it. He characterized almost all of the test questions as "elementary math" or "pre-algebra," with a few falling into the "moderately hard" category. "You need to know very little algebra to do this test," he said. "Most of the items, even the ones that look like algebra, are not. One hundred percent of the kids in my daughter's eighth-grade algebra class could pass this test." The three California mathematicians compared the TAAS to the Texas Essential Elements, a curriculum guideline since replaced by the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and to the California math standards, which were drawn up based on Japanese and Singaporean models. They said they couldn't use the TEKS for comparison because it is too vague and lacking in grade-level specifics. "The level of specificity in the TEKS is not up to the California standards," Clopton said. Stotsky said the test, not the curriculum, is what's at fault here. "Texas happens to have some very good ELAR (English/Language Arts/Reading) standards, among the best in the country," she said. "But they have serious limitations. Nothing is built in to your standards that tells the test developer what grade level you want tested." Clopton said the problem is that the "hurdle" for students taking the TAAS is set too low. "If there's a lot of attention on low-level objectives ... it focuses instruction on low-level goals," Clopton said. "If you make the test too easy, it's blind to high levels of achievement. The system is actually set up to give these students false hope, you might say." The big question revolves around why the tests have gotten easier. Scott deflected questions about what motivation may have spurred "dumbing-down" the tests, but the researchers themselves had some suggestions. "It's clear that policy decisions were made along the way to drive it down," Clopton said. "But you run into a social problem. We don't want to fail half the kids. Knowledge itself is disparaged." Klein said one reason the tests are simple is because the reflect a current educational fad. "Some questions (on the math TAAS) are 'not-math' or 'barely-math,'" Klein said. "They reflect a philosophy in education called higher order thinking skills, or critical thinking. The problem is that kids can't do critical thinking without having any basic knowledge." "There is a similar problem in reading, downplaying vocabulary for critical thinking," Stotsky said. "Some vocabulary you can't express in monosyllables." The researchers said, however, that although the TAAS has problems, it's still a great instrument for accountability. "Texas has the advantage over California in that they started on the right path," Clopton said. "We're not here to say the assessment system hasn't done a good job." "Texas has a golden opportunity to be the national leader on this. You need to amplify your standards with clear grade-level expectations," Stotsky said. "Vagueness is the enemy of high expectations." ======================================= Access the full report: http://www.taxresearch.org. +OK 10075 octets Received: from smtp9.nwnexus.com (smtp9.nwnexus.com [192.135.191.10]) by mail1.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA26454 for ; Tue, 10 Nov 1998 21:22:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from ripple.dundee.net (ripple.dundee.net [206.249.104.12]) by smtp9.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id VAA16868 for ; Tue, 10 Nov 1998 21:21:23 -0800 Message-Id: From: "Donna Garner" To: "ClearingHouse" Subject: [education-consumers] TAAS -- TEA Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 23:26:32 -0600 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by mail-gw3adm.rcsntx.swbell.net id XAA24426 Reply-To: "Donna Garner" Precedence: bulk Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mail1.halcyon.com id VAA26454 Status: ===================================================================== TAAS and the Texas Education Agency November 10, 1998 "Somebody" made the policy decision to lower the passing standards of the TAAS. That decision was not made by the company who designed the test; it was made by the people who told the test graders how to grade the test. That "somebody" had to be the Texas Education Agency. Are we Texans going to trust the Texas Education Agency -- who gave students, their parents, and us educators false information -- to develop the new TAAS for the year 2000? How foolish it would be for us to let the same agency (who apparently corrupted the TAAS data) to spend our hard-earned taxpayers' money to create a new generation of TAAS tests. This would be like letting the convicted thief design the security system for his own prison cell! Donna Garner dggarner@swbell.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ By Dave Mundy Managing Editor Katy Times Texas students have been passing the state-mandated test -- the TAAS -- at increasing rates during each of the past four years, resulting in increased public support for the education system and the elected officials in charge of that system. A group of researchers say those passing rates don't mean much, however -- because the TAAS isn't very difficult, and has gotten progressively easier. The Tax Research Association of Houston and Harris County, in conjunction with the Acres Homes Citizens Chamber of Commerce, issued devastating reports Monday about the academic rigor of the TAAS, the lynchpin of Texas' highly-acclaimed school accountability system. Among the key findings: * The TAAS reading test has grown progressively easier and tests students across several grade levels of ability, with most test questions far easier than the grade level tested; * The TAAS math test has also grown relatively easier to pass Ñ according to one researcher, "it was simple to begin with" Ñ and at the exit level, tests students primarily on subjects they should have known in fourth, fifth and sixth grades; * In order for the tests to have started simple and gotten simpler, "there would have to have been policy" to do so; * Testing at a low level harms all students, but particularly harms minority students who think they are achieving when they really aren't. TRA President George Scott, a Katy resident, told a news conference at Houston's Four Seasons Hotel Monday morning that the report was not intended as "an attack" on the state's education bureacracy, and was intentionally issued after the Nov. 3 elections to avoid being labeled political or partisan. What prompted the seven-month-long study, Scott said, was the fact that although Texans were seeing higher scores on the TAAS, they weren't seeing more students successfully passing higher-level courses -- which should have been a natural result of higher scores. "Texas has a recognized accountability system," Scott said. "Some aspects of this accountability system have gotten off-track." The TAAS reading tests from 1995-98 were reviewed by Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Stotsky helped draw up Massachusetts' state curriculum standards and is helping create that state's first statewide test similar to the TAAS. The TAAS math tests were reviewed by three members of California's Mathematically Correct group -- Cal State-San Diego's Paul Clopton, UCLA's Wayne Bishop and Cal-State Northridge's David Klein. California recently rewrote its state standards in a "back-to-basics" movement after the state's student math performance fell to dead-last in the nation following a performance-based curriculum. The critique of the TAAS's rigor belies glowing reports of increased student success statewide. Stotsky said student achievement may very well have increased -- but it would be difficult to judge that using the TAAS. "If student scores have been rising, it's not really clear that they're getting better," Stotsky said. "It could have been artificial improvement." Stotsky's analysis concluded the 1995 TAAS reading test was at about the appropriate grade level, but has been progressively getting both shorter (fewer sections) easier (more reading selections from lower grade levels). The mathematicians trotted out a number of examples of questions on the exit-level test which were well below the grade level (10th) being tested -- including some they called "solveable by any second-grader." "The exit-level exam is almost identical in depth to the eighth-grade exam," Clopton said. "You're testing students for high-school graduation at about a seventh-grade level." Bishop also analyzed the state's end-of-course Algebra I exam, a test most notable for the fact that most of those students taking it -- especially at the high-school level -- fail it. He characterized almost all of the test questions as "elementary math" or "pre-algebra," with a few falling into the "moderately hard" category. "You need to know very little algebra to do this test," he said. "Most of the items, even the ones that look like algebra, are not. One hundred percent of the kids in my daughter's eighth-grade algebra class could pass this test." The three California mathematicians compared the TAAS to the Texas Essential Elements, a curriculum guideline since replaced by the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), and to the California math standards, which were drawn up based on Japanese and Singaporean models. They said they couldn't use the TEKS for comparison because it is too vague and lacking in grade-level specifics. "The level of specificity in the TEKS is not up to the California standards," Clopton said. Stotsky said the test, not the curriculum, is what's at fault here. "Texas happens to have some very good ELAR (English/Language Arts/Reading) standards, among the best in the country," she said. "But they have serious limitations. Nothing is built in to your standards that tells the test developer what grade level you want tested." Clopton said the problem is that the "hurdle" for students taking the TAAS is set too low. "If there's a lot of attention on low-level objectives ... it focuses instruction on low-level goals," Clopton said. "If you make the test too easy, it's blind to high levels of achievement. The system is actually set up to give these students false hope, you might say." The big question revolves around why the tests have gotten easier. Scott deflected questions about what motivation may have spurred "dumbing-down" the tests, but the researchers themselves had some suggestions. "It's clear that policy decisions were made along the way to drive it down," Clopton said. "But you run into a social problem. We don't want to fail half the kids. Knowledge itself is disparaged." Klein said one reason the tests are simple is because the reflect a current educational fad. "Some questions (on the math TAAS) are 'not-math' or 'barely-math,'" Klein said. "They reflect a philosophy in education called higher order thinking skills, or critical thinking. The problem is that kids can't do critical thinking without having any basic knowledge." "There is a similar problem in reading, downplaying vocabulary for critical thinking," Stotsky said. "Some vocabulary you can't express in monosyllables." The researchers said, however, that although the TAAS has problems, it's still a great instrument for accountability. "Texas has the advantage over California in that they started on the right path," Clopton said. "We're not here to say the assessment system hasn't done a good job." "Texas has a golden opportunity to be the national leader on this. You need to amplify your standards with clear grade-level expectations," Stotsky said. "Vagueness is the enemy of high expectations." ======================================= Access the full report: http://www.taxresearch.org. ===================================================================== EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE networking and information for parents and taxpayers on the internet Subscriptions & Archives: http://education-consumers.com or You are currently subscribed to education-consumers as: arthurhu@halcyon.com TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send a blank email to leave-education-consumers-989462S@lists.dundee.net ===================================================================== For less mail, click on the following link and choose 1) a daily digest, 2) a daily list of subjects, or 3) no mail (read postings on Web) http://lists.dundee.net/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=education-consumers For more help & info: http://www.lyris.com/help or . +OK 3355 octets Received: from smtp3.nwnexus.com (smtp3.nwnexus.com [206.63.63.41]) by mail1.halcyon.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA03468 for ; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 16:28:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail-gw1adm.rcsntx.swbell.net (mail-gw1adm.rcsntx.swbell.net [151.164.60.101]) by smtp3.nwnexus.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA19107 for ; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 16:27:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from hewett-pachard (ppp-207-193-11-67.hstntx.swbell.net [207.193.11.67]) by mail-gw1adm.rcsntx.swbell.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA20202; Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:27:00 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199811120027.SAA20202@mail-gw1adm.rcsntx.swbell.net> X-Sender: jimmyk5@mail.swbell.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:28:55 +0000 To: jimmyk5@swbell.net From: "Donna Garner" (by way of Jimmy Kilpatrick ) Subject: I rate a letter from TEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status: Looks as if the Texas Education Agency is still in denial. Jimmy =============================================== I do not believe that it is the SBOE which has voted to "rig" the writing test so that a 10th grade student can miss 32 out of 40 on the multiple choice section and still pass. Please show me in the SBOE minutes where the board decided to pass such an inferior standard. I believe it is the TEA who is responsible for determining just how the test questions will be weighted and scored -- not the SBOE. By the way, I have done my "homework." It was from the TEA's very own conversion table that I took the information which is mentioned in my article, "The Broken Stick -- the TAAS." Donna Garner dggarner@swbell.net P. S. I will be sure to share your e-mail with the SBOE members so that they can discuss its contents. ---------- > From: Ratcliffe, Debbie > To: 'dggarner@swbell.net' > Subject: your latest attack on TEA > Date: Wednesday, November 11, 1998 9:18 AM > > Mrs. Garner: > > Your e-mail alleging that TEA has lowered the passing standards on the TAAS > test was forwarded to me. As someone once said, facts can be pesky things > but if you are going to fire off letters, you ought to get your facts > straight. The Texas Education Agency has not lowered the passing standards > on the TAAS. The agency, in fact, has nothing to do with setting the > passing standard. The passing standard is set by the State Board of > Education. The board has consistently set the passing standard at 70 > percent for every single test. If you had taken the time to look at the > minutes of the board, you would have found this information. > > If you have questions about what we are doing, please call or e-mail me. > > Debbie Graves Ratcliffe > TEA Director of Communications ============================================= Material forwarded by: Jimmy Kilpatrick http://www.readbygrade3.com http://www.k-12science.org ============================================= For a free daily up-date of education news, research articles and commentaries published in major newspapers, magazines and journals, please forward email address to Jimmy Kilpatrick jimmyk5@swbell.net . Date sent: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 16:35:37 +0000 To: jimmyk5@swbell.net From: "Dave Mundy, Managing Editor" (by way of Jimmy Kilpatrick ) Subject: TRA report feedback The Texas Education Agency tries once again to strike back at the TRA report on the so called "Dumb Down" Texas Accountability System. Trying to perpetuated this public deception has gone on long enough Governor Bush. The public is still waiting for you to respond to the facts presented by TRA Report http//www.taxresearch.org It is interesting that your office and TEA used the Fordham Foundation and Heritage Foundation for all the praises on the Texas Accountability System. These two outstanding organizations were unaware of the true level of test questions. As stated before, the public needs to see all the correspondences between the test contractor, TEA and the governor's office. Looks like we need to put the full press conference on the internet so everyone can see and hear the truth. It looks to me like the center of education reform in Texas is Katy, Texas and being lead the dynamic duo Dave Munday of the Katy Times and George Scott of the Tax Research Organization. Jimmy ========================================== To the editor: Once again, The Katy Times and Dave Mundy have seen fit to print only one side of a story. A recent story went on at length about a report by the Taxpayer Research Association of Houston and Harris County that was critical of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test. Mundy didn't see fit to get comment from the Texas Education Agency officials who were present sociation's press conference nor did he bother to pick up the phone and call teh agency for comment. I keep wondering why Mundy seems so intent on presenting a one-sided critical view of public education. The association hired out-of-state researchers to criticize the TAAS test. Most of the researchers were from California, a state where students fail to outscore Texas students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam. Do we really want to model the Texas education system after California's? The researchers claimed that the TAAS test is too easy. That argument doesn't wash because other tests confirm that student achievement in this state is climbing. A report released Nov. 5 by the National Education Goals Panel said, "... students in North Carolina and Texas realized the largest average gain on the seven reading and mathematics tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) between 1990 and 1996. The analysis confirms that gains in academic achievement in both states are significant and sustained." We question how this could occur unless the TAAS test was at least as rigorous as the testing program in other states. Debbie Graves Ratcliffe Senior Director of Communications Texas Education Agency Austin 78701 12 Nov. 98 Debbie Graves Ratcliffe Senior Director of Communications Texas Education Agency 1701 N. Congress Ave. Austin TX 78701 (512) 463-9000 Dear Ms. Ratcliffe: Thanks for your Letter to the Editor. I always appreciate feedback, even when it's critical. My article on the TRA report certainly differs from those written by, for example, the Chronicle's Melanie Markley. Melanie has little control over how much space she can devote to a story; I can pretty much run as long or as short a story as is needed to inform my readers. The Chronicle story lacked depth, and as a result, most of Markley's readers gained very little in the way of clues about what the TRA researchers were talking about, aside from the fact that they were critical of TAAS. I concentrated more on what the report said, rather than fishing about for rebuttal statements from the TEA officials at the news conference, because for average Joe Reader, "educationese" is a complex language. In order to explain what these guys were saying, my story was necessarily lengthy, detailed and concentrated on the report, rather than the reaction. Had it been TEA issuing this report, I would have concentrated on what TEA claimed, figuring that if TRA wanted to issue a rebuttal, I'd eventually hear from them. Your point about the NAEP is certainly well-taken, and I included that in the article without adding additional comment on the NAEP (I'm quite aware of where it comes from, and what it's designed to do). My local school district does not participate in NAEP for a number of reasons, including the database tracking of students who take it and the affective nature of the test. I heartily salute them for that stance. What did the TRA report say? It said TAAS is too easy. It said the idea of a state test is good, the accountability system based on that test is good, but that the focus of the TAAS is on the lowest common denominator rather than on demonstration of high achievement. It suggested the TEA work to improve that rigor, and even suggested the agency do its own study, welcoming differing conclusions. My story says exactly that. Regarding my intent in presenting a "one-sided critical view," my job is to keep an eye on government -- good, bad or indifferent. My educational stories certainly aren't always "negative," if you'll recall my recent series on DARE, the glowing endorsement we gave the Texas Reading Initiative and our staunch opposition to government vouchers for private schooling, to name just a few. And one-sided critical views don't win National Newspaper Association awards for Best Coverage of Education ... a plaque which now hangs on my wall. Over the years, I've noticed that critique of any bureaucracy -- especially the educational bureaucracy -- is more often than not dealt with by closing ranks, rather than exploring whether or not that critique has merit. I remain mystified by the insistence of the education bureaucracy, in particular, that "in-house" criticism is the only criticism which has value. Being a newspaperman, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve both my paper and my own skills, and listening to critique is an important building block of improvement. It would be stupid of me to listen to constructive criticism only when it's offered by those in my profession; my readers' opinions are more important. When I make mistakes and someone points them out, I do my best to 'fess up and fix them. To paraphrase Dr. Nancy McLaran Oelkhaus, that's one of the major flaws of our current education system: it isn't open to ideas from outside its own ranks. It took several years, for example, for us mean ol' nasty right-wingers to convince the educrats of this state that Whole Language was a crock, in spite of the overwhelming evidence in favor of phonemic awareness and phonics. When the TEKS was finally revised to include phonics, it was the educrats who took the credit. (Mind you, we're not complaining: a win is a win, who threw the TD pass is unimportant.) Granted, critique directed at Texas public education isn't always couched in the most diplomatic phrases these days -- but that snarling is prompted by the frustration of dealing with abject indifference to ideas from outside the education establishment. I find it hard to call the TRA report an attack on the entire public education system; it attacked only the TAAS, and only the rigor of the TAAS, not the TAAS concept. If they'd really wanted to attack the whole system, they could've presented that report in, say, October, before the elections ... or made a broader suggestion that someone had to have ordered the test be "dumbed down," for political reasons. Again, I appreciate the feedback. I'm aiming at including your letter in our weekend edition. Sincerely, Dave Mundy ============================================= Material forwarded by: Jimmy Kilpatrick http://www.readbygrade3.com http://www.k-12science.org ============================================= For a free daily up-date of education news, research articles and commentaries published in major newspapers, magazines and journals, please forward email address to Jimmy Kilpatrick jimmyk5@swbell.net ate sent: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 18:08:05 +0000 To: jimmyk5@swbell.net From: "Jerry Jesness" (by way of Jimmy Kilpatrick ) Subject: [ppie-texas] Re: TRA report/NAEP results The Waco Times-Tribune has the best quote so far. Jimmy Association president George Scott said the findings raise questions about the test-score gains Texas students have made in recent years. "If you are a parent and you are depending upon your child's report card or your child's performance on the TAAS test to really understand what your child's academic skill level is, then you might as well be consulting one of those late-night psychic hot lines," Scott said. "What does a high performance on a TAAS test mean if the TAAS math test is below grade level?" From: "Donna Garner" To: "ClearingHouse" Subject: [education-consumers] Today's TEA Letter -- Nov. 12 Date sent: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 21:47:15 -0600 Send reply to: "Donna Garner" ===================================================================== After a day of reflection (and probably after hearing some comments from SBOE members to whom I faxed a copy of her letter), Debbie Ratcliffe, Texas Education Agency Communications Director, sent me another note today. What she does not seem to comprehend from her "ivory tower" position at the TEA is that tenth-grade students all over the state know that "correct" writing does not matter on the TAAS; therefore, it is extremely hard for classroom teachers who teach explicit skills to get students to focus on correct writing. By the way, Ms. Ratcliffe and I did not "misunderstand" each other. She knew exactly what I stated in my article, "The Broken Stick -- the TAAS," and I knew exactly what she meant in her letter to me yesterday. Here is today's letter: =================================================== Mrs. Garner: I think we have misunderstood each other. From your latest response, I see that you were not talking about the 70 passing standard for the test, which the board does set. There is a sliding scale used on the writing portion of the exam. This allows students with a higher score on the essay to pass the test while correctly answering fewer multiple choice questions than is required of those students with a lower score on the essay test. Of the 19,782 10th grade students who took the TAAS in 1998 and scored a 4 on the essay, no student answered fewer than 20 items correctly. The use of a sliding scale in grading the writing portion of or state exam has been in place since 1980 when the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills test was introduced. Debbie Graves Ratcliffe > -----Original Message----- > From: Donna Garner [SMTP:dggarner@swbell.net] > Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 1998 6:49 PM > To: Ratcliffe, Debbie > Subject: Re: your latest attack on TEA > > > I do not believe that it is the SBOE which has voted to "rig" the > writing test so that a 10th grade student can miss 32 out of 40 on the > multiple choice section and still pass. Please show me in the SBOE > minutes where the board decided to pass such an inferior standard. > > I believe it is the TEA who is responsible for determining just how the > test questions will be weighted and scored -- not the SBOE. > > By the way, I have done my "homework." It was from the TEA's very own > conversion table that I took the information which is mentioned in my > article, "The Broken Stick -- the TAAS." > > Donna Garner > dggarner@swbell.net