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Studies, lawsuit taking TAAS to task
(Last updated Thursday, Jan 6, 2000) By Cecilia Ballí Texas' public school test is harmful to minority and low-income children, according to two studies to be presented in Washington today by a Harvard University think tank. The report will be made the same day a San Antonio federal judge decides whether the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills infringes on the rights of African-American and Hispanic students when used as a graduation requirement. And it coincides with a Fordham Foundation national report card that gave Texas an A and praised its school accountability system, which is driven by TAAS scores, for helping boost teacher quality. The Harvard reports, commissioned by the university's Civil Rights Project and immediately disputed by Texas officials, say minorities disproportionately fail high-stakes exams — tests that determine grade promotion or graduation — and are the biggest victims of the tests' secondhand effects. "Almost nobody in the testing business seriously believes that that's an appropriate use of tests," said Gary Orfield, a Harvard education professor and co-director of the research center. "It has the potential of denying a high school diploma and making unemployable hundreds of thousands of minorities across the country." Orfield said the timing of the TAAS decision and the Washington presentation to some 150 congressional aides and agency staffers, which had to be scheduled weeks ago, is coincidental. The studies are two of 12 reports to be published later this year in a book about the impact of high-stakes testing on minorities. Four researchers from the University of Texas and Rice, Columbia and Michigan State universities conducted the TAAS studies. In October, two of them testified in the San Antonio trial for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which filed the lawsuit in 1997. MALDEF Regional Counsel Al Kauffman said there is no direct relationship between the reports and the San Antonio case. He said he solicited Linda McNeil, the Rice education professor who co-authored one of the studies, to testify here when he was told she was investigating the TAAS' effects on classroom instruction. Her findings, he said, are "the same thing that we talked about in our trial. And that's what we found to be the case around the state." Most of McNeil's testimony was blocked in court after state lawyers argued it didn't apply to the narrow question of whether the exit-level TAAS is constitutional. Her co-author, UT Professor Angela Valenzuela, also was restricted in her testimony because she refused to name the Houston-area schools she examined in her research due to confidentiality issues. The Civil Rights Project researchers, however, concluded:
"The test itself, and the system of testing and test preparation, have in poor and minority schools come to supplant the opportunity for high quality, meaningful learning," the report concludes. But a Texas Education Agency spokeswoman said the study applies only to a small number of schools. "It looks like a lot of the report is based on anecdotal information, and I'm sure you can find a small number of schools that spend too much time on TAAS preparation," Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said. "But as you've heard us say many, many times, the TAAS test is based on the curriculum. If teachers teach the TAAS test, their students will pass." The second study, which is less critical and summarizes the use of high-stakes tests in Texas, New York and Minnesota, points out that while the gap between minority and Anglo TAAS scores at the 10th-grade level has shrunk over time, it remains in the double digits. "Although the increasing cumulative pass rates from 1996 to 1998 are encouraging," the study says, "the overall impression is that these tests are, and will remain for some time, an impediment to the graduation prospects of African-American and Hispanic youth." Linda Edwards, Gov. George W. Bush's spokeswoman, said those numbers need to be compared to figures on national standardized tests that show Texas students — including minorities — are outperforming their peers in other states. "The statistics show the opposite is true, and minorities are benefiting the most from the Texas accountability system because they have made the largest gains among all student groups," Edwards said. "And outstanding minority gains have earned Texas recognition for being a national leader in closing the minority achievement gap." The Fordham Foundation's report doesn't cite test scores, but it credits the TAAS-driven accountability system for making schools responsible for student performance and teacher quality. It also lauds the state's alternative teacher certification program, although it notes that nearly half of Texas educators teach outside their field. Only Texas and Florida, governed by the Bush brothers, received A's. The nation overall received a D+ for teacher quality.
Thursday, Jan 6, 2000
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