Follow the Money

In a front-page article in Saturday’s Washington Post, Amit R. Paley reports that the Justice Department in investigating profiteering and cronyism connected to the No Child Left Behind law.

At the center of the investigation is Reading First, a Department of Education program which provides $1 billion in grants each year to improve reading for children in kindergarten through third grade. Under NCLB, third grade students are required to pass the reading test to advance to the fourth grade. Education Department employees who oversaw these grants, including Christopher J. Doherty, former director of Reading First, steered recipients to purchase certain textbooks and tests with their grant money. Doherty’s wife was a paid consultant for Direct Instruction, which investigators said Doherty “tried to force schools to use.”

Dynamic Measurement Group, developer of another reading test, made $1.3 million after being “endorsed by a Reading First evaluation panel.” Half-owner of the company, Roland H. Good III, was a member of the panel. Other members of the panel also profited from Reading First endorsements. In fact, 7 of the 24 tests endorsed by the Reading First panel had ties to panel members.

In Texas, vigilance is necessary to insure that everything associated with the multi-million dollar testing industry is above board. Lucrative contracts to develop and score tests, in addition to teaching materials to prepare students for the tests, provide ample opportunity for cronyism and influence peddling to become part of the selection process. TAKS and NCLB should not become avenues for the well-connected to enrich themselves at tax-payer expense.

Attacking TAKS

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, and Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, have filed legislation which will replace the state-mandated TAKS test with end-of-course tests in public high schools. If passed, the bill (SB 1031; HB 2236) will go into effect starting with the '09-'10 school year. To graduate, students entering ninth grade that year would have to accumulate 840 points from twelve tests covering these core subjects: English I, English II, English III; Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II; Biology, Chemistry, and Physics; and World Geography, World History, and U. S. History. Each test would also count 15 percent of a student's grade in the course.

Other provisions of the bill include a requirement that the exams measure “annual improvement in student achievement.” While details are not yet available, this assessment would probably involve comparing one year’s class with the previous year’s class, rather than assessing individual student progress. In addition, eighth grade students would take a college readiness diagnostic test, followed by the PSAT in their sophomore year, again for diagnostic purposes. These mandatory tests would be paid for by the state, along with the SAT or ACT, which would be offered to students in their junior year, but would not be required.

Senator Shapiro’s bill contains much to support. End-of-course tests make sense for high school students, and counting the tests as part of semester grades gives students added incentive to do their best. More important, teachers might feel less pressured to spend instructional time on test prep and drill, which many feel is dumbing down the curriculum.

Still, questions arise about the costs involved. TAKS, only three years old, cost millions to develop, field test, and benchmark. If TAKS is inadequate, who is accountable for that waste of tax dollars? After all, we previously had end-of-course state exams in many high school courses, but TAKS replaced them. Which companies stand to gain from new test development? What connections, if any, do these companies have with state legislators?

Perhaps the most fundamental question, however, is this: When will legislators stop jumping from one new idea to another and stick to a course of action long enough for it to be implemented?

TAKS Sets ESL Students Up for Failure

As if you needed another reason to despise TAKS, consider the dilemma facing state educators concerning students for whom English is a second language.

The U.S. Department of Education demands that students enrolled in U.S. schools for more than one year take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills English exam.

When high school-age students arrive at the Newcomers center in Birdville, they typically begin working at a second- to third-grade level, Haygood said."We start with the alphabet, if necessary," she said.

During a recent lesson, the word "random" stumped the class. Yet within two years, these students will be expected to tackle questions on the 11th-grade English TAKS exit exam that compare literature and measure revising and editing skills.

How big an issue is this for Texas schools?

During the 2005-06 school year, Texas had 711,237 students with limited English proficiency, representing 15.8 percent of the state's student enrollment.

One of the consequences of pushing the students to take tests for which they are clearly unprepared is that more schools may now be labeled low-performing.

Educators nationwide have questioned whether the new federal rules will open more doors for school vouchers.

The federal school accountability system allows parents of children at low-performing Title 1 schools -- those that have a high number of economically disadvantaged students -- to transfer to other schools. Vouchers would provide public funding that would make it easier for parents to place their children in private schools.

U.S. Department of Education officials say there is no hidden agenda, however. They defend the plan for testing students with limited English skills by saying some schools take too long to get the students up to grade level.

There is another consideration for ESL students. Studies show that students who are in bilingual education do better than students who are in English immersion classes. The early push to English actually may undermine the student's ability to successfully learn, and contribute Texas' already overwhelming drop-out rate.

But surely our own government wouldn't be setting schools up for failure, would it?

Nationwide, many educators think so. Consider this letter published last year in the Washington Post regarding the Virginia Department of Education's efforts to seek an exemption from the requirement:

To the Editor:

Why are federal officials pressing Virginia schools to test English language learners in the same way they test fluent English speakers? [Metro, October 29]. Assessments with a built-in language barrier are simply not valid for measuring what these students have learned. Nobody, including the U.S. Department of Education, seriously claims otherwise.

Mandating meaningless tests will only serve to frustrate children, demoralize their teachers, and unfairly brand their schools as “failing.”

If the No Child Left Behind Act is intended to improve public schools, how does the Bush Administration foster that goal by requiring tests that generate misinformation about student achievement? If the purpose is to discredit public schools and make way for privatization schemes, then the federal action makes a lot more sense.

James Crawford, President

Institute for Language and Education Policy