Talk to me about the "Texas Miracle"....

[phillybri]

Bill Maher spoke about it acouple of weeks ago. The impression I get is that there was an effort to force less gifted students into dropping out in order to raise average test scores.

If anyone has some good sources, my wife and I would greatly appreciate it!

[GOPisEvil]

1. Don't know about the drop-outs, but...

...I seem to recall low-performing students being classified as "special needs" so that their scored did not count toward the average.

[SilasSoule]

24. Good to see your hemisfair 68 throwback plate again Davo.

[LoneStarLiberal]

2. Raising test targets

And the generic tactic of simply lowering the target scores on standardized tests.

I haven't heard of forcing less gifted students to drop out, though. Wouldn't surprise me.

[Warren Stuart]

3. Here's a link

Go to google and you'll find a bunch more.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/16_01/Tex161.shtml

[Rose Siding]

9. It's just tragic.

Everyone loses. My daughter faced a much less extreme version of new testing in 4th grade (WA State) She's bright and after a few weeks was asked not to raise her hand to answer questions anymore.

I understand the teacher wanted to spend plenty of time with those students who needed more help but how demoralizing it was for her! We sweated that year out and were fortunate to get her into more targeted program the next year.

The discouragement of excellence in regular classes was so hard to see. It must appear to some of the children that doing well or knowing the answers is not the goal.

I know the problems range the spectrum. This was just my personal experience.

[mantis]

4. Many

States do crap like that...you would be
amazed...or not.

[wellstone_democrat]

5. well I can help a bit with that!

reclassification of students and "not discouraging" dropouts. It works generally like this:

indeed students are not "discouraged" from dropping out---its their "choice" ya know. One way to do this is to cut counselors from low income schools where many of the "low performers" are registered.

Apparently in the "better districts" (read: wealthier suburbs) reclassification is the tool so that middle class Johnny stays in the school but isn't counted in the average! Counselors , of course, are maintained in these schools based on the need for them with the new classifications of "special needs" which predominantly falls in the category of various learning and attention disabilities.

There are other interesting tricks (lowering the score baseline is a favorite) that pump up some numbers but they are constantly fine-tuning that rationale for the new educational system that is based entirely on "teaching to the test"

"Miracle?" Disaster is more like it.

[phillybri]

11. This sounds about right....

...here in NC. My wife is speech pathologist at a very rich, 99% white school. They recently began bussing about 25 kids in from downtown Raleigh. Almost all of these kids are African-American.

My wife tells me that teachers make no effort to engage these kids and the majority of teachers have written these kids off.

The worst part is that most of these kids end up sitting in the principal's office ALL DAY if they misbehave in any way. Thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy when the child misses an entire day of instruction and falls further behind.

Luckily, my wife has become an advocate for these kids and has started a weekly after-school program to teach them about self-esteem, hard work, and being yourself.

So many of these kids are so bright and have such ability. It just tears me up that so many teachers could care less about helping them...

[Yupster]

6. The one school reform I'll give Bush credit for

is issuing report cards on each scchool and putting the info in the newspaper. It will be published for every school that X % of the kids in this school passed the reading, or math standardized tests at the end of the year. That really let's parents know if there's learning going on in the school or not. Schools are also ranked as Exemplary or troubled, or whatever the terms are, but the worst schools in the state are listed in the paper every year, and I have to think that makes them try harder.

I think that was part of his education bill too his first year as president.

On dropouts, the problem is how you measure the dropout rates. This is a problem everywhere, not just in Texas.

You may hear that a school's dropout rate is 3 % or 40 %. It just depends on how you measure it.

For instance, let's say a poor student doesn't show up for school his senior year after summer vacation. Is he a drop-out? The school will not count him as such unless he actually comes into the school to tell them he's dropping out. If he just disappears, the school doesn't know what happened to him, so they don't count him as a dropout. So, you have 1,000 freshman entering high school every year and 600 graduating every year and you have a 3 % annual drop-out rate. Well where did the other 350 kids go? The school doesn't know so they don't count them.

On standardized testing, one trick the schools have is to declare as many of their poor students as possible to be special ed, ESL, or otherwise disabled so they are exempted from the test. This of course drives their scores up for the whole school.

I heard Bill Maher talking about drpouts in Texas, but having worked in the schools, I'd be very surprised if there are educators trying to get kids to drop-out. I've never seen anything like that in my years. I've seen just the opposite of trying to keep kids in no matter what.

Nw getting kids exempted from taking the test I've seen plenty of.

[sandnsea]

8. Encouraging no, letting yes

Happens in my kids' high school as part of the routine. Lower performing students get absolutely no help, no attention, no support, no encouragement. They're disrespected by the Principal and Vice-Principal and eventually drop out. I doubt they think they're encouraging these kids to drop out. Rather they have an attitude that if some students don't want to be there, it's better for the rest of the students if they're just gone.

One reason that by the time the high school reports come along, I don't trust the test scores so much. The kids who would skew those scores downward are already gone. So we still have a large group of uneducated adults.

[Yupster]

19. Geeze - around here

in Texas there are so many intervention programs -- but I still have my kid in private school.

I did teach in public high school for nine yars though.

[CO Liberal]

7. A Trainable Monkey Became Their Governor......

...and the rest is history.

[madfloridian]

10. I posted on this topic last night in relation to Florida......0 responses.

I am going to post my message again.....it is very serious. Your Tom Luce is the person in charge or Just for the Kids. That appears to be the main group. He is a lawyer, not a teacher. This message was about how Jeb is using him to do the same thing to Florida schools......test test test, and then ......group by demographics. That part is still coming.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I just did some reseach because I knew I had heard the name. His Just for the Kids is apparently taking over school systems all over the country. He is highly connected to the Bush family. How does a lawyer know so much about schools?
I can see our paper is already questioning this decision by Jeb. What I did not know is that apparently they are already working here in Florida....see last article.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-ffcat16aug16,1,2763075.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
Texas company to evaluate Florida schools

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-11-09/pols_capitol.html
Would you like to swing on a star?
Corporation with deep pockets tests every one but themselves.

Just happened on this, don't have a clue about it.
http://www.texasjudges.net/perjury.htm
Godbey perjury

Looks like Luce might already be taking hold in Florida schools. This
article is from 2002. Are they trying to demographically group the schools
even now?
From a Google cache page, shortened link.
http://makeashorterlink.com/?B56C51D95
Education analysis golden

By Billie Stanton Denver Post Columnist

March 03, 2002

So as schools in 16 Colorado districts tender their state test results and
other data to that Texas-based nonprofit group, they do so with the
expectation that they ultimately can improve students' learning.

That's never an easy process, of course. But with Just For The Kids, it
becomes a whole lot easier.

The program, launched by businessman Tom Luce in Texas in 1995, also is
underway now in Florida, Arkansas, Minnesota, California, Washington state
and even Tennessee, where William Sanders gained fame for his research on
analyzing student data.

But Tennessee officials know that the Sanders model and Just For The Kids
are complementary approaches.

Both crunch student data. While Sanders' method identifies effective and
ineffective teachers, the Texas model finds the most productive schools and
the practices yielding strong student achievement.

Just For The Kids does this by grouping schools according to demographics.

Those with high student mobility, poverty and a plethora of English language
learners, for example, might be lumped together.

Any of those schools with unusually high achievement then will be sifted out
for further review.

With deep analysis of a winning school's curriculum, mission,
student-teacher ratio, teacher experience and education, along with other
factors, Just For The Kids tries to determine what makes a school overcome
the odds to achieve excellence....."END SNIP

I had no idea all this was going on here already.

I would like to know more about this Tom Luce. It is hard to find anything but good stuff about him and the Bushes.

[phillybri]

13. This is fantastic, thank you so much....

Terrific info. I can't believe this is goin on in the US....:puke:

[donco6]

16. The Sanders model is based on identifying "bad" teachers.

They look at the test scores of students of teachers over a multi-year period, then make conclusions as to the effectiveness of the teacher.

Sanders' research states that a student who has one bad teacher in the early grades never regains the loss in learning he/she suffered in that bad year. That's why he's so adamant about identifying "bad" teachers.

The Just for the Kids model does the same thing, except focuses only at the school level, not the individual teacher level.

Of course, it can be fraught with problems - the biggest one I can think of lies in the way many schools actually work. You often have one teacher who does an excellent job with special ed. students, welcomes them into her room - therefore she gets assigned an inordinate number of them. If you just looked at her scores, you MIGHT conclude that she's a poor teacher. Though Sanders says he corrects for this by modifying the data for kids with IEPs, a lot of teachers are wary of the model for this reason.

[madfloridian]

28. Yeah, those bad teachers.

I know all the tricks principals use to give a teacher a bad class. Oh, yeah, they do it.

One would not permit me to leave when my mother fell and was on the floor all night. She dragged to a phone and managed to have the operater call the school. I was told by the principal that I could leave when she said I could.

I called the county office, then I left the school to take care of my dying mother.

I then called my rep in the teacher's group, and from that time on I had the worst classes in the school. The secretaries documented that she changed the class rolls during the summer.

I would not set foot back in a classroom for a million dollars. I was a good teacher, one of the best. One principal destroyed my love of teaching. She did get fired, but she sued them. She was back the next year.

[Avalux]

12. Don't have a source

but my daughter who is an extremely bright student is in the gifted program (if you can call it that). Since she's starting middle school, she only goes a couple of hours a week as opposed to one day a week in grade school.
As it was explained to me, the funding comes from the special education pool. She's considered special ed. Since there's not much money to begin with and the handicapped students "need" more attention and resources than the kids at the other end of the spectrum, guess who loses? Was told the gifted program will probably go away completely in a couple of years.

On edit: just read the post about not being counted with the other kids...I need to find out if my daughter is counted or considered special ed when it comes to statistics.

[madfloridian]

14. They have been trying to do away with gifted programs in Florida.

Except for an outcry from the public, the excellent program for honors students (called International Baccalaureate...I think) would have been cancelled in our county.

If Jeb had his way the honors programs would be no more. The special ed kids are rapidly being given vouchers for private schools which do NOT have to account for them!

Even before I retired, it was almost impossible to get a kid into the gifted program except by points. By points I mean points for economic status, for minority status, and I did not ever find out the others. I won't get into that, as I will get slammed. I saw a lot of hurt, a lot of pain.

I told one parent what would likely happen if we went through with the testing. I told her once I referred I got very little input.
She thought about it, decided to go for private testing. Then the school system played games for a year before accepting the private tests!

And the people are waking up a little. But not enough, and too late.

Now they are trying to stop funding to our public libraries. That is really opening eyes.

But, too late, I fear. At least for Florida. They are going after CA and TX, but we are already in the clutches.

[donco6]

15. We only receive about $10,000 in gifted/talented money

each year. It is distributed through special ed. That's compared to $650,000 for special ed programs besides g/t.

It's very specific on what the money can/can't be used for. We cannot use ANY of the other special ed money for gifted.

[jody]

30. I thought I read a report saying for every $11 in Special Ed, 2 cents are

spent on gifted/talented programs.

Can anyone confirm that?

[zekeson]

18. Your daughter is counted in acountability stats

as are all special ed kids. There is then a breakout of all special population or disaggregation of the data. When used as a diagnostic tool its a pretty effective method of determining the health of a school.

Having a lot of dropouts in your school or district can change your performance indicator terrifically. If you have a high percentage of dropouts then you get labeled Academically Unacceptable and parents go nuts. Several years ago Alamo Heights school district, a small, wealthy district in San Antonio had 4 dropouts. Regretably, they were all of one minority race. Though the district led the state in many academic areas, they were labled Academically Unacceptable - as they should have been. The district, in one way or the other, failed to meet the needs of those 4 kids of color.

Reviewing the TEA pages I don't see that their accountability standards have changed. How they get the kids off the books is not certain to me, but, yeah, anytime you have heavy accountability, someone (read Rod Paige) is gonna figure out how to screw with the system.

This from the glossary at the TEA page:
Dropout Rate (Annual): The annual dropout rate is the count of official dropouts summed across all grades (7-12) divided by the number of students summed across all grades (7-12). It is calculated as follows:

number of students who dropped out at any time during the school year

divided by

number of students who were in attendance at any time during the school year

Annual dropout rates are shown for 2000-01 and 1999-2000.

Note that a cumulative count of students is used in the denominator as well as the numerator. This method for calculating the dropout rate neutralizes the effects of mobility by including in the denominator every student who enrolled at the school throughout the school year. If the student dropped out, the student was counted as a dropout for the district last attended (as well as for the campus where the student was enrolled in that district). See also Dropout and Leaver Record. (Source: PEIMS, Oct. 2001, June 2001, Oct. 2000, and June 2000)

Description of who gets tested:

Every student enrolled in a Texas public school in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10 must be given the opportunity to take the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). Although state law mandates that every student in these grades is tested, there are circumstances under which some students are not tested. Also, of the students who are tested, not all students' test performance is considered for a school or district's accountability rating.

General information on Texas Education:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/about.aeis.html

Here's a breakout of a typical TX Middle School:
Texas Middle School

[donco6]

17. The Texas Miracle refers to Rod Paige . . .

. . . the Secretary of Education, who was once Supt. of Houston ISD:

"In 1999-2000, when then-Gov. George Bush praised HISD's academic progress, students in the district already had made significant strides on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. But before the next school year, Paige told administrators they could lose their jobs if their students did not improve. And in that year alone, the number of top-rated schools in Houston jumped from 11 to 35. The number in the state's top two categories rose from 87 to 123.

Based on this "miraculous" improvement in test scores, Houston and Texas became the darling children of Bush's education program, with the newly promoted Paige as spokesman.

However, the latest research into the "miracle" has discovered the following:

Only 50% of minority students in Texas have been progressing from grade 9 to high school graduation since the initiation of the TAAS testing program.

Since about 1982, the rates at which Black and Hispanic students are required to repeat grade 9 have climbed steadily, such that by the late 1990s, nearly 30% of Black and Hispanic students were "failing" grade 9.

Cumulative rates of grade retention in Texas are almost twice as high for Black and Hispanic students as for White students.

Some portion of the gains in grade 10 TAAS pass rates are illusory. The numbers of students taking the grade 10 tests who were classified as "in special education" and hence exempted from TAAS and not counted in schools' accountability ratings nearly doubled between
1994 and 1998. A substantial portion of the apparent increases in TAAS pass rates in the 1990s are due to such exclusions.

http://list.terc.edu/pipermail/ra-cia/2000-August/000017.html

The bloom is off the rose. The "miracle" is turning out to be more hokum than holy.

[Yupster]

20. Student repeating a grade is not a bad thing

It's better than pushing him out the door whether he learned anything or not.

I'm just glad they care enough to have them repeat the grade and not just pass them through without learning anything, which is how it usd to be.

[madfloridian]

21. Hmmm...mmmm How about 1000 in one county, all 3rd graders.

Please please do not fall for the stuff they are dishing out about how really good retention is.

Over 1000 3rd graders in our county are being forced to repeat, some very bright kids.

I am sorry, but that one test fits all is a part of the new system. I see they have parents convinced until the reality hits them in the face.

[Yupster]

22. Hey I taught public school high school

for nine years. I had kids who had second grade reading levels. I'd go back through their files and see they were never retained once. I'd see report cards in junior high school where the kid got 6 F's on their card and still ended up in the ninth grade. It was awful late to do much about it. By ninth grade the kid was just waiting to be old enough to drop out.

You're not going to convince me that retention in general is a bad thing. I saw the results of not retaining.

[madfloridian]

25. Hey, for a long time we were NOT permitted to retain.

For years there was a movement that said it would hurt their little feelings and psyches if we held them back. I would present my case to the principal as to why an individual child would benefit. I got nowhere. This went on for several years as a philosophy.

It is not the teachers' faults. High school teachers here, in spite of knowing that we could NOT retain, still blamed us.

Retention is beneficial is some cases. It should be the teacher's decision, based on careful documentation.

When parents go above our heads, we are not permitted to retain in this county.

The kids you taught like that were the victims of social promotion theories NOT held by the teachers.

On Edit: 1000 in one county in one grade is NOT acceptable. It is overkill.

[Yupster]

26. Why would you think

I was blaming the teachers? I knew it wasn't their decision.

I just think if they're now retaining kids who don't have a certain degree of literacy, it's probably more to the good than bad.

[madfloridian]

29. Have you taught to the FCAT?

Do you know what it is like? I have. It is a secretive, pathetic test, where no one is ever permitted to know how it is graded.

There are still 300 tests missing from our county. They do NOT know where they are.

I agree with you that if the child is able to learn, and is just behind then retention can help. If they are mentally challenged already, with no background of help and support, there is only so far they can be taken. I had a child in my 3rd grade class who was 11 years old with an IQ of 60. That is counter-productive.

[donco6]

23. You're missing the point

The point is that the Texas "Miracle" isn't a miracle. It was hyped as achievement gain, but in reality, it was just juggling.

I fail to understand how retention accomplishes anything, however. If they didn't get it the first time, why would you think that running them through the same process again would turn out any differently?

[Yupster]

27. Different teacher?

Better teacher? Different teaching style? Maybe the kid had something going on in his life and is now more ready to learn?