Former Texas education commissioner Robert Scott sparked national revolt against high-stakes testing
by JEFFREY WEISS
Staff Writer
Published: 28 November 2012 11:26 PM
Robert Scott
Robert Scott says now that he never intended to inspire a national
revolt against high-stakes standardized testing in public schools. But
when the then-commissioner of the Texas Education Agency spoke out
earlier this year, that’s pretty much what happened.
In January, Scott responded to questions at a meeting of the State Board of Education. He called overemphasis on test results at the local level a “perversion” of the system. And he said that the state’s reliance on those test results for more and more accountability measures was the “heart of the vampire.”
He made similar comments a few days later — to enthusiastic applause — at the annual midwinter conference of the Texas Association of School Administrators, or TASA.
Scott’s pungent comments were an emperor’s new clothes moment for those opposed to test-based accountability.
They also triggered a backlash from defenders of the system who say Scott didn’t object as it was being designed and didn’t work hard enough to help it succeed.
But Scott’s perspective is being voiced at many levels. This week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was in Dallas. During an interview, his position on high-stakes testing closely shadowed Scott’s position.
Federal testing requirements in the No Child Left Behind law need a “reset,” Duncan said. More than 30 states — Texas not among them — have applied to his department for waivers to the law and none have retained a singular focus on one-day standardized testing.
“Test scores can be a part of what you’re looking at, but should not be the fixation,” Duncan said.
In
Texas, Scott’s critique has become a rallying cry in preparation for
next year’s legislative session. That’s where any significant changes to
state testing requirements would need to be approved.
In a recent interview, Scott listed aspects to the Texas system in need of what he called a midcourse correction:
•The requirement that STAAR test results represent 15 percent of the final grade for high school core classes.
•The use of STAAR almost exclusively to determine ratings for schools and school districts
•The “four-by-four” high school graduation requirement of four years of math, English, science and social studies — each class tied to its own End Of Course/STAAR test — that leave little flexibility for class selection.
•The total absence of classes such as fine arts or career and technical education — none of which have STAAR tests — in accountability ratings.
These elements are all vital to the system that Scott supervised from 2007, when Gov. Rick Perry appointed him as commissioner, until he stepped down in July. That he was still in charge of the agency when he started to level his criticisms made them all the more influential.
First, his remarks became the core of a letter signed by more than a dozen North Texas school district superintendents. That letter became the framework of a resolution crafted by TASA that attacks high-stakes, one-day, one-test accountability. The resolution has now been approved by more than 85 percent of Texas local school boards.
Next, an organization called the National Center for Fair and Open Testing built on the Texas resolution and created a version it has taken around the country.
“He’s a real hero around here,” Robert Schaeffer, director of public education for the national test policy advocacy group, said about Scott.
And the ripples continue to spread. Just this week, the American Federation of Teachers announced a new PR campaign: “Learning is more than a test score.” The new message piggybacks onto a resolution that opposes what it called “the growing fixation on high-stakes testing” passed earlier this year at the AFT’s annual convention.
If Scott is a hero to one side, he’s something entirely different to the other. Sandy Kress is a former Dallas ISD board president, senior adviser on education to Rick Perry and George W. Bush, and a paid consultant for Pearson, the company that designs the standardized tests used in Texas and many other states.
But Kress was a high-stakes testing advocate long before he got the Pearson job. He’s a vigorous supporter of the current Texas system. Saying he’s speaking only for himself, he dismisses Scott’s comments to the state board and to TASA as nothing more than “retail demagoguing.”
If the system was misunderstood or being misused at the local level, it was Scott’s job to keep those things from happening, he said.
Scott,
43, has kept a relatively low public profile since leaving the TEA,
though he’s made speeches to groups of educators in and out of Texas.
He’s now working for an Austin law firm — he’s a lawyer — and as a
consultant about education and other topics.
Scott seems bemused at being viewed as either a standard-bearer or a lightning rod. He says he hadn’t exactly plotted out his broadsides over accountability. The questions came up, and he answered them.
“It wasn’t some grand plan,” he said.
When he announced in May that he’d be resigning, there were murmurs that he’d been nudged for speaking out against the system. Scott says it was more the other way around.
“I realized last Christmas there wasn’t much more I could do at TEA,” he said. “That was probably more a symptom of me getting ready to go. Here’s what I see on my way out the door.”
Within the relatively closed world of education officials, grousing about testing has gotten louder by the year. What made Scott’s an observation that made such a difference?
“Because of his position and the state he comes from, he has a lot of credibility,” Schaeffer said.
Texas has been a national leader in pushing test-based accountability since Ross Perot chaired a Select Committee on Education in the 1980s. As governor, George W. Bush threw his full support behind it — and as president he took the idea to Washington as part of No Child Left Behind. Under Perry, the state only increased its emphasis on tests.
And Scott has been anything but a critic of the program since he started working at TEA in 1994.
“I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life developing this system,” he said last week. “I believe in it.”
In fact, he was in charge of the agency when the Legislature imposed some of the most controversial testing measures. Scott now says that some of that is overreach.
Critics like Kress want to know where his voice was as the policies were being crafted.
“The 15 percent rule was deliberated while he was commissioner,” Kress said. “I never heard a peep of objection to it from him.”
Scott says his ideas evolved.
STAAR
is part of an overhaul of the state’s education standards. First, the
curriculum requirements, called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills
(TEKS), were beefed up with the intention of pushing more students into
college readiness. Then STAAR was supposed to represent better
assessment of those skills than the old TAKS tests.
But as Scott and his agency released information about the changes, he discovered there wasn’t much interest in the new curriculum standards.
“The only way to appease people was to release a whole practice test,” he said.
Teaching to the test rather than the curriculum had become the goal in too many places, he said. Too many schools were filling their calendars with “benchmark” exams, testing whether students were able to succeed on STAAR-like tests.
Both Scott and Kress agree that’s not remotely what was intended.
Scott said he and his agency did what they could to redirect attention by teachers and school officials. Kress said that Scott himself should have been more a more visible advocate, barnstorming the state and speaking forcefully about the value in using the system properly.
Kress and Scott sharply diverge about the limits of testing.
For instance, people unfamiliar with the system might assume passing rates for STAAR or TAKS simply represent an objective measure of competency. Not so much, Scott said.
“I’m the guy who set the passing standards for five years,” he said.
Yes, they were supposed to indicate something about competency. But he also tried to set them low enough to not overly discourage students and schools, yet high enough to create an incentive to work harder. And he tried to raise the bar a bit each year.
None of that subjectivity was visible either in the scores sent home to parents or in the accountability standards for schools and districts that depended almost entirely on the passing rates.
And then there are the unavoidable flaws in the tests themselves, Scott said.
“The most fundamental question facing the state right now is ‘Is the test infallible?’” he said.
Scott’s answer: It’s not. And that’s a problem.
“When you use it for so many high-stake things, and you know it’s fallible,” he said, “you know there are risks.”
-----
Then-Education Commissioner Robert Scott, speaking to the State Board of Education in January:
•“You’ve reached a point now of having this one thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of the vampire, so to speak. All you have to do is kill that, and you’ve killed a whole lot of things.”
•“I’ve been a proponent of standardized testing, for some things, and I want to continue to use it, for some things. But we have overemphasized it, and even if we haven’t overemphasized it specifically at the state level, the perception out there is that it is the end-all, be-all….”
• “The assessment and accountability regime has become not only a cottage industry but a military-industrial complex.”
In January, Scott responded to questions at a meeting of the State Board of Education. He called overemphasis on test results at the local level a “perversion” of the system. And he said that the state’s reliance on those test results for more and more accountability measures was the “heart of the vampire.”
He made similar comments a few days later — to enthusiastic applause — at the annual midwinter conference of the Texas Association of School Administrators, or TASA.
Scott’s pungent comments were an emperor’s new clothes moment for those opposed to test-based accountability.
They also triggered a backlash from defenders of the system who say Scott didn’t object as it was being designed and didn’t work hard enough to help it succeed.
But Scott’s perspective is being voiced at many levels. This week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was in Dallas. During an interview, his position on high-stakes testing closely shadowed Scott’s position.
Federal testing requirements in the No Child Left Behind law need a “reset,” Duncan said. More than 30 states — Texas not among them — have applied to his department for waivers to the law and none have retained a singular focus on one-day standardized testing.
“Test scores can be a part of what you’re looking at, but should not be the fixation,” Duncan said.
His objections
In a recent interview, Scott listed aspects to the Texas system in need of what he called a midcourse correction:
•The requirement that STAAR test results represent 15 percent of the final grade for high school core classes.
•The use of STAAR almost exclusively to determine ratings for schools and school districts
•The “four-by-four” high school graduation requirement of four years of math, English, science and social studies — each class tied to its own End Of Course/STAAR test — that leave little flexibility for class selection.
•The total absence of classes such as fine arts or career and technical education — none of which have STAAR tests — in accountability ratings.
These elements are all vital to the system that Scott supervised from 2007, when Gov. Rick Perry appointed him as commissioner, until he stepped down in July. That he was still in charge of the agency when he started to level his criticisms made them all the more influential.
First, his remarks became the core of a letter signed by more than a dozen North Texas school district superintendents. That letter became the framework of a resolution crafted by TASA that attacks high-stakes, one-day, one-test accountability. The resolution has now been approved by more than 85 percent of Texas local school boards.
Next, an organization called the National Center for Fair and Open Testing built on the Texas resolution and created a version it has taken around the country.
“He’s a real hero around here,” Robert Schaeffer, director of public education for the national test policy advocacy group, said about Scott.
And the ripples continue to spread. Just this week, the American Federation of Teachers announced a new PR campaign: “Learning is more than a test score.” The new message piggybacks onto a resolution that opposes what it called “the growing fixation on high-stakes testing” passed earlier this year at the AFT’s annual convention.
If Scott is a hero to one side, he’s something entirely different to the other. Sandy Kress is a former Dallas ISD board president, senior adviser on education to Rick Perry and George W. Bush, and a paid consultant for Pearson, the company that designs the standardized tests used in Texas and many other states.
But Kress was a high-stakes testing advocate long before he got the Pearson job. He’s a vigorous supporter of the current Texas system. Saying he’s speaking only for himself, he dismisses Scott’s comments to the state board and to TASA as nothing more than “retail demagoguing.”
If the system was misunderstood or being misused at the local level, it was Scott’s job to keep those things from happening, he said.
Not ‘some grand plan’
Scott seems bemused at being viewed as either a standard-bearer or a lightning rod. He says he hadn’t exactly plotted out his broadsides over accountability. The questions came up, and he answered them.
“It wasn’t some grand plan,” he said.
When he announced in May that he’d be resigning, there were murmurs that he’d been nudged for speaking out against the system. Scott says it was more the other way around.
“I realized last Christmas there wasn’t much more I could do at TEA,” he said. “That was probably more a symptom of me getting ready to go. Here’s what I see on my way out the door.”
Within the relatively closed world of education officials, grousing about testing has gotten louder by the year. What made Scott’s an observation that made such a difference?
“Because of his position and the state he comes from, he has a lot of credibility,” Schaeffer said.
Texas has been a national leader in pushing test-based accountability since Ross Perot chaired a Select Committee on Education in the 1980s. As governor, George W. Bush threw his full support behind it — and as president he took the idea to Washington as part of No Child Left Behind. Under Perry, the state only increased its emphasis on tests.
And Scott has been anything but a critic of the program since he started working at TEA in 1994.
“I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life developing this system,” he said last week. “I believe in it.”
In fact, he was in charge of the agency when the Legislature imposed some of the most controversial testing measures. Scott now says that some of that is overreach.
Critics like Kress want to know where his voice was as the policies were being crafted.
“The 15 percent rule was deliberated while he was commissioner,” Kress said. “I never heard a peep of objection to it from him.”
Scott says his ideas evolved.
STAAR is born
But as Scott and his agency released information about the changes, he discovered there wasn’t much interest in the new curriculum standards.
“The only way to appease people was to release a whole practice test,” he said.
Teaching to the test rather than the curriculum had become the goal in too many places, he said. Too many schools were filling their calendars with “benchmark” exams, testing whether students were able to succeed on STAAR-like tests.
Both Scott and Kress agree that’s not remotely what was intended.
Scott said he and his agency did what they could to redirect attention by teachers and school officials. Kress said that Scott himself should have been more a more visible advocate, barnstorming the state and speaking forcefully about the value in using the system properly.
Kress and Scott sharply diverge about the limits of testing.
For instance, people unfamiliar with the system might assume passing rates for STAAR or TAKS simply represent an objective measure of competency. Not so much, Scott said.
“I’m the guy who set the passing standards for five years,” he said.
Yes, they were supposed to indicate something about competency. But he also tried to set them low enough to not overly discourage students and schools, yet high enough to create an incentive to work harder. And he tried to raise the bar a bit each year.
None of that subjectivity was visible either in the scores sent home to parents or in the accountability standards for schools and districts that depended almost entirely on the passing rates.
And then there are the unavoidable flaws in the tests themselves, Scott said.
“The most fundamental question facing the state right now is ‘Is the test infallible?’” he said.
Scott’s answer: It’s not. And that’s a problem.
“When you use it for so many high-stake things, and you know it’s fallible,” he said, “you know there are risks.”
-----
WHAT HE SAID: Former TEA chief’s take on testing
•“You’ve reached a point now of having this one thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of the vampire, so to speak. All you have to do is kill that, and you’ve killed a whole lot of things.”
•“I’ve been a proponent of standardized testing, for some things, and I want to continue to use it, for some things. But we have overemphasized it, and even if we haven’t overemphasized it specifically at the state level, the perception out there is that it is the end-all, be-all….”
• “The assessment and accountability regime has become not only a cottage industry but a military-industrial complex.”
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