In my previous post this morning, I touch on HB 4545 that in Section 48.1102 seeks to implement outcomes-based funding. I so appreciate Dr. Theresa Treviño's April 6, 2021 testimony on this which explains exactly why we should not go in this direction as a state.
If only these legislators would pay attention to the research on high-stakes testing, and listen to parents, educators and child psychologists like Dr. Theresa Treviño. In the meantime, we as a public need to call whoever represents us in the legislature to register our concerns.
Thanks to Dr. Treviño for sharing her testimony with me. And thanks to TAMSA for its consistent advocacy against high-stakes testing in the Texas State Legislature.
-Angela Valenzuela
Testimony HB 4545 April 6, 2021
Theresa Treviño, TAMSA: Against HB 4545
Chairman Dutton, members of the House Public Education Committee:
TAMSA greatly appreciates your hard work to help students, especially in this unusual pandemic school year.
Specifically, TAMSA has tracked the state’s NAEP scores for many years. In 2011, a drop in both the 4th and 8th grade NAEP reading scores coincide with the reduction in funds to public education as a whole, a new STAAR testing system, the 83% reduction in the budget for the Student Success Initiative and the abolishment of reading academies. TAMSA believes this bill will help address some of these issues by providing accelerated instruction for students that need the resources to help them attain grade level expectation.
TAMSA is testifying against the bill because of Section 48.1102.
TAMSA strongly opposes any finance system based on performance on standardized testing.
Parents support reasonable assessments that are used as intended - to check where students are in their academic achievement, to aid instruction, and to highlight a student’s strengths and weaknesses. Standardized tests are being used to do a wide variety of things they were not designed to do. They are the basis and constitute almost all of our accountability system. They determine whether students will pass to the next grade or graduate from high school. They determine the “grade” a school and a school district get. Now, this section of the Texas Education Code would codify funding or further limiting funds based on these scores.
Here are just a few reasons why we oppose that plan:
1. These tests are not measuring what students know. They are designed to “sort”
students. If a test question is answered correctly or incorrectly by most students, it is thrown out because it limits that question’s ability to “sort.” We are forcing a curve on these tests rather than truly measuring what students have learned. For Texas to base “ratings” and funding on a misused assessment is a travesty.
2. The arbitrary setting of cut scores also complicates the issue. With the current
accountability system, the Commissioner will be setting higher cut scores to meet the new performance standards. The cut scores are made after the test is taken and the Commissioner has reviewed the results. This mechanism gives much power to the Commissioner to fund schools in an outcomes-based finance system.
3. Students and schools that struggle most on the state assessments are often those in greatest need of additional funding to compensate for students from families living in poverty, learning a new language, or who have a learning difference. The added stresses of the pandemic only magnify the ones listed. Does this bill intend to fund a school less because it is in greater need?
As a child psychiatrist, I am intimately aware that children develop at their own pace. The three common cognitive measures psychologists assess to understand brain development are processing speed, working memory, and fluid reasoning. A child has no control over how quickly these measures are developed, just as a child cannot control how quickly they will reach their adult height. There is variation among the human population. We assert that tying funding to outcome measures such as test scores would make about as much sense as tying funding of education to height achievement by students.
However, just as one can eat a nutritious diet to achieve his or her full height, interventions do exist to help foster cognitive development from an early age.
Education practices that try to influence test scores, such as test prep, have limited effect on development of cognitive skills. Improvement on standardized tests scores instead reflect crystallized knowledge, knowledge that comes from prior learning or past experiences. 1 They do not reflect fluid knowledge, the ability to think and reason abstractly and solve problems. The nutritious diet that Texas students need is one of project-based learning and other hands-on relevant learning. That would be a far better investment than pouring money into standardized tests and funding schools based on how they do on these faulty tests.
A free and public education is a constitutional right for all Texans and the finance of it should not be subject to the whims of a test score or the setting of that score. TAMSA urges the Texas legislature to utilize the dollars allocated to education more prudently by limiting testing to the minimum level required under federal law and utilize more meaningful, age- appropriate tests, lessening the burdens surrounding testing such as high stakes, and resist tying funding to any metric utilizing standardized test scores.
1. Even when test scores go up, some cognitive abilities don’t, https://news.mit.edu/2013/even-when-test-scores-go-up-some- cognitive-abilities-dont-1211, April 5, 2021.
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