Texas Education Review. SPECIAL ISSUE: TEXAS 87TH LEGISLATURE on High-Stakes Testing

I am so very proud of our University of Texas College of Education doctoral and masters students for this important special issue of the Texas Education Review (TER) that just came out. Congrats, as well, to the TER editorial board members, Alex Armonda, Lebon James, and Will Davies for their hard work on this special issue (see TER editorial board) focused on important work done by the Texas Center for Education Policy that weighed in on high-stakes testing during the 2021 87th session of the Texas State Legislature (TSL).

I, too, have some bragging rights here because three of the four pieces highlighted below reflects work done in my doctoral-level Ethnography Course that I taught in Fall 2020 that resulted in policy briefs and portfolios, making them actionable during the regular session that commenced in January, 2021.

The assignment was on what we in the assessment world term, "authentic assessment." This means that instead of high-stakes, standardized tests, students take on real-world tasks that are of concern to them. Authentic assessment gets them to do research and apply what they have learned in real-world contexts where they can impact the direction that policy takes. 

Once the legislative session began in January, 2021, these, as well as other students taking my Spring, 2021, Policy Analysis Class, had varied opportunities like working in legislative offices, conducting bill analyses, drafting legislation, or assisting in the work of the Texas Education Legislative Equity Coalition. Several also got the chance to testify in legislative hearings. All of this fills my heart. 💗

Back to the Fall class. When I first asked them what problem we should take on as a class project, I suggested school re-opening policy as this was and continues to be a hot issue in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Several students who were working in the schools at the time expressed
their preference instead for us to focus on high-stakes testing, particularly for bilingual learners.

Given the Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath decision to go through with Spring testing despite the pandemic, the political-economy of this neoliberal agenda was also centered as a concern. Who profits from this testing system and to what end or ends?

"Okay," I said. "Let's do that," forcing me to change gears in the moment. In retrospect, I celebrate such beautiful alignment in focusing conceptually on high-stakes testing and its alternative, authentic assessment, in a class where this humanistic, social justice, intellectual approach could simultaneously get demonstrated, experienced in the flesh.

It was great observing all the students' work, from this semester and last, contributing in their own ways while generating the materials they needed for their policy briefs and portfolios on a range of policy topics in education. 

What you see below are only the published policy briefs generated from the Fall ethnography class. The ethnographic component consisted of what students observed throughout the semester together with the data that they collected, combined with in-depth readings and discussions of books on ethnographic methods. Students' observations and ethnographic memos (or thematic summaries) from the many public meetings they attended found their way into their portfolios that they submitted at the end of the semester. 

Paradoxically, because everything was remote due to the pandemic, our class concluded that we had significant access to policy discussions that in more normal times would have been more limited due to complicated schedules and travel costs associated with getting to and from places on time. Austin is not the easiest city to navigate and getting to San Antonio, Houston, or Dallas meetings can be a hike.

The students shared how working remotely expedited a sense of community and belonging that proved vital to their well-being, particularly for those living alone in their apartments throughout the pandemic. Zoom fatigue and the lack of human touch notwithstanding, there were clear benefits in this isolating context to working remotely. 

The Fall class defended their policy briefs toward the end of the semester before a statewide committee of advocates representing different organizations, including Texas AFT, Texas LULAC, Every Texan, Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA), and member-affiliates of the Texas Education Legislative Equity Coalition. 

I must confess that in the moment, it was a bit nerve-wracking as one cannot get more high-stakes than having to defend one's work before an expert audience. Of course, the students' performed excellently. From an authentic assessment perspective, they pretty much had to... I'm so proud of them.

And that is the point about authentic assessment. 

It's a process. It's formative. It's holistic. It's a relationship that a teacher has with their students.

We seriously need to hit the pause button on mental testing and re-think the idea of what high-stakes assessment (not "testing") can and should be. I hope I've convinced you on just how awesome it could be if this is what school were about, period. 

After all, it's what motivates our youth who, like ourselves, see a world spinning out of control. They become part of the solution in that very instance when they are called upon to put their own learning at the service of social justice. In fact, this motivates and inspires. Instead of racist, intimidating, high-stress, high-stakes standardized testing, let's give them meaningful, real-world tasks that they have to defend before a stakeholder audience. 

There's a growing body of literature on this that you yourself can learn about and read, beginning with the New York Performance Standards Consortium Schools.

Did we in this class make a difference? 

Absolutely. Bills were written, testimonies delivered, the work of a coalition was strengthened, a beautiful sense of community, both inside and outside of class, was established. Some students even secured meaningful jobs or internships in the process. 

Further, as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "The the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  It's an honor and a privilege to be part of that bending of the arc such that standing up to injustice—with the full weight of our intellect and integrity as members of a righteous community—is triumphal in itself.

Thanks to my teaching assistant Lauren Shook, for her much-needed and highly valued assistance throughout. Thanks to all our students for their hard work, guts, and intellect. Your love, caring, and compassion for Texas' children and youth was palpable and restorative.

Finally, many thanks to the advocacy community for embracing our students. Experiences like these leave indelible marks on their psyches and souls that last a lifetime. These are indeed the hallmarks of a just and virtuous education.  

As William Butler Yeats once said, "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire."

Do read their well-conceived and well-written pieces.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

*Thanks to the Texas Education Review for publishing my comments in this special issue, as well! 😊

SPRING 2021: VOLUME 9, ISSUE 2

FULL ISSUE

ARTICLES

Out of the Classroom and Less Likely to Graduate: The Relationship Between Exclusionary Discipline and Four-Year Graduation Rates in Texas

KRISTIAN LENDERMAN, University of Houston

JACQUELINE HAWKINS, University of Houston

SPECIAL ISSUE: TEXAS 87TH LEGISLATURE

Establishing Equity: Aligning Dual Language Bilingual Education to HB3 Sec. 11.185 Texas Early Childhood Literacy & Mathematics Proficiency Plans

PATRICIA NÚÑEZ PORRAS, The University of Texas at Austin

JULIA HERNÁNDEZ , The University of Texas at Austin

The Testing Industrial Complex: Texas and Beyond

MARÍA DEL CARMEN UNDA, The University of Texas at Austin

LIZETH LIZÁRRAGA-DUEÑAS, The University of Texas at Austin

Shooting for the STAAR: An Authentic Assessment Pilot Proposal to Replace Inequitable High-Stakes Accountability

ALEJANDRO MADRIGAL III, The University of Texas at Austin

ELIZA EPSTEIN, The University of Texas at Austin

LULAC Education Leaders Share Their Vision With Education Secretary Cardona

Friends:

LULAC is getting a HUGE response to this press release. 

Please share widely.

Note at the bottom the suggestion where we call for a moratorium on high-stakes testing and call for a system based on authentic, performance-based assessment. ☺

-AngelaValenzuela

LULAC Education Leaders Share Their Vision With Education Secretary Cardona

Nation’s Oldest and Largest Latino Civil Rights Organization Welcomes a New Approach to Advance Learning in America

Washington, DC - Education leaders of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) today issued a combined statement highlighting their objectives and goals which they are forwarding to newly confirmed Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona.

Caroline Sanchez Crozier - LULAC National Education Chair

“On behalf of the LULAC National Education Committee, we extend our sincere felicidades on his appointment as Education Secretary. We live in an amazing time of change and opportunity, and we take great pride in your leadership and look forward to advancing with you the equitable success of all Latino students. Dr. Miguel Cardona represents an opportunity to rewrite the history of English-language learners’ underachievement as one of systemic oversights and failures inaugurating a fresh vision together with fundamental changes that his appointment will bring to vulnerable and marginalized communities across the country.

Also, there is the promise of a new narrative of success for native language students and the encouragement of preserving their foundational language and culture that should be valued in a country of multilingual and multicultural populations. With this appointment, LULAC sees an opportunity to address and work on persistent challenges that have plagued our educational systems and students. The National Education Committee stands with Commissioner Dr. Cardona in moving forward an agenda of equity, leadership, and innovation for Latinos.”

Dr. Angela Valenzuela - LULAC Higher Education Task Force Co-Chair

“This is an opportunity to reinstate the Title VII Graduate Fellowship program to prepare masters and doctoral students’ preparation for careers in bilingual and dual language education programs and the profession. As importantly, we must affirm the need for Ethnic Studies by providing support and funding to LEAs and IHEs for both the development of curriculum, undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation and teacher professional development. My final ask of Secretary Cardona as a major priority is to incentivize the establishment of Grow-Your-Own Latina/o educator pathways into the teaching profession.”

Dr. Theresa Montaño - LULAC Higher Education Task Force Co-Chair

“We look forward to working with Secretary Cardona on important education-related initiatives. These include safe, sane and healthy reopening of schools, colleges, and universities. Latinx students, teachers, and faculty should be assured socially distanced classrooms and offices, access to vaccines and continued technological support.

Also, we call for reducing and/or eradicating student debt, freezing tuition hikes, securing affordable housing, and ending student food insecurity as core components of a quality higher educational experience for Latinos. Equally vital and long overdue is increased funding for Hispanic Serving Institutions, particularly for Latinx faculty hiring, retention, and salary equity. Finally, we urge Secretary Cardona to place a moratorium on high-stakes testing for Latinx students PK-university and instead, substitute this with authentic, performance-based models for assessing student learning. This is a far more culturally-equitable approach that treats Latinx students fairly and affirms their life experiences.”

# # #

About LULAC

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities. Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 1,000 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.LULAC.org.

Millions of ELL Students Face Prospect of In-Person, Federal Testing During COVID-19

WIDA needs to take the loss here as it's unconscionable to subject this or any population at risk in the height of a pandemic that further happens to disproportionately impact the families of this very population.  What little useful information it may provide does not justify the risk. 

As per my previous post, what we really need is not a testing system that amounts to little more than checking a box off, but we need instead an assessment system that is authentic, formative and performance-based. Can one only begin to imagine the kind of "test-based curriculum" to which these children are getting exposed right now in order to prepare them for this test? How uninspiring and wrongheaded. 

Furthermore, let's be done with census testing altogether. We've done this for much too long in our country. You don't need a blood transfusion to know the health of the body; you only need a sample and even the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a matrix-sample test, that has long been considered the nation's report card—has been canceled this spring because it's too dangerous to administer, as follows:

“We are in full agreement with the decision by the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics to cease preparation for the NAEP 2021 assessments in reading and mathematics for grades 4 and 8, scheduled to start in January 2021, and to reschedule the assessment to 2022.

However in the middle of a pandemic, where people are sick and dying in staggering numbers, this is arguably irresponsible and discriminatory. Opting out is what I would do if my child were subjected to this. There's no penalty to the children for this anyway in the states that are doing this.

-Angela Valenzuela

#OptOut

Millions of ELL Students Face Prospect of In-Person, Federal Testing During COVID-19

In this Thursday, May 23, 2013 photo, students line up for recess at Jay W. Jeffers Elementary School in Las Vegas. More than 80 percent of the school's incoming kindergartners don’t speak English.

Julie Jacobson/AP

By Corey Mitchell — December 22, 2020 | Corrected: December 28, 2020

Corrected: An earlier version of this article incorrectly included Florida among the states that develop and administer their own English-proficiency exams. Florida uses the ACCESS exam, which is developed by WIDA, one of the nation’s largest ELL testing vendors.

The disruption to in-school learning caused by the global pandemic this year has hit the nation’s 5 million English-language learners especially hard.

These students often lack access to dependable internet and technology, have non-English-speaking parents who struggle to support their remote learning, and have lost crucial access to teachers and classmates who have in prior years helped them develop their language skills.

Now, millions face yet another predicament: being asked to return to schools to take federally required English-language-proficiency exams amid the national surge in coronavirus cases.

That’s because WIDA, one of the nation’s largest ELL testing vendors, has concerns about the validity of a take-home test and students’ access to technology and the internet.

“My job as a test director, is to say that the score you get from our assessment means the same thing that it meant last year, that gives you the same information so that you can make a choice and decision about a student’s proficiency,” said H. Gary Cook, the senior director of assessment for WIDA. “I have a really hard time understanding how we can get a score that’s comparable to the score that’s not remote.”

Advocates in at least two states, Colorado and Florida, say it is unfair and potentially dangerous to ask English-learners—most of whom are Latino, Asian, and Black—to return to school buildings while COVID-19 cases sweep through their communities.

In both states, groups have urged the state education commissioners to postpone the start of testing season, which begins next month, until things are safe or make the test voluntary for families who are not yet comfortable with their children returning to school. National organizations for English-learner educators are also urging states to postpone or aggressively seek testing waivers.

The reliance on in-person testing is “far too risky and potentially life threatening” and “raises serious discrimination concerns,” Jorge Garcia, the chairman and chief executive officer of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education, wrote this month in a letter to Colorado state Education Commissioner Katy Anthes.

Despite the requests, the Colorado and Florida departments of education indicated this week they will proceed with testing. States run the risk of losing federal funding if they fail to enforce federal standardized testing requirements.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states must use data from the exams to determine whether students are English proficient. Not offering the tests could hold back some students who are ready to exit English-learner status.

The push to delay or forego the English-proficiency testing is part of the larger debate this year over federal standardized testing requirements during the pandemic. Outgoing U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has declined to waive testing requirements for the 2020-21 school year after granting states a reprieve in the spring as schools shut down nationwide.

Taking Out the Guesswork

The English-proficiency exams are required by state and federal law for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The scores indicate what level of English proficiency a student has reached and helps determine if students should stop receiving English-learner support services.

Determining whether ELL students still need support and when they no longer require it marks a critical juncture in their academic careers. Students who are deemed English proficient and pulled out of support services before they are ready can end up struggling in school. Taking longer to reclassifying students as English proficient could slow their academic growth and limit their access to higher-level courses that can prepare them for college and career opportunities.

States use the English-proficiency tests to take some of the guesswork out of the process.

Both states belong to the WIDA consortium, the organization that oversees the ACCESS for ELLs tests, which measure students’ English-proficiency in four domains—listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

WIDA, which provides the ACCESS tests to 36 states, several United States territories, and agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education decided in September not to offer a remote option for the test. Altogether, the consortium tests 2.1 million students annually, slightly more than 40 percent of the nation’s English-learner enrollment.

The tests will not have remote options this year because WIDA and its member states were not confident that all students would be able to take the test in its current format, and that students would have equal access to technology at home to complete the exam, said Cook.

There were also concerns that English-learner students’ parents, some of whom are not proficient English speakers themselves, would be unable to help with setting up and proctoring the test, said Jonathan Gibson, the director of consortium and state relations department at WIDA.

For younger students, a remote test would have been especially difficult to carry out: the entire test for kindergarten students is paper-only and the writing test is paper-only for students in 1st through 3rd grade.

TESOL International Association, an organization for teachers who specialize in working with English-learners, has also raised questions about the validity of tests given this year, especially the speaking portions: with students wearing masks in class, it could be more difficult for teachers to hear and understand what students are saying.

Advocates in Colorado argued that the test results may yield little useful information, given the amount of time that many English-learners have been away from in-person schooling.

The English Language Proficiency Assessment for the 21st Century (ELPA21) consortium, which includes eight states, also will not offer a remote option for its English-proficiency test.

The consortium determined that remote testing was not a constructive use of “time given the pandemic circumstances,” Cathryn Still, the executive director of ELPA21, said in a statement provided to Education Week.

Advocates Push Officials to Tell Parents They Can Opt Out

While advocates in Colorado and Florida are pushing for a reprieve, many of the remaining states in the WIDA consortium will forge ahead with in-person testing, allowing for flexibility in the testing schedule by either delaying the start of testing or extending the period where students can take the exam. Testing has already begun in Montana and Department of Defense schools.

In response to concerns about health-and-safety protocols, WIDA developed guidelines on how to administer the ACCESS tests during the pandemic. While having data to gauge how students progressed or regressed is valuable, Cook acknowledged that requiring students to return to class does carry risks.

In Colorado and Florida, advocates are asking the states to communicate to parents that they can opt their children out of taking the test. While the state could face penalties for not offering the test, students cannot be punished for skipping the test.

Advocates asked in their letter to Florida state Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to inform parents that “those students who elect not to take the tests will not be disciplined, punished, or otherwise sanctioned for opting out of the tests.”

Illinois is among the states that pushed back the start of testing in response to community concerns. The state’s Board of Education this week announced plans to delay the opening of its spring assessment window, ensuring that no students will take a federally required assessment, including ACCESS, until mid-March at the earliest. In previous years, the state testing window for ACCESS typically ran from mid-January through mid-February.

California, home to about 1.1 million English-learners, will offer remote and in-person testing options for its annual English-proficiency exam, the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California, also known as ELPAC. Most of California’s 6 million public school students are still learning from home—and some school districts have not set a timeline to resume in-person instruction. More than 40 percent of public school students in the state speak a language other than English at home.

Like California, the states of Arizona, Texas, and New York develop and administer their own English-proficiency exams. Officials there did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Project-based learning and project-based assessments are the way to go together with other reforms, such a recruiting a diverse teacher workforce, structuring time in the day for  curriculum development, and better working  conditions, overall. 

Andrea Gabor points appropriately to the New York State Performance Standards Consortium as the way to go.  I've visited several of the schools in this network in New York City over the years.

They're great small schools where young people have much more autonomy than in most public schools where they can even provide direct input into the school curriculum through thematic units across the curriculum of their choosing.  Plus, they hardly administer high-stakes, standardized test (in New York, theirs is the Regents exam). 

This helps keep these schools interesting and relevant and children and families happy and satisfied because their children are learning real-world, meaningful tasks with assessments being a helpful, as opposed to punishing, component.

-Angela Valenzuela

Testing Craze Is Fading in U.S. Schools. Good. Here’s What’s Next.

New ways to measure student progress are gaining ground. Wind turbines, anyone?

By 

Andrea Gabor

July 29, 2019, 8:00 AM CDT

America’s decades-long infatuation with standardized testing is finally waning, and for good reasons. Despite years of training students to do better on tests, the performance of 17-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, has flatlined. At the same time, the focus on testing produced unintended consequences, including inattention to important educational priorities and growing teacher shortages.

That’s in part because test performance became a goal in many districts instead of a means to an end and, thus, a prime example of Campbell’s Law, which points to the corrupting influence of using a single measurement as a target, thus ensuring that “it ceases to be a good measure."

The federal “No Child Left Behind” initiative introduced by President George W. Bush imposed a battery of high-stakes testing mandates, which continued under President Barack Obama. If children failed to meet proficiency goals for math and English, schools faced closure, teachers were shamed and fired and children were held back. Consequently, many schools and districts focused on test prep, often sacrificing untested but important subjects like civics and neglecting the classroom give-and-take that nurtures critical thinking and creativity.

At the peak of testing mania in the 2014-2015 school year, the average U.S. student was taking 112 standardized tests in the course of a K-12 education, many of which were redundant or pointless.

Now states from Arizona to Wyoming are retreating from high-stakes testing. The announcement last month that New York’s education commissioner, a testing proponent, will resign in August, signals another reversal.

It might be easy to say good riddance, but schools still need ways to measure student progress. The accountability movement that pushed testing was a response to a genuine need to improve K-12 education. Since the 1983 publication of “A Nation at Risk,” a bipartisan report by a commission appointed by President Ronald Reagan, business leaders have warned that schools weren’t developing the knowledge workers modern industry needs, and progressive educators have criticized traditional factory-style schools for not fostering an engaged and informed citizenry.

So schools need to find new ways to show accountability advocates that test retrenchment won’t weaken standards, and this presents an opportunity to develop more robust assessments and better education.

The country’s best under-the-radar experiments are a useful guide. Chief among these is the New York State Performance Standards Consortium, a decades-old effort led by progressive educators and involving 38 high schools, which won exemptions from all standardized tests except English. Instead, students complete ambitious projects known as performance-based assessments — think mini theses with lots of research, writing and real-world projects in everything from social studies to physics, which students present to expert panels, including teachers (often from different schools) and community members.

Since launching in the 1990s, the consortium has racked up far higher graduation rates and college matriculation rates for its schools than New York’s traditional public schools.

The consortium prevailed even as New York became Exhibit A for the nation’s testing follies. New York adopted “Common Core-aligned” tests before the standards were completed, and introduced new tests almost every year — making it difficult to track student progress.

Testing excesses even prompted soul searching among leading accountability champions like Arne Duncan, who blogged while he was education secretary in 2014, “I believe testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools.”

New York is the latest state to rethink long-held education policies. At its July meeting, the state’s supervisory Board of Regents considered scrapping the subject-by-subject Regents exams — one of the oldest tests of its kind — as a high-school graduation requirement, and formed a commission to examine whether the tests improve “student achievement, graduation rates and college readiness.” Close to 20 percent of New York’s children sit out certain assessment tests at their parents’ discretion, one of the nation’s highest opt-out rates. MaryEllen Elia, the departing education commissioner, angered the Regents, who recently have been visiting consortium schools, by continuing to put schools with high opt-out rates on a watch list. 

In 2015, New Hampshire won a waiver under a federal pilot program that opened the door to alternative assessment programs, and is introducing performance-based projects like New York’s that are designed almost entirely by teachers.

Developing high-quality alternative assessments is time consuming and costly, and the federal pilot program offers no funding. But educators committed to the model say it’s worth it. At the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, a consortium school where nine in 10 students are members of minority groups and 70 percent are economically disadvantaged, one group of 11th graders completed a science assessment that involved a yearlong study of climate change and alternative energy sources. The students developed the physics- and earth science-related questions they wanted to answer and researched, wrote up and presented their findings. They also built wind turbines.

“It was the most rigorous academic work I have ever seen done in a high school setting,” wrote Lori Ungemah, a former New York City teacher who now teaches at a Community College.

One challenge is that project-based assessments would demand greater confidence in the ability of teachers and schools to judge their students’ progress, and would require striking a better balance between local autonomy and the kind of state and federal oversight that favors standardized curricula and testing. One way to encourage parents and citizens to trust local schools more might be to begin with networks of the schools most interested in project-based learning and let them serve as models, instead of trying to change the whole system all at once.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Andrea Gabor at Andrea.Gabor@baruch.cuny.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.net

THE TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IS HOLDING A HEARING ON K-12 STUDENT ASSESSMENT ON MAY 24, 2018

Dear Fellow Texans:

High-stakes testing is invalid and unfair.  This is different from assessment, a larger umbrella category the includes standardized testing.  There is no educational organization of any repute that supports the idea that high-stakes testing is valid and fair.  If you have the time, consider attending this hearing on May 24, 2018 either to be present in solidarity or to learn of alternatives.  They do exist.  It's painful to consider how severely our children have been harmed by this.  Let's stop harming children and consider not only more humane alternatives, but ones that encourage learning and student engagement.

Angela Valenzuela

THE TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING COMMITTEE: Public Education TIME & DATE: 10:00 AM, Thursday, May 24, 2018 PLACE: E2.028 CHAIR: Rep. Dan Huberty

The committee will meet to consider the following interim charges:  Examine research-based options for evaluating student achievement beyond standardized test scores, including adaptive and portfolio assessments. Examine the scope of the current Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)in grades with the state assessment, including the format, assessment calendar, and the limits of instructional days, if any. Determine if it is appropriate to limit TEKS to readiness standards that can be taught in less than the school year. Review current Student Success Initiative testing and make recommendations on its continuation or repeal. Review the ability of the state to waive standardized testing for students with significant cognitive disabilities.  Examine programs in public schools that have proven results meeting the needs of and improving student achievement for students with disabilities, with an emphasis on programs specializing in autism, dysgraphia, and dyslexia. Recommend ways to support and scale innovative programs for these students, including providing supplemental services, or incentivizing public-private partnerships or inter district and charter school collaborations. Monitor the implementation and funding for the pilot programs authorized in H.B. 21 (85R) and review the Texas Education Agency's compliance with S.B. 160 (85R), which prohibits special education student caps. Public testimony will be limited to three (3) minutes.

NOTICE OF ASSISTANCE AT PUBLIC MEETINGS Persons with disabilities who plan to attend this meeting and who may need assistance, such as a sign language interpreter, are requested to contact Stacey Nicchio at (512) 463-0850, 72 hours prior to the meeting so that appropriate arrangements can be made.

TCEP Policy Brief: High-Stakes Testing in Texas High Schools: The Case for Individual Graduation Committees and Authentic Assessment

Happy to share with you this Texas Center for Education Policy brief that is germane to a bill that is currently at play in the Texas State Legislature.  Senate Bill 463 is about Individual Graduation Committees (IGCs).  This brief explains how IGCs are good policy, most especially their implications for holistic, authentic assessment.  Proud of the great job our students did on this.

You may also link to this piece here.

Angela Valenzuela

Policy Brief

High-Stakes Testing in Texas High Schools: The Case for Individual Graduation Committees and Authentic Assessment

by

Catherine Hartman, Gregory Pulte, Kristina Gutierrez & Will Davies

Texas Center for Education Policy

The University of Texas at Austin

May 16, 2017

Executive Summary

High attrition and low high school graduation rates in Texas are a large and growing concern across the state.  Standardized tests, like the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), are a significant contribution to this problem.  This brief explores why high-stakes, standardized tests fail students and why Texas policy makers and educators should turn to authentic assessments instead, including project- and portfolio-based assessments, which are designed to serve the learning characteristics and needs of all students, notably those from minority and low socioeconomic groups.  Individual Graduation Committees (IGCs) represent an important opportunity for authentic assessment to occur within Texas high schools.  IGCs provide a much-needed alternative for educators to graduate students who do not pass EOC, or STAAR, exams.

 Background

To make the case for Individual Graduation Committees (IGCs) and authentic assessment, this brief first elaborates on the context of the state’s testing system known as the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR).  Accordingly, we demonstrate how STAAR testing does not meet students’ needs.  The following sections further elaborate the deleterious effects of STAAR testing on minority, low socioeconomic, and English language learner (ELL) populations.  Among the factors highlighted are high school attrition rates, the language-dependent natures of the tests, and other biases that lead minority populations to underperform.  Concerns grow out of a recent body of research on the prevalence of testing fatigue and anxiety, impacting students, parents, teachers, and legislators themselves.  Most positively, we maintain, that the move to IGCs in Texas meets up conceptually with best practices in education related to authentic assessment.

High School Graduation and Attrition Rates in Texas.  High, high school attrition rates are a pervasive issue in Texas. One out of every four students across the state fails to graduate, and 25 percent of students enrolled as high school freshmen in the 2012-2013 school year left school before graduating from a Texas public high school.  Attrition rates run high, as 102,610 left Texas high schools between the 2012-2013 and 2015-2016 school years.  Additionally, attrition rates for minority students are substantial.  Compared to White students, Black and Hispanic students are more than twice as likely to leave a Texas school prior to graduation (Intercultural Development Research Association [IDRA], 2016).  One of the factors that contributes to low completion rates and high levels of attrition is standardized testing, including the STAAR (see Valenzuela, 2004, who makes a cogent argument in the context of Texas’ earlier high-stakes, standardized test, the Texas Assessment for Knowledge and Skills [TAKS]; also see McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000).

Part of the problem demonstrated with standardized testing is that the test assumes a one-size-fits-all approach, relying on the assumption that all students come to school with the same abilities and opportunities to learn to perform equally well on the test. The reality is that teachers face a huge variation in student abilities, backgrounds, cultures, and characteristics across a single classroom (Moores, 2013).  Test results, like those from the STAAR, are often invalid and unreliable and underestimate the academic attainment of the test taker, especially among disabled and English language learner students (ELLs) (Cook, Gerber, & Semmel, 1997; Moores, 2013; Wright, 2006). 

Aside from linguistic bias against ELLs who are tasked to test in a language that they do not master, standardized testing is culturally biased because tests reflect the culture of those who designed the test, meaning whites from middle- to upper-socioeconomic statuses (Phillips, 2006).  Hence, students who are affluent and members of the majority will more easily understand standardized tests and, as a result, achieve higher scores on them than students who are members of minority and low socioeconomic groups.  These tests do not necessarily reflect students’ actual intellectual abilities (Phillips, 2006).  Students’ language proficiency in the testing language, as mentioned, also plays a substantial role in student performance.  Standardized tests are written in English, which results in non-English proficient students, who are otherwise capable, high-level students, underperforming on them due to their language-dependent nature (Phillips, 2006).

Testing Fatigue.  Testing fatigue is another factor that needs to be considered in the discussion of why standardized tests are an unfit option for Texas students.  A tremendous amount of testing fatigue exists for students subjected to Texas’ system of assessment and accountability.  Fatigue, stress, and aversion to tests that students experience is damaging to the quality of student education (Segool, Carlson, Goforth, Von Der Embse, & Barterian, 2013).  Standardized testing provokes fear and frustration among students (Segool, Carlson, Goforth, Von Der Embse, & Barterian, 2013).   

Research suggests that high-stakes standardized tests, such as those required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), significantly impact student anxiety levels (Segool et al., 2013).  Studies also indicate that students who suffer testing anxiety perform poorly on standardized tests (Segool et al., 2013).  Additionally, teachers report that students experience significantly more test anxiety when taking an NCLB assessment than on a teacher designed classroom assessment (Segool et al., 2013).  Reflective of this testing anxiety are the reports of students crying or vomiting when taking these tests (Chasmar, 2013).  Loss of sleep and illnesses are common during testing season, as well as academic disengagement (Croft, Roberts, & Stenhouse, 2016). 

Texas parents also experience testing fatigue.  According to FairTest, a national center that promotes fairness and validity in testing, hundreds of thousands of parents nationally are opting their children out of standardized testing (FairTest, 2017).  In Texas, the number of subscribers to the Texas Parents Opt Out of State Tests is well beyond 37 thousand people, indicating that a large proportion of Texans are tired of standardized tests like STAAR.  In addition to opting out, parents have successfully banded together against state standardized testing.  Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA) successfully lobbied to eliminate the inclusion of End-of-Course (EOC) exam scores in final course grades of graduating students (TAMSA, 2014).  Additionally, TAMSA fought for the considerable reduction of standardized testing from 15 EOC exams to five (TAMSA, 2014).

The stakes attached to testing narrows the curriculum to subjects only tested on the standardized test.  Teacher skill sets are constrained by the testing structure that limits them to only consider students’ content and skills development, thusly ignoring the needs of the whole child and stunting child development (Barrier-Ferreira, 2008).  Research indicates that teachers find that mandated standardized testing contradicts many sound and holistic educational practices that promote growth beyond rote memorization (Abrams, Pedulla, & Madaus, 2003).     

Standardized testing is particularly burdensome in bilingual classrooms during test time, during which teachers face pressures to only teach tested subjects (Palmer & Virginia, 2011).  Teachers are placed at a disadvantage when standardized testing does not allow for the knowledge and experiences that students bring to the classroom (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000), nor does it reflect the social, economic, and emotional challenges that inhibit student test performance (Phillips, 2006).  Additionally, standardized testing damages teacher morale through excessive test preparation that limits the range of student educational experience (McNeil, 2000; McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000) and minimizes the skill set of teachers (Abrams, Pedulla, & Madaus, 2003).  It becomes difficult to imagine that teachers perform optimally when faced with increased stress and threats to their livelihood and careers based upon how students perform. The stress associated with test preparation and performance inhibits teacher productivity (Phillips, 2006).  The difficulties inherent in producing high student test scores on state mandated tests contribute to teacher dissatisfaction that negatively impacts morale (Moore, 2012). Testing fatigue becomes intense for teachers to the degree that it drives experienced educators out of the profession (Thibodeaux, Labat, Lee, & Labat, 2015).

Texas Legislators Recognize Standardized Testing Fatigue.  Several Texas legislators recognize the deep structural flaws in the accountability system and that Texans are burned out by standardized testing.  These legislators have sought in recent years to recommend assessment alternatives to high-stakes testing.  After considerable lobbying from Texas parents and TAMSA, former House Public Education Committee Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock introduced legislation that reduced the number of EOC exams from 15 to 5.  Additionally, Senator Kel Seliger chaired a committee that in 2016 released a report suggesting alternatives to high-stakes, standardized testing (Texas Commission on Next Generation Assessments and Accountability, 2016). 

Additionally, the A-F grading system, which was passed in the 84^th Texas Legislative session, has already been denounced by legislators in the 85^th legislative session.  House Public Education Committee Chairman Dan Huberty introduced House Bill 22, a bill that overhauls how the state assigns letter grades to public schools in Texas by placing less emphasis on assessment tests (Alfaro, 2017).  Outrage over the A-F grading spurred House Representative to file a bill that would repeal A-F grading entirely (Ayala & Hacker, 2017).

Long a subject that legislators were unwilling to negotiate vis-à-vis other demands for funding, the costs of standardized testing is now coming into question.  In March 2017, House Bill 1336 was heard.  This bill would assess the costs of standardized testing to the state of Texas but also to the school districts and teachers charged with implementing the test.  The efforts of parents and legislators reflect testing fatigue.  Standardized testing is structured in a way that fails to provide a system that is equitable for students.  It is also not embraced by many, if not most, parents, teachers, or legislators.

Why We Need Authentic Assessment.  American classrooms are becoming more diverse.  Unless teachers account for students’ culture, learning styles, background, and experiences within their classrooms, the “achievement gap” will never be closed (DeCastro-Ambrosetti & Cho, 2005).  High-stakes testing has been proven ineffective, particularly within minority populations.  In short, culturally relevant, authentic assessments are an effective alternative to high-stakes, standardized testing (Gipps, 1999; Heritage, 2010).

NCLB has seen a rise in the political interest within communities to ensure that schools meet the need of minority populations, primarily students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools (Durden, 2008). Latina/o students in low-income schools are often faced with inequitable resources, which, affect their test scores (Rodriguez & Arellano, 2016). Educational systems often give the illusion of equality in terms of access to resources and student performance, but upon closer examination, minority students often receive a second-class education compared to non-minority students; inequalities within the system leave minority students destined for educational failure (Durden, 2008).

Education must shift away from rote learning models and high-stakes, standardized testing and evolve toward a model that allows for development of students’ creativity and problem-solving skills (Litchfiled & Dempsey, 2015).  Extensive research has shown that culturally relevant teaching (CRT) has positive effects on minority student populations. If done effectively, CRT can provide students with opportunities for developing critical competence.  CRT also nurtures students’ sociopolitical and critical consciousness (May, 2010). Schools must move towards CRT to reach equity in teaching all students.

Additionally, authentic assessments have been proven to be effective measures to use in order to meet the needs of all learners and to incorporate elements of CRT. Standardized tests only demonstrate students’ abilities to recognize and recall information; authentic assessments, like portfolios and project-based learning assignments, require students to be effective performers with acquired knowledge (DeCastro-Ambrosetti & Cho, 2005).  These assessments provide students the opportunity to engage with applicable real-world activities in which they apply skills that they have previously learned in order to demonstrate their learning.  Teachers may use rubrics, which are shared with the students, as a way to assess students’ learning; rubrics also provide clear goals and objectives, ensuring that students have a clear vision of teachers' expectations while ensuring a high level of rigor.  Additionally, alternative assessments provide teachers with options to engage in differentiated learning based on students’ preferences and learning styles, therefore meeting the unique needs of all students (DeCastro-Ambrosetti & Cho, 2005).

The Need for IGCs.  As previously discussed, portfolio and project-based, student assessments provide a desirable and more effective alternative to standardized testing.  One way that authentic assessment can be introduced into Texas high schools is through Individual Graduation Committees (IGCs).  IGCs serve as a way to increase high school completion rates by providing students with an alternate way to complete high school course requirements and graduate.  The concept of IGCs is not a revolutionary idea.  For more than 100 years Texas has graduated high school students based on student performance, and students have been certified as ready to graduate by local public school teachers, principals, and school districts without testing.  As previously discussed, standardized testing can be unreliable and a poor way of measuring what learning takes place in the classroom (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000; Ravitch, 2013; Valenzuela, 2004)It is time for Texas to move away from a one-size-fits-all testing program to an accountability system that truly measures student growth and teacher productivity: authentic assessment.  Accountability systems should be locally designed, culturally relevant, and authentically reflect student experiences.  IGCs are a positive step in this direction and can increase graduation rates while keeping young Texans from falling through the cracks within the educational system.

Texas high school students enrolled in grades 11 or 12 who have taken and failed an EOC exam for no more than two courses can be candidates for IGCs.  State-required EOCs can serve as a major barrier for students attempting to complete high school.  Data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reveal that during the 2014-2015 school year, most students who completed IGCs failed the English II and U.S. History EOCs, which are not required by the federal government.  Students who failed these exams comprise 83 percent of the IGC graduate population.  Nearly 6,000 IGC graduates failed at least one EOC during the 2014-2015 school year.  Of those students, 63 percent of IGC graduates failed only one exam; thirty-four percent of IGC graduates failed two EOCs, and nearly 3 percent failed three or more EOCs.  Of those students that failed one EOC, most failed either the English II or U.S. History EOC: nearly 39 percent failed English II only, and nearly 14 percent failed U.S. History only.  Of IGC graduates that failed two EOCs, nearly 7 percent failed both English II and U.S. History (TEA, 2015-a).

At just 2 percent during the 2014-2015 academic year, IGC graduates comprised a small percentage of the entire population of Texas high school graduates.  IGCs were therefore created for 12,077 students in Texas.  From that group, approximately 6,279 students (52 percent) were recommended by their committees for graduation (IDRA, 2016; see Appendix A).  Comparing school districts across the state, the percentage of IGC graduates for the 2014-2015 school year ranged from 0.6 percent to 4.3 percent (TEA, 2015-a). Minority students, including Black and Latino students, and economically disadvantaged students benefit greatly from IGCs.  

Black students comprised 18 percent of IGC graduates during the 2014-2015 school year with a total of 1,121 IGC graduates out of 39,690 total Black graduates.  The overall Texas high school graduation rate for Black students is 13 percent.  For Latino students, Latinos made-up 68 percent of IGC graduates in contrast to their 48 percent total of all high school graduates in Texas that year.  Seventy-four percent of IGC graduates were identified as economically disadvantaged while comprising only 47 percent of the total number of high school graduates in Texas (TEA, 2015-a).

IGCs allow flexibility for certain populations of students, like English Language Learners (ELLs).  ELLs who fail the English I EOC are permitted to pursue an IGC as an alternative plan to graduation, so long as the student takes all other required EOCs but fails one additional test.  ELLs are also permitted to pursue IGCs if they pass the English I EOC but fail two other EOCs (TEA, 2015-b).

IGCs are comprised of a variety of individuals who assess students’ performance.  These committees are comprised of a student’s principal or their designee; the teacher who taught the course in which the student failed the EOC; the department chair or lead teacher supervising the course; and the student’s parent, guardian, or advocate if the student is under 18 years of age (students aged 18 years or older can represent themselves) (TEA, 2015-b).  Members of a student’s IGC determine whether a student has demonstrated proficiency in course content on the basis of alternative measures.  IGCs therefore grant autonomy to professional educators in decision making with respect to student learning.  Most importantly, IGCs are a form of authentic assessment: Requirements for IGCs could include a project related to course content or a portfolio of work samples related to the course subject matter (TEA, 2015-b).  Other factors include the following: the student’s grade; the student’s EOC scores: the amount of remediation courses the student has completed; the student’s completion of dual enrollment, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses; the student’s college-level, examination program score; the student’s SAT or ACT score; and other factors related to the student’s preparedness for postsecondary education (TEA, 2015-b).

Policy Recommendation

If we trust our educators with our children, we must similarly trust educators to assess our students on the basis of well-known, and subscribed to, best practices like authentic assessment. IGCs provide the policy space for educators to measure student growth holistically.  Moreover, they represent an opportunity for change within the context of an arguably poor assessment and accountability system in Texas about which even legislators have grown weary.  These committees afford marginalized students chances to complete school in an alternate format that offers a more authentic and reliable alternative to standardized, high-stakes testing.  Without IGCs, Texas will unnecessarily fail large numbers of minority students, including Blacks, Latina/os, and ELLs, as these students will be forced to adapt to the harmful confines of high-stakes testing, a system that fails to prioritize their needs, characteristics, and potentialities.

Appendix A.

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