What We Refuse to Learn About Standardized Testing: Dr. Gerald Bracey and the 89th Legislature, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

What We Refuse to Learn About Standardized Testing: Dr. Gerald Bracey and the 89th Legislature

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

December 4, 2025

Learn more about Dr.
Bracey here.

When I revisited Gerald W. Bracey’s 2009 commentary in Educational Leadership, I was struck by how uncannily prophetic it feels in this political moment—especially in light of the sweeping changes enacted by the 89th Texas Legislature in 2025. Best known for his famous "Bracey Reports," his critique of the nation’s “test mania” reads not as a relic of a bygone era but as a warning flare we failed to heed, one whose consequences unfolded vividly during last session’s battles over testing, accountability, and privatization (see Valenzuela, 2025, for discussion).

While public school advocates secured incremental gains—slightly less disruptive testing policies, quicker turnaround on results, the elimination of a handful of assessments, and improved transparency—the underlying system remains largely intact. Schools are still judged primarily by test scores, accountability frameworks remain narrowly defined, and the deeper structural reforms that advocates have long demanded are once again deferred (Valenzuela, 2025). In this vacuum, the push for charterization and privatization only accelerates. 

Even so, there was a brief moment of meaningful political possibility: Texas lawmakers introduced proposals to overhaul or even eliminate the STAAR exam altogether. Raise Your Hand Texas, in particular, deserves a shout-out for leading the charge. For the first time in decades, a major statewide assessment regime came under serious legislative challenge, and the House even passed a bill to move the state away from STAAR. Yet despite the symbolic significance of this breakthrough, the effort stalled—revealing just how entrenched the test-based accountability system remains.

Bracey began with an observation so commonsensical that many policymakers today still stumble past it: no standardized test can ever know a child better than the teacher who sees that child every day. Yet over a fifty-year span, he noted, the United States managed to devolve from viewing tests as occasionally useful tools, to treating them as compulsory, and finally elevating them into the dominant—almost exclusive—measure of educational quality.

Even though tests like NAEP, PISA, TIMSS, or STAAR were never designed to evaluate teaching, curriculum, or the complex, relational work of schooling, policymakers have repeatedly misappropriated them for exactly those purposes. The result, Bracey argued, has been a national preoccupation with numerical indicators that flatten the human reality of learning, obscure the deeper conditions shaping students’ educational lives, and induce undue stress on teachers and the teaching profession.

That critique feels especially urgent in Texas today. This year, the Legislature passed a statewide voucher program that redirects public funds into private schools, one that rests on the long-standing assumption that public schools are failing (Edison, 2025). This assumption gets reinforced year after year through simplistic interpretations of test scores. 

These debates echo Bracey’s core argument: when policy decisions hinge on flawed measures, those decisions inevitably warp the system they intend to improve. Vouchers, sold as a remedy for supposedly failing schools, rely on the very test-based narratives Bracey spent a lifetime challenging. The claim that low standardized test scores reflect poor teaching ignores the deep structural factors shaping learning in Texas—poverty, segregation, underfunding, and what we are by now discovering as the soaring costs (or "price") of privatization. 

Yet these structural realities rarely appear in the public conversation. Instead, test scores are brandished as evidence that public schools are beyond repair, clearing the political path for vouchers, school district takeovers, and the redirection of taxpayer dollars into private hands.

The fight over STAAR reveals a similar contradiction. Legislators across the spectrum have acknowledged that STAAR tells parents little about what their children actually know and does nothing to inform day-to-day instruction. These critiques echo Bracey almost word-for-word. Still, unless Texas reimagines assessment from the ground up—beginning with teaching rather than measurement—any replacement risks replicating the same distortions. Bracey insisted that the best assessments are those built by teachers and anchored in teacher-made curricula, not imposed from above. 

Bracey also challenged the persistent belief that national or international test scores determine economic success. He reminded readers that Japan continued to dominate global assessments even as its economy faltered, and that countries like Iceland maintained high scores while facing economic collapse. 

The notion that bubbling in answers on a fourth- or eighth-grade exam shapes global competitiveness is, to use Bracey’s word, “easily refuted.” Yet Texas, like much of the nation, continues to tie student outcomes to broader narratives about economic health and workforce readiness, despite overwhelming evidence that economic forces are far larger than any test score.

Bracey’s insistence on returning to the human, relational work of teaching feels especially vital. Public schools are not failing; they are absorbing the accumulated burdens of inequality, political interference, and relentless underfunding—burdens that privatization schemes will only intensify. Vouchers will not solve the challenges facing Texas students. Nor will another standardized test, no matter how politically appealing.

Bracey’s enduring message is that education is not a number. It is not a rank, a percentile, or a scaled score. It is the web of relationships, communities, and possibilities that unfold when schools are supported rather than scapegoated. If Texas is serious about creating a stronger and more equitable education system, then we must move beyond the illusions spun by test scores and invest once again in teachers, teacher-made curriculum, and public schools as public goods.

In this critical moment, Bracey’s voice reminds us that the greatest danger is not that our tests show too little—but that we have come to believe they show too much.

Reference

Bracey, G. W. (2009). Multiple measures. Educational Leadership, 67(3), 32–37.

Edison, J. (2025, May 3). Private school vouchers are now law in Texas. Here’s how they will work. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/05/03/texas-school-vouchers-greg-abbott-signs/

Valenzuela, A. (2025, September 15). Accountability without justice: The continuing agenda to demonize K–12 public schools to set the stage for further privatization. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas, https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/09/accountability-without-justice.html 

Austin’s Children Deserve More Than A Test Score, by María del Carmen Unda & Raul Longoria

Congratulations to Dr. María del Carmen Unda and Raul Longoria for this powerful and timely piece in the Texas Observer. You’ve spoken a truth we have long known: test scores measure poverty far more reliably than they measure learning. 

So why punish the very children and communities already carrying the heaviest burdens—other than to continue filing the deep, bottomless pockets of the testing industrial complex?

Thank you for lifting up the voices of Austin’s students, families, and educators, and for reminding us that partnership—not punishment—is the path to real educational justice.

-Angela Valenzuela

Austin’s Children Deserve More Than A Test Score: The city's “F” schools overwhelmingly serve mostly low-income African-American and Hispanic children 

by María del Carmen Unda & Raul Longoria | September 24, 2025 | Texas Observer

Earlier this month, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced that 12 Austin-area schools with an “F” rating could be closed. For many families, this isn’t just a policy decision—it’s a direct threat to thousands of children’s educational stability and their communities’ future. 

The affected schools, all part of Austin Independent School District (AISD) received three consecutive failing grades under the state’s accountability system tied to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exam. TEA ordered the campuses to submit improvement plans by mid-November, which could involve major staffing changes or closures. The schools include Winn Montessori, Barrington, Dawson, Linder, Oak Springs, Pecan Springs, Sanchez, Widen, Wooldridge, Bedichek, Martin, and Paredes. As education researchers and community advocates, we know that school ratings often reveal more about poverty than about student learning. Decades of research show that standardized tests don’t measure intellect, creativity, or resilience. They measure zip codes. Numerous studies also highlight the direct ties between the testing industry and the prison industrial complex.

The problem is clear: Austin’s “F” schools overwhelmingly serve mostly low-income African-American and Hispanic children. Closing them on the basis of a flawed metric sends one message: Your community does not matter. 

SCHOOL BUSES IN AUSTIN (SHUTTERSTOCK)

More specifically, data from the Texas Academic Performance Report outlines that the twelve Austin ISD campuses at risk of closure or major intervention serve predominantly low-income African-American and Hispanic student populations (see a full chart here): At these campuses, between 78 percent and 97 percent of students are classified as economically disadvantaged, with most schools exceeding 90 percent. This strongly suggests that socioeconomic status, not instructional quality, is the most consistent predictor of school ratings. Research has long demonstrated that poverty shapes educational outcomes through limited access to resources, higher mobility rates, and increased exposure to stressors outside of school. The racial and ethnic composition of these same schools is between 57 percent and 91 percent Hispanic, while African-American enrollment ranges from 1.9 percent to nearly 39 percent. The clustering of F-rated schools in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods highlights the racialized nature of standardized testing outcomes, aligning with scholarship that critiques accountability systems as mechanisms that reproduce racial and class stratification. 

TEA’s accountability system disproportionately penalizes schools that serve economically disadvantaged students of color. All twelve schools identified for improvement or closure received failing (“F”) ratings, yet their student demographics highlight structural inequities rather than deficiencies in teaching or learning. 

Parents and teachers have long known what research confirms: Standardized testing is a poor predictor of success. It rewards test-taking strategies, not curiosity. It privileges students with resources, tutors, and stability at home, while penalizing those navigating poverty, language barriers, or trauma. 

Standardized testing has become a billion-dollar business. In 2013, TEA awarded Pearson a $462 million contract, followed by a $280 million contract with Education Testing Services. Nationally, 45 states spend a combined $669 million annually on testing contracts. These corporations reap massive profits, yet there is no evidence that more standardized testing improves student learning or narrows achievement gaps. What these tests do measure—reliably—is the ability of corporations to siphon resources away from Texas students, teachers, and communities.

Instead of doubling down on testing, TEA should reduce the number of exams and provide real support. Before closing schools, the agency must engage communities in honest conversations about what children need to thrive—whether it’s more bilingual staff, smaller classes, or after-school programs. 

Austin’s children deserve more than a test score. Closing schools will not build stronger communities. Listening to them will. TEA must choose partnership over punishment. 

A growing body of scholarship urges states to move beyond single test scores and adopt multiple measures of accountability. Such systems better capture the breadth of student learning by incorporating graduation rates, college and career readiness, access to qualified teachers, and school climate. Authentic assessments—such as project- and portfolio-based evaluations—offer viable alternatives that measure higher-order thinking and student creativity while remaining compliant with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which explicitly authorizes states to integrate portfolios, extended performance tasks, and adaptive assessments into their accountability systems. Despite this flexibility, Texas continues to rely almost exclusively on high-stakes standardized tests, ignoring well-established recommendations for more equitable, comprehensive approaches to evaluating student learning and school quality. 

At the state policy level, Texas must fundamentally rethink accountability. Policymakers, TEA, and school leaders should establish school-based teams to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data, ensuring that decisions are grounded in the realities of students, families, and educators. 

These efforts must prioritize schools with the greatest needs and the fewest resources, offering sustained support rather than punitive closures. Specifically, TEA should end costly assessment contracts with for-profit corporations and redirect those funds into classrooms, counseling services, culturally relevant curricula, and community engagement initiatives that actually strengthen schools. 

Dr. MARÍA DEL CARMEN UNDA is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas. Her research examines education policymaking and access in K–12 schools, with a focus on the experiences of students of color.

Raul ‘Neto’ Longoria is a candidate for the Texas State Board of Education, District 5. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and he has dedicated his career to Austin ISD as a bilingual special education teacher and parent support specialist.

Accountability Without Justice: The Continuing Agenda to Demonize K-12 Public Schools to Set the Stage for Further Privatization

Accountability Without Justice: The Continuing Agenda to Demonize K-12 Public Schools to Set the Stage for Further Privatization

by

Angela Valenzuela

September 15, 2025

Students attend a math and reading workshop at a STAAR summer camp held at Dobie Middle School on July 23, 2025. Texas lawmakers are again trying to revamp the state's standardized test during this year's  special session. Photo credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman for The Texas Tribune

After a grueling regular session and two special sessions, the Texas Legislature finally passed House Bill 8 (HB 8), birthing what they are calling the Student Success Tool—a revamped statewide assessment system set to roll out in the 2027–28 school year. The current STAAR contract remains in place through 2026–27, ensuring no immediate change. This is the story of progress that sidesteps transformation.

The new system shifts away from the single, high-stakes STAAR exam toward a series of three shorter tests administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the year in reading/language arts, math, science, and social studies, with a dedicated writing component. Only the end-of-year exam will count for accountability purposes (Houston Chronicle, 2025; Texas Tribune, 2025). The legislation also sets strict testing windows to reduce classroom disruption, limits the number of district benchmark exams, and guarantees parents access to results within 48 hours (Houston Chronicle, 2025; Good Reason Houston, 2025). It eliminates the English II end-of-course test, allows students to substitute qualifying scores from the SAT, ACT, AP, or IB in place of state tests, and mandates automated rescoring for certain writing responses (Raise Your Hand Texas, 2025). Additionally, the Texas Education Agency must define cut scores earlier and with greater transparency.

There are glimmers of relief here—less redundancy, faster feedback, and a nod toward flexibility. But they do not add up to the seismic shift advocates hoped for. HB 8 may reduce some burdens of testing, but it adds more high-stakes checkpoints and keeps the same fundamentally punitive system alive. As one major editorial put it, this is “not real reform—merely a rebranding of STAAR, expanded under a new label” (San Antonio Express-News, 2025). Educators continue to warn that the bill “overemphasizes high-stakes testing and punitive ratings… forcing teachers to teach to the test rather than focusing on critical thinking, creativity, and deeper learning” (Texas AFT, 2025). The so-called advisory committee on accountability, established under the bill, has also been criticized as underrepresentative and largely preordained to affirm TEA priorities, meaning community voices may not drive the process (Texas AFT, 2025).

Why, then, does this fetish for high-stakes testing persist, even as it fails our students and schools? One answer lies in the broader political narrative it enables. By repeatedly labeling public schools as “failing,” the system creates a crisis frame that makes it easier to justify diverting public dollars to charter schools, vouchers, and private alternatives. 

Indeed, in the very same session that produced HB 8, lawmakers advanced a $1 billion voucher plan, offering families up to $10,000 per student for private tuition. Critics note this policy disproportionately benefits wealthier families, lacks meaningful accountability, and threatens to drain already scarce funds from neighborhood public schools (Houston Chronicle, 2025; Texas Tribune, 2025). In this sense, HB 8’s surface-level reforms play into a broader agenda that demonizes public schools and sets the stage for privatization.

So, did public education advocacy organizations succeed? They secured incremental wins: less disruptive testing, faster feedback, cancellation of some exams, and improved transparency. Yet the core system endures. Schools are still judged primarily by test scores, accountability remains narrow, and meaningful change is postponed yet again.

References

Churchill, L., ProPublica, & Simani, E. (2025, Aug. 13). Some Texas private schools hire relatives and enrich insiders. Soon they can do it with taxpayer money, Texas Tribune.

Dey, S. (2025, Sept. 2). Texas is poised to replace STAAR. Here is what schools’ new standardized tests would look like, Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/02/texas-staar-standardized-test-accountability/?utm

Good Reason Houston. (2025, September 2). Texas Legislature passes HB 8, ushering in the next phase of assessment and accountability for Texas students. Good Reason Houston. https://goodreasonhouston.org/texas-legislature-passes-hb-8-ushering-in-the-next-phase-of-assessment-and-accountability-for-texas-students/

 

Houston Chronicle. (2025, August 13). Texas House passes $1 billion private school voucher plan. Houston Chronicle. https://link.houstonchronicle.com/public/39469102--

Raise Your Hand Texas. (2025, September 4). Statement on House Bill 8. Raise Your Hand Texas. https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/news-release/statement-house-bill-8/

San Antonio Express-News. (2025, August 27). Editorial: Expanded STAAR testing is not reform. San Antonio Express-News. https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/editorial/article/expanded-staar-testing-21017783.php

Texas AFT. (2025, August 28). Texas educators oppose woefully inadequate STAAR reform proposal. Texas AFT. https://www.texasaft.org/policy/testing/texas-educators-oppose-woefully-inadequate-staar-reform-proposal/

"A Trojan Horse for the Affluent: House Bill 3041 and the Resegregation of College Admissions in Texas," by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Friends,

I will always remember that today is the anniversary of the horrific killings in Uvalde, Texas, because it is also mine and my husband's wedding anniversary.

As I contemplate violence against children in our schools, I urge us to also think about the symbolic, institutional violence that H.B. 3041 represents.

I often wonder what bills are getting passed while the advocacy community is focused on other critical fronts—like fighting SB 37, SB 12, and the ongoing battle against vouchers. H.B. 3041 is one of these, and it is VERY consequential to the future of children and youth in Texas.

What concerns me even more is the noticeable absence of critical perspectives or in-depth analysis of this bill in major news outlets or academic circles. Outside of endorsements by pro-homeschooling groups and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, there has been virtually no public scrutiny of its impact on equity, public education, or financial aid. That silence is itself telling—and dangerous.

Thank you for reading,

–Angela

A Trojan Horse for the Affluent: House Bill 3041 and the Resegregation of College Admissions in Texas

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 24, 2025

The University of Texas at Austin tower on July 16, 2020. Credit: Allie Goulding/

The Texas Tribune

Well on its way to becoming state law, H.B. 3041 —authored by Reps. Dennis Paul and Terry Wilson—masquerades as a measure to expand college access. In truth, it codifies a deeply inequitable double standard in admissions and financial aid. The bill creates a separate pathway for students from “nontraditional secondary education” backgrounds—such as homeschoolers and those from unaccredited private schools—allowing them to bypass class-rank requirements and qualify for automatic admission based on standardized test scores set by each institution. 

It goes further by amending the Texas Education Code, meaning statute, to make these students eligible for state-funded financial aid programs like the TEXAS Grant—resources already stretched thin. This carveout, cloaked in the language of fairness, opens a back door for students who are disproportionately white, affluent, and well-resourced, while further narrowing the front door for historically underserved students in Texas public schools (Knox, 2024).

This isn’t just unfair—it’s a form of institutional violence. At a time when children of color in Texas schools are already being targeted by book bans, curriculum restrictions, racial surveillance, and chronic underfunding, H.B. 3041 inflicts yet another wound. The violence may not be physical, but its effects are just as real. When the state systematically redirects opportunity away from the vulnerable and toward the already privileged, it signals that some lives—and futures—matter more than others. That, too, is a kind of assault: quiet, calculated, and devastating.

The bill attempts to simulate class-rank-based admissions for students without one by substituting standardized test scores. Although the benchmarks must be recalibrated annually using institutional data, this approach is fundamentally flawed. Standardized tests are not neutral indicators of merit—they mirror access to wealth, tutoring, and stable learning environments. Consequently, H.B. 3041 disproportionately benefits students from nontraditional, affluent backgrounds—many of whom also stand to gain from newly passed school voucher legislation. Together, these measures constitute a systematic redirection of public support toward those already advantaged.

Meanwhile, students in public schools must compete through class rank in an increasingly narrow funnel (Dey, 2024). At UT Austin, for example, automatic admission once applied to students in the top 10 percent of their graduating class; by Fall 2026, only those in the top 5 percent will qualify—due to legislative provisions that cap automatic admissions at 75 percent of the freshman class. The rest are admitted through holistic review. In this context, H.B. 3041 is not just inequitable—it’s egregious. While public school students, disproportionately Black, Latino, and low-income, face rising barriers, nontraditional students gain a separate route designed around their strengths.

As McNeil (2005) and Valencia, Valenzuela, Sloan, & Foley (2001) have shown, so-called “color-blind” policies often obscure structural racism, reinforcing systems that reward those already equipped with social and economic capital. Berliner and Glass (2014) add that standardized test scores track family income more reliably than academic ability. H.B. 3041 reflects what Valenzuela (1999) calls subtractive schooling—policies that devalue the knowledge and experiences of marginalized students while privileging dominant norms. It rewards those in individualized, resource-rich settings while burdening public school students with mounting obstacles. This is not equity; it is privilege masquerading as reform.

The bill’s provision for “equal access” to dual credit courses is equally deceptive. While it requires institutions to treat all students the same in admissions to dual credit, it ignores the reality that many public schools—especially in rural and low-income areas—lack the infrastructure, staffing, and partnerships to offer these courses in the first place. Texas is a deeply rural state, yet rural schools remain underrecognized in policy. This formal equality masks material inequality. As Berliner and Glass (2014) warn, when laws ignore structural disparities, they don’t close gaps—they widen them.

Finally, by expanding financial aid eligibility without increasing funding, H.B. 3041 threatens to dilute resources for those who need them most. This is not an expansion of access—it’s a redistribution of opportunity upward: from public to private, from the underserved to the already advantaged.

In sum, H.B. 3041 is not a policy of inclusion—it is a Trojan horse. It offers the appearance of equity while reinforcing race, class, and geographic privilege. With UT Austin and other public institutions narrowing their admissions thresholds, this bill ensures that the gate remains open to the few and closed to the many. Texans must see H.B. 3041 for what it is: a backdoor policy that elevates the already elevated—at the cost of justice, access, and the democratic promise of public education.

References

Berliner, D. C., & Glass, G. V. (2014). 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools. Teachers College Press

Dey, S. (2024, Sept. 16). UT-Austin tightens automatic admission threshold to 5% of Texas’ top high schoolers: The current threshold is 6%, Texas Tribune, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/16/ut-austin-top-five-percent-threshold/

Knox, L. (2024, Dec. 16), The longhorn long shot, Inside Higher Education

McNeil, L. (2005). Faking equity: High-stakes testing and the education of Latino youth. In A. Valenzuela (Ed.), Leaving children behind: How “Texas style” accountability fails Latino youth (pp. 57–111). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Valencia, R., Valenzuela, A., Sloan, K., & Foley, D. (2001). Let’s treat the cause, not the symptoms: Equity and accountability in Texas revisited. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(4), 318–321, 326. 

Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. State University of New York Press.

© Angela Valenzuela, May 24, 2024

A Christmas Eve Reflection: Educational Ice Cream and Making the World Anew

I want to thank John Tanner for his blog, "Educational Ice Cream," as it got me to reflect on where we are as a state and nation after two decades of so-called "educational accountability." I, too, have been a constant critic throughout this entire time period. 

I read him as tongue-in-cheek on trading out the toxic phrase, "educational accountability" with "ice cream" since the former is so toxic and freighted. If we trade out this phrase, this might at least get us to smile and have a constructive conversation on the matter.

It merits mention that I got my Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University where one cuts one's teeth on scholarship that considers how stratification occurs in modern society. One can hardly understand this without looking at the role of policies surrounding the implementation of standardized tests, a focus that, at least for myself as a younger scholar, also entailed an in-depth examination of the history of standardized testing and test development that exposes for me—alongside reputable national educational organizations, as Tanner himself mentions—the inherent unfairness and lack of validity of high-stakes testing.

Underscore "high stakes" in the phrase high-stakes testing. This is not at all to say that there isn't a role for standardized testing, but rather that they should be administered responsibly and never in a high-stakes manner that can profoundly impact teachers,' and most particularly, students' lives and well-being. As folks at the Intercultural Development Research Associates in San Antonio have been saying for well over 20 years, as well, we don't need "census testing," but rather "sample testing." We could even simply default to the National Assessment for Educational Progress as a new direction in policy. The "NAEP" is already considered "The Nation's Report Card."

So why the excess? One doesn't need a blood transfusion to know the health of the human body. Rather, a simple blood test does the job. 

Twenty-plus years of this system makes it abundantly clear that the intention actually is to be a punishing racist and classist system that discredits schools and public education and in so doing, paves the way to charters and privatization while yielding eye-popping profits to the high-stakes-testing-industrial complex? 

It's so telling that across five Texas legislative sessions this year of 2023, none of Gov. Greg Abbott's "voucher bills" required any high-stakes testing or accountability. None. Zero. Nada. What's good for the goose (public education) is clearly not good for the gander (private schools). Such hypocrisy. At least it's all out in plain sight.

When I first got to UT in 1999 and operated a "listserv" for about 6 years that focused on high-stakes testing and privatization, I then switched to blogging in 2004 with this very idea of launching a critique and like Tanner, shifting the discourse surrounding Texas-style accountability. After all, it had just gotten rolled out to the nation in the form of federal policy in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002 which later became the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. We have had some success, but more must be done, beginning with eliminating high-stakes testing and accountability altogether, as Tanner suggests.

The late Rice University professor, Dr. Linda McNeil, MALDEF attorney Al Kauffman, Dr. Gary Orfield, Dr. Mindy Kornhaber, and myself, research in hand, lobbied the U.S. Congress in 2001, letting them know that the proposed NCLB policy augurs an era of great harm, particularly considering that opportunities to learn the curriculum were woefully uneven within districts, within states, and across states. Linda and I even published a widely-read piece on the matter long before the "jury was in," so to speak, on just how harmful high-stakes testing and accountability systems are (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001). 

While in Washington, D.C., I remember hanging out in the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone's office as he was one of the few truly powerful voices at the time pushing back on NCLB. Based on data we had gathered (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001; Valenzuela, 2004), we testified at a press conference in the Rayburn Building on how the proposed federal policy would deepen inequalities by structuring out enrichment opportunities, particularly for low-income, marginalized youth that if anything, needed more, not less, enrichment.

I remember it being a very hostile audience comprised largely of civil rights organizations that simply couldn't hear the evidence we had provided. They attacked and demeaned us scholars engaging in "Texas bashing" and for being spoilers to what they were heralding as their glorious achievement. I kid you not. I was glad that we got out of there in one piece. This experience of getting attacked by a mob of so-called progressives was shocking to me and has never once repeated in my entire professional career.

After this majorly unsettling experience, we met with all of the members of the congressional Texas delegation to warn them about the harms of this system but to no avail. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee's fateful words still ring in my ears today: "You're too late. Unless there are dead bodies on the tracks, the train has left the station." 

I could only think of the children and youth in my research at the time and the oppressive mental testing to which they were already subjected. Linda and I were deflated. Not even ice cream could have lifted our spirits.

On January 8, 2002, the brilliant Congressman Paul Wellstone died in a fiery airplane crash and by October 25, 2002, NCLB became law. As Linda said, "Now everybody's become Texas." 

Dr. Linda McNeil passed away on April 1, 2021. Boy, do we miss you, Linda.

Linda and I saw this top-down, remote-control, reform then and see it now today as not just a neoliberal (or market-based ideal) of student, school, and district "success," but also as a mechanism of control that works to preempt marginalized groups and the lower- and middle classes to conceptualize, or "think," their way to freedom. 

It is through this same lens that I see other attacks on education in the form of voucher bills, so-called anti-Critical Race Theory legislation, and the current attack on DEI. These all double as harmful policy and weapons of mass distraction by structuring out critical thought, creativity, and imagination.

To consider this further, change cannot be left in the hands of the "reformers," many of whom are found within our K-12 and higher education institutions, as well as in our legislatures or nonprofit sectors, because they are either controlled by, or are themselves, elites that adhere jealously to our high-stakes systems of testing and accountability. Still today, some organizations that claim to be about civil rights support this vastly inequitable and punishing system. We must address the power structure that sustains this regime.

Again, as Linda would say, "If this were just a test, that would be innocuous. But rather, it's a 'system of testing' that makes it so harmful."

Drawing on Scott (1987) and Rossatto (2019) whose writings come to mind this morning, real change must come from the very people whose lives are profoundly impacted by this system. The first step is to decouple "high-stakes" from testing and then to consider alternatives like portfolios, performance-based assessments, and system-wide approaches as currently exist within the New York Performance Standards Consortium (NYPSC) schools. Accordingly, read a 2015 blog post "This Is What a Student-Designed School Looks Like." There are alternatives. However, we need a more just government together with the political will to consider these.

We must also fully fund public education since policymakers still haven't fully addressed how students' opportunity to learn the curriculum is what test results reflect, namely, a lack of opportunity for poor schools and lower-income, Black and Brown youth. As far as civil rights are concerned, groups and organizations must know from here on out that we will never test our way to equity. If this were so, it would have happened by now.

Finally, the ice cream that puts a smile on my face is of the kind that departs from the premise that only a "transformative," as opposed to "reformist" consciousness can guide us out of this conceptual quagmire. Reformist ice cream won't do the job. Transformative ice cream will, as we've had enough "reform." We now need to shift from tinkering at the margins and make the world anew.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Rossatto, C. A. (2019). Manifesto for New Social Movements Equity, Access, and Empowerment. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Scott, J. C. (1987). Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press.

Valenzuela, A. (2004). Leaving Children Behind: How 'Texas-style' Accountability Fails Latino Youth. State University of New York Press.

McNeil, L. M. & Valenzuela, A. (2001). The harmful impact of the TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability rhetoric. In Orfield, G., & Kornhaber, M. L. (Eds). Raising standards or raising barriers?: Inequality and high-stakes testing in public education.  https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED443872.pdf

Monday, December 18, 2023

Educational Ice Cream

by John Tanner, An Educational Contrarian Blog

The challenge in talking about educational accountability is twofold. First is that no one in their right mind would suggest that they are unwilling to be accountable for the work they do, especially when that work is as important as the education of a child.

But second, the way accountability has been done in education is so embarrassingly dumb that it isn’t an accountability worth being accountable to or for. That leaves educators in the untenable position of saying that they are happy to be accountable, just not in the way that states and Federal government want them to be accountable. Which leaves educators vulnerable to accusations of wanting to cherry pick among systems for the one that puts them in the best possible light. Or of not wanting to be accountable at all.

Let’s be clear about how dumb the current system is. It is something done punitively and authoritatively. It is done to schools by those outside schools, most of whom lack any expertise regarding educational processes. Its negative judgments are concentrated on the poorest communities. It is based largely on standardized test scores, which few understand, especially the policy makers making the rules. It creates judgments that differ a great deal from what the educators in a building know to be true. It comes with sufficiently negative judgments that it interferes with and often corrupts what educators know to be best practice. It is stressful and forever the 600 lb. gorilla in every school. It uses complex compliance-based formulas to assign labels. Almost no one would classify what passes for educational accountability as a system that promotes anything resembling excellence.

In short, what passes for educational accountability follows a formula that has been roundly rejected by virtually every other profession for the simple fact that if understanding an organization and its efforts is the goal, this won’t get you there.

The challenge in talking about fixing educational accountability is also twofold. First, the paradigm of test—judge—punish is so powerful that improving accountability almost always occurs under the assumption that standardized testing is a fete accompli, something as commensurate with accountability as the terms bunny and hare are to each other. 99% of the effort that goes into trying to fix state and federal accountability programs and policies is about trying to lessen the negative impact of a demonstrably bad (dumb) system. Or find a better way to test. Or tweak the formulas to hurt a little less, which of course will be met with accusations of (ironically) dumbing down the system.

And second, it has proven almost impossible to imagine something other than our compliance-driven test-based accountabilities. Whatever the reason, there has never been a concerted and sustained effort to ask and research what accountability could have and should have looked like, and then ask how we might move towards it. I interact with people all the time about a future state of educational accountability, and it never ceases to amaze me how challenging it is to see beyond narrow educational metrics and thinking that compliance with them somehow signals effectiveness.

All that weight anchored to a single phrase, educational accountability, means that the instant the phrase is invoked so too is the negativity and the sense that getting out from underneath it will be near impossible. That weight makes it challenging even to imagine what something else might look like. Or that there could even be a something else.

When I say educational accountability I’m talking about the most transformational of all the leadership disciplines, more capable of supporting a great work environment, creating trust between an organization and its stakeholders, and helping to shape strong organizations well into the future than any of them. Do it well and the big issues that seemed unsolvable in the past can become solvable going forward. No other leadership discipline can make that claim.

I’m talking about the way great organizations of all stripes account for what they do such that it leads and guides them as effectively as possible into an uncertain future.

Does that sound like what currently passes for educational accountability?

Real accountability looks nothing like what currently passes for educational accountability. It doesn’t need or require standardized test scores. It doesn’t require census metrics. It is not data-led. It is high stakes, but its goals are not punitive. It is based upon the hopes and dreams parents have for their children, or in slightly different terms, on the benefits parents expect for having entrusted their children’s lives and educations to a school. It tells the truth. It focuses on the future. It is easy to understand by every single stakeholder.

However, when I invoke the phrase, educational accountability, and start to point to the research that outlines a better way to do it, what people are understandably conditioned to hear is that I’m yet one more person with a slick strategy to help a school avoid sanctions, or I’m offering a different test or data point, or I’m claiming some policy tweak will help make a lousy system a little less lousy. Because up to this point that is all anyone has offered. And none of those, to be frank, is worth a moment of anybody’s time. If that were what I was really offering, you should ignore me.

I know this is how people view the phrase educational accountability because of the thousands of people I’ve asked what they believed what was about to happen when they first walked into one of my courses or seminars. Their answers are almost the same: they expected to hear yet one more way to deal with the current accountability mess, and that given the choice they would rather be anywhere else. Again, if I were in their shoes, I would feel the exact same way.

My goal going forward is to help people see at the outset something very different indeed. I’m better at it than I was, but I’m not there yet.

When I talk about making educational accountability right, what I am signaling is the need for something entirely different than the corruption currently claiming that name. I am arguing for accountability that is good for schools, students, parents, and communities, which is a far cry from what we have. I’m accusing the current system being so bad and poorly conceived that it cannot be salvaged, but also—and this is a bright spot—of being so narrow and short-sighted that you can run a great accountability alongside and eclipse it, meaning we don’t need a policy change in order to make a huge dent in the problem—although make no mistake—a policy change is absolutely the goal.

And I’m stating, as loudly as I can, that if the public understood the technical details of what a standardized test score is designed to do and as a result, could see what it cannot also do, they would reject it as an accountability tool outright, as a terrible and stupid mistake. It needs to become clear that trying to use standardized testing as an accountability tool is akin to trying to pound a square peg into a round hole with a mackerel. I hope that image stays with you because it really is that dumb.

When I talk about making educational accountability right, it is not through a set of acronyms or quippy phrases that were created to sell books or consulting hours. Rather, accountability is an almost universal function in organizations, and when done well, follows a handful of underlying frameworks, each of them replete with common sense. Doing accountability right requires learning those commonsense frameworks, a shift in mindset regarding what accountability is and is not, and a few hours a month. Accountability is not supposed to be your job, or the 600 lb. gorilla. Rather, it is how to account for your work and effectiveness, including how you intend to be effective going forward. That is, as I said, high stakes to be sure, just as it should be with any and all work that is meaningful and worthwhile.

For someone who now researches and studies accountability and has discovered its wondrous possibilities for improving the health of organizations, meeting the needs of stakeholders, shaping the organization for the future, and making it a great place to work, the fact that I have to start with the word, accountability, automatically puts me at a disadvantage by bringing with it its mountains of baggage. A disadvantage I must spend weeks and sometimes months trying to overcome.

The alternative is to find a different word, but that puts me at risk of being accused of not caring about accountability. Of being an apologist for under or poor performance, or of not caring about kids. That would put me outside the conversation and prevent my mission of solving this accountability mess once and for all.

So, I’m not going to dismiss the term, but rather, embrace it. But I need every educator to meet me halfway, so that we can start with a shared set of assumptions at the outset. And here’s a strategy to do that. Every time I say the phrase educational accountability the first few times we talk, or you read something I wrote, please read it as educational ice cream. Ice cream makes people happy. It's delicious. We’re happier to have than to not. We can look forward to the next flavor of the month. We leave our experiences with ice cream feeling better than before we had it. Any negative feelings we have about the calories are almost always offset by how good it is.

Educational ice cream creates the right denotative flair for that old and weighted term accountability, which can serve as an emotional placeholder until I can show you how truly transformational real accountability can be.

And I like saying that I’m something of an expert when it comes to educational ice cream. My bet is that our conversations will start off at a more advanced stage, and on a more positive note, which gets us much closer at the outset from discovering that a better accountability really is out there.

Test-Optional Policies Now Dominate Higher Ed, by Jacquelyn Elias, Chronicle of Higher Education

Many colleges and universities have prolonged their test-optional policies for this past year's 2023-24 admissions cycle, and in certain instances, for an extended period. Harvard applicants have posted this related notice on application requirements website:

"For the College Classes of 2027-2030, students may apply for admission without standardized test scores."

From College Curators, 2022-23

Similarly, UT-Austin is test-optional as are and many other highly selective institutions that you can learn about here.

It's so interesting, if not aggravating, to ponder why so many of our nation's universities are increasingly test-optional but our K-12 schools are not. What we do know is that increasing the numbers through diversity is a need for higher education institutions increasing drops in enrollment numbers (see previous blog: The Shrinking of Higher Ed In the past, colleges grew their way out of enrollment crises. This time looks different.) 

Clearly, higher education is different from K-12 public education such that we can all surmise what's going on here. I have looked at high-stakes testing over the years and land on the view this agenda is not about truly providing our children and youth with opportunity, but about profits for the test companies, while disempowering our youth who test poorly so that they don't grow up to be critical and threaten the incumbencies of those in power. Tests are also about reproducing white privilege in society and serving the neoliberal ends of privatizing, marketizing, and corporatizing public schools. 

If you know anything about how the Houston Independent School District (HISD) got taken over by Mike Miles' charter management organization, test scores are key. Accordingly, read this piece in Texas Monthly titled, "Welcome to Houston’s No-Longer-Independent School District." 

What about "test-optional?" It actually sounds patronizing to me. How about grasping the bigger story here on how these tests are anti-democratic. To be clear, I totally believe in assessment, just not these offensive mind-numbing, disempowering, reductive, and objectifying tools we have to hurt some kids, while providing others with a false sense of superiority. 

Eyes wide open. It all connects.

-Angela Valenzuela

Test-Optional Policies Now Dominate Higher Ed

By  Jacquelyn Elias

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Admissions policies that give applicants the option of whether to submit their standardized test scores have been growing steadily over the years, sparked by long-running concerns about how the tests can contribute to racial and socioeconomic inequality and more-immediate pandemic-driven logistical challenges.

Lately, a sea change has overtaken higher education: Over 800 institutions shifted to test-optional policies between the fall 2019 and fall 2021 admissions cycles, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education. Only about 160 institutions still classify themselves as requiring test scores.

The change has become sufficiently widespread that the Education Department will incorporate choices for test-optional, test-blind, and test-required in its data collection, the first update to this part of its admissions table since it was created seven years ago.

Which institutions have made this change, and what effects has it had? See below.

What happened to test scores at test-optional institutions?

To see how submission rates and test scores changed from 2019 to 2021 at institutions that went test-optional, search below. (Go to link search 850 organizations).

Methodology

This analysis looks at over 1,400 institutions that reported their admissions data to the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (Ipeds) for the fall 2021 admissions year. The data set does not include institutions with an open-admissions policy. Only Title IV, degree-granting, four-year institutions that admitted more than 50 students in the fall of 2021 were included. For-profit institutions were excluded.

Ipeds presents four categories for universities to choose from when reporting their admissions considerations: “required,” “recommended,” “considered but not required,” or “neither required nor recommended.” Test-optional is defined as any institution that did not report that test scores were “required.” This includes all institutions that listed test scores as “recommended,” “considered but not required,” and “neither required nor recommended.”

A version of this article appeared in the December 9, 2022, issue.