Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
The state of Texas spends more than 90 Million dollars per year on the "STAAR test" (State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness), which purports to measure the quality of education by testing the knowledge of students.* The 90 million dollars is the money paid directly to Pearson Education, a foreign company to whom the STAAR was outsourced after the original publisher took its money and ran.
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School districts spend untold additional money on testing expenses. In my district we have two very senior district administrators dedicated to the STAAR. One is the "Testing Coordinator" whose job is compliance, which is making sure that we meet all the legal requirements and avoid the dreaded "irregularity," which is a mistake that invalidates a student's test. The other is the Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum, a job which used to be about making sure children learn, but is now about teaching to the test.
Countless hours and dollars are spent throughout the year on "Benchmark Testing," data meetings, and other ways to increase the district's test scores. The latest strategy is to focus on "bubble kids," whose benchmark tests results indicate that they are predicted to score close to passing, either slightly above or slightly below the line. By focusing resources on those kids, more of them pass than fail, raising the overall percentage.
Kids who are very likely to pass because they have learned enough, as well as kids who are not likely to pass, because they haven't learned enough to even have a chance, can be (and are) ignored under that strategy.
Testing will be useless for the next five years, anyway. All it will really measure is how far behind students are falling due to the COVID hysteria.
This much we know without testing: students learn nothing after they are murdered by serial killers who are allowed to simply walk into schools carrying high-capacity weapons.
Let's stop this useless spending, and divert the money to safety and security. One off-duty police officer working part time as a school resource officer cannot protect a thousand kids at a high school. We need secure entry ports at which metal detectors are used to prevent guns from coming in. We need hardened classroom doors, safe rooms, and partitions that can be activated remotely to block off hallways to limit the access of any intruder who does make it through. We need teachers trained and armed as a last line of defense.
*The STAAR doesn't measure academic achievement. It is basically an IQ test, much more so than the old "TAKS" was. Smart kids can work out the answers on a STAAR test, whether they have paid attention in class or not. Not-so-smart kids may have painstakingly learned the math calculation methods, but they are tripped up trying to figure out what math to use for a word problem like:
To produce a special concrete, for every 13 kg of cement, 3 liters of water is required. Which of the following ratios is the same as the ratio of cement to liters of water?
Commentary: STAAR outcome obvious; test a waste of $90M
STAAR testing should halt for the school year. It’s expensive and education has been...
School districts spend untold additional money on testing expenses. In my district we have two very senior district administrators dedicated to the STAAR. One is the "Testing Coordinator" whose job is compliance, which is making sure that we meet all the legal requirements and avoid the dreaded "irregularity," which is a mistake that invalidates a student's test. The other is the Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum, a job which used to be about making sure children learn, but is now about teaching to the test.
Countless hours and dollars are spent throughout the year on "Benchmark Testing," data meetings, and other ways to increase the district's test scores. The latest strategy is to focus on "bubble kids," whose benchmark tests results indicate that they are predicted to score close to passing, either slightly above or slightly below the line. By focusing resources on those kids, more of them pass than fail, raising the overall percentage.
Kids who are very likely to pass because they have learned enough, as well as kids who are not likely to pass, because they haven't learned enough to even have a chance, can be (and are) ignored under that strategy.
Testing will be useless for the next five years, anyway. All it will really measure is how far behind students are falling due to the COVID hysteria.
Really far.
This much we know without testing: students learn nothing after they are murdered by serial killers who are allowed to simply walk into schools carrying high-capacity weapons.
Let's stop this useless spending, and divert the money to safety and security. One off-duty police officer working part time as a school resource officer cannot protect a thousand kids at a high school. We need secure entry ports at which metal detectors are used to prevent guns from coming in. We need hardened classroom doors, safe rooms, and partitions that can be activated remotely to block off hallways to limit the access of any intruder who does make it through. We need teachers trained and armed as a last line of defense.
*The STAAR doesn't measure academic achievement. It is basically an IQ test, much more so than the old "TAKS" was. Smart kids can work out the answers on a STAAR test, whether they have paid attention in class or not. Not-so-smart kids may have painstakingly learned the math calculation methods, but they are tripped up trying to figure out what math to use for a word problem like:
To produce a special concrete, for every 13 kg of cement, 3 liters of water is required. Which of the following ratios is the same as the ratio of cement to liters of water?
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