The View from Hillsboro - Advocating for Public Schools

Of tests and metrics

In one of the meetings I attended last week I was given an advance copy of the Hillsboro School District scorecard for the year 2003-2004. There is a lot of interesting data in the four pages of the scorecard, some of them quite eye-opening for someone like me who is still learning the ins and outs of the district.

My family lived in Texas in the late 1990s. My wife's older daughter did her last three years of high school in Arlington. The educational system in Texas revolved around the standardized TAAS test, to the point that nothing else mattered. Funding was linked to the results of the test, and this meant that test preparation took precedence over any other educational activity. Funding was cut to the schools when a student was absent, and to make sure that they would get their monies, students had to make up lost days by spending their Saturdays at school in detention. When my daughter was home sick (and contagious) for a week, she had to spend the following five Saturdays doing nothing at her high school. And those students that for one reason or another were out more than a few days were strongly encouraged to drop out for the rest of the year. If they were no longer in school their absences would not count against the school, which would keep the district's metrics high so that they would keep their funding.

The result is that the Texas students do extremely well in the TAAS test, better that students in other states do on their own state's standardized tests. But when compared on the same national college admission tests, Texas students do very poorly compared with other states. To me, this means that they are learning how to pass the test, but they are not learning the academic and reasoning skills that the test should be based on.

I fear is that over the long term we will be forced to turn Oregon education into the failure that is Texas.

As a parent I have to admit that I like to see metrics that tell me if the school district and my child's school are doing their job. But the results should be the basis for some healthy discussion on educational strategies and improvement, not just a way to punish schools. And we should be able to measure our progress on metrics that we choose based on our state and local educational goals and our vision for our public schools. I would like us to find measurable ways to track our goal of greater parent involvement, for example. I would like to see metrics that show that our teachers are not just qualified but that they are allowed to spend enough time each year to further their own education and stay up to speed with the challenges in the classroom.

posted by Unknown @ 6:12 AM