District Quality & the STAAR Test
The extremists would have you believe that GCISD's quality is on the decline because some standardized test scores have declined over time. Not enough time is being spent on reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, they say! Too much time is being spent on other things like social-emotional learning, they say! These claims feed into their false narrative that public education is trying to indoctrinate students with Marxist views and against America.
First, STAAR tests are not a good measure of an individual student's mastery of subjects, and that is not their intention.
STAAR testing can make parents less informed about a student’s progress
Second, there are lies being spread about GCISD students' performance on the STAAR test. Here is the truth:
Deep Dive: The truth about GCISD students’ performance on the STAAR test
Most recently, we saw test scores decline during the pandemic, as they did everywhere. They have rebounded in GCISD since, and the board majority wants to take credit for that. But the rebound was measured in academic year 2021-2022, BEFORE the new majority took over.
Sadly, anecdotal evidence suggests that the quality of GCISD is declining BECAUSE OF the new school board majority. We know quite a few families who have already left in part or in whole due to the school board. Lower enrollment only adds to the budget deficit that the school board majority has created, all the while pushing the false narrative that they balanced the budget. Instead of making plans to increase revenue, they've started slashing programs and cutting teacher positions, which further erodes quality. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
First, STAAR tests are not a good measure of an individual student's mastery of subjects, and that is not their intention.
STAAR testing can make parents less informed about a student’s progress
- STAAR is designed to compare student groups from across the state.
- STAAR is worse than useless for looking at individual students. If you use the data to draw conclusions about individual student learning, you’ll draw false conclusions about what that student has learned.
- As both the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and ETS have repeatedly stated, the test questions are not designed to measure mastery of academic concepts. While each question is aligned with a specific Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) student expectation, it is not designed to judge the extent of a particular student’s learning.
- As W. James Popham, an international expert on assessment and accountability and former president of the American Educational Research Association, points out in his book “Transformative Assessment,” these tests are comparative, and not intended to determine student success or quality of teaching.
Second, there are lies being spread about GCISD students' performance on the STAAR test. Here is the truth:
Deep Dive: The truth about GCISD students’ performance on the STAAR test
- In almost all grades, over 95% of GCISD students meet or exceed expectations on the STAAR. In two grades, for two subjects, that number is slightly lower but still well over 75%.
- 10% of GCISD students are English language learners, and 82% passed the English/Reading STAAR test.
- GCISD is ranked as a top 1% school district in the state and a top 10% district in the nation.
Most recently, we saw test scores decline during the pandemic, as they did everywhere. They have rebounded in GCISD since, and the board majority wants to take credit for that. But the rebound was measured in academic year 2021-2022, BEFORE the new majority took over.
Sadly, anecdotal evidence suggests that the quality of GCISD is declining BECAUSE OF the new school board majority. We know quite a few families who have already left in part or in whole due to the school board. Lower enrollment only adds to the budget deficit that the school board majority has created, all the while pushing the false narrative that they balanced the budget. Instead of making plans to increase revenue, they've started slashing programs and cutting teacher positions, which further erodes quality. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken.
A Little History about GCISD and Test Scores
Below is a little history that will give you some insight into why the extremists' claims about test scores are not valid. In fact, if they get their wish, our district quality will likely suffer immensely.
In 1999, GCISD was the largest school district in the state of Texas to achieve the rating of Exemplary. At this time, accountability was based largely on standardized test scores – as it is today. The test administered in 1999 was TAAS. Since then, the state has developed two new tests - TAKS and STAAR. Scores on these tests cannot be compared over time. STAAR has been shown to be more difficult than these other tests.
According to John Tanner, “standardized test results represent the means by which we adjudicate student and school performance against the existing content standards” (The Pitfalls of Reform, 2014). He suggests that they are not only the most cited performance data, but the most misunderstood and misused. The results of standardized tests have become the evidence by which we judge whether or not a child has mastered the curriculum, whether or not a teacher has taught effectively, the quality of principals as instructional leaders as well as the overall quality of a school. They were never intended for these purposes.
The strongest correlation with success on standardized tests is socioeconomics. Children from poverty overwhelmingly end up in the bottom half of the rank order standardized tests provide - not because they are less able, but because they enter school with fewer experiences that support academic readiness in addition to other factors that exacerbate the “achievement gap” we so often hear about. Standardized tests spread kids out on a continuum according to how far above and below the average they score. A cut score is then determined. Students who fall below the cut score are considered “failing” the test. In this scenario, all students cannot possibly pass the test as the state would have us believe. In a rank order, someone has to be at the bottom. Standardized test scores are much more a reflection of socioeconomics than they are of student achievement. The data from these tests can certainly inform instructional and curricular decisions, but they were never intended to place value on a student, a teacher, a school, or a school district.
A big difference between 1999 and 2021 is the ability to exempt children from either taking the test or “counting” in the scores. In 1999, students could be exempted from testing for a variety of reasons. Not so much today. Another difference is the number of students from poverty in GCISD. In the 2003 AYP report, only 15 economically disadvantaged students from GHS and 12 from CHHS took the TAKS - a fraction of the number who currently take STAAR. TEA’s reporting of standardized test scores used to include both the number and percentage of students taking and passing the test. With the current A-F ratings, you only see percentages of students who “approach,” “meet,” or “master” grade level requirements. I challenge anyone reading this to explain what any of that means. So, we not only have a system that rank orders children and punishes those who are at the tail end of the rank order, we also have a reporting system that is so convoluted that few educators understand it. The people in Austin certainly don’t!
When test scores are tied to socioeconomics and your number of economically disadvantaged students increases to a quarter of your population, one would logically expect scores to decline. Of course, if we had one consistent reporting system, one could make some inferences over time. But we are comparing apples to oranges to pears every time the state changes the assessment instrument as well as the reporting protocols. In our current system, celebrating a grade of A is as foolhardy as lamenting a grade of C or lower. Reasonable school leaders understand how this system is stacked against schools and districts with a larger percent of students from poverty. These leaders look at other indicators of student success, indicators that truly paint a picture of how students achieve.