Public schools, public school students, and public school educators have been held accountable for their work for years. We have come to expect it and we want to be held accountable. We have seen many different accountability systems come and go. It seems like if you don’t like the system we have now, just wait a few years and it will be changed. It has happened again. Change is upon us.
For the past few years we have been under a system that has essentially two levels: Met Standard or Improvement Required. These levels are based on a school’s performance on the STAAR and End of Course tests. Additionally, there are 6 different Distinction Designations that a school can earn. These designations are based mainly on a percentage of students that scored at an advanced level on these tests. Even though this seems like a simple system, it is still difficult to understand how a school earns their rating or grade.
In a perfect world, Texas would have a rating system that would not be based on our students’ performance on one test. How is it possible to correctly judge a school’s ability to educate its students based on one day’s performance? How is it possible to say that a student cannot be passed onto the next grade or graduate based on one test? It would be the same as to judge a football team’s season based on one play. What if that one play resulted in a fumble; does that mean your season is a disaster? What if a basketball team’s season is based on one shot? If the other team blocked the shot, is the season a loss? It goes without saying, that these methods of judging performance are not fair. Based on these two scenarios, it is not possible to correctly/fairly determine if their seasons are successful or not.
But that is what we currently do with our students. State law mandates that schools must teach their students a total of 75,600 minutes a year. Students are required to take a test that has an average length of 180-240 minutes. Schools receive their ratings based on what their students do in 0.003% of their time in class. Students pass or graduate, based on .003% of their work. Is that fair? Is that really a true picture of what really goes on in a school?
In 2015, the Texas Legislature passed HB 2804, which completely changes the way schools are evaluated. This bill mandates that schools be graded on an A-F scale. One of the arguments for this new system was that it would be something that the public is used to; students receive A-F grades daily.
It is a true saying that “Simple is always best, unless it is wrong”. The new A-F system, on the surface, seems to be exactly what we need, simple to understand. State law mandated that sample ratings be released in August of 2016. That has already been pushed back untill January of 2017. Something tells me it is not to simplify the system. It has been released that the rating explanation will be 42 pages long! That is certainly a lot of paper to explain a simple accountability system that bases all of its decisions on what students do in 0.003% of the school year.
Currently, sixteen states have an A-F accountability system. Florida was the first in 1999. Florida has revamped their system various times. It always seems that the reason is to ensure that they get the results that they want. Could this be the reason why the TEA has postponed the release of the sample ratings? Could it be that there were “too many” A’s? That would be contrary to what many in Austin believe. Virginia, who passed their A-F system last year, has already appealed it. Maybe Texas should follow.
Another fallacy of the A-F system is that one might automatically think that if their school receives a “C” that all students in that school are “C” students. NOTHING could be further from the truth. If a football team has a 10-0 record for the season, does that mean that ALL of their players are great? If a football team has a 3-7 record, does that automatically mean that ALL of their players are bad?
Having said all of this, I do not know of any accountability system that works, unless it is one that is locally developed. A locally developed accountability system, will ensure that their school is held accountable for the things that the local parents, community members, students, and educators say are important, not the things that the legislators in Austin say are important.
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