First—for those who don’t know, NCLB stands for No Child Left Behind, the rewritten federal Elementary And Secondary Education Act which is the signature issue of Bush’s first term domestic policy and which has imposed all of the testing mandates upon our schools.

Second—there is increasing evidence of cheating across the country, but most particularly in Texas, on the high stakes test.

The least of the problems was the actual cheating on the tests. The real scandal was whom they kept from taking the tests. Walt Haney of Boston College did a very thorough examination of the problem, published (online) by Education Policy Analysis Archives, out of Arizona State, back in 2000 as Volume 8, Number 41 under the title of The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education.

Let me quote the abstract so you will understand:

I summarize the recent history of education reform and  statewide testing in Texas, which led to introduction of  the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in 1990-91.  A variety of evidence in the late 1990s led a number of observers to conclude that the state of Texas had made near miraculous progress in reducing dropouts and increasing achievement. The passing scores on TAAS tests were arbitrary and discriminatory.  Analyses comparing TAAS reading, writing and math scores with one another and with relevant high school grades raise doubts about the reliability and validity of TAAS scores. I discuss problems of missing students and other mirages in Texas enrollment statistics that profoundly affect both reported dropout  statistics and test scores. Only 50% of minority students in Texas have been progressing from grade 9 to high school graduation since the initiation of the TAAS testing program.

Since about 1982, the rates at which Black and Hispanic students are required to repeat grade 9 have climbed steadily, such that by the late 1990s, nearly 30% of Black and Hispanic students were "failing" grade 9. Cumulative rates of grade retention in Texas are almost twice as high for Black and Hispanic students as for White students.  Some portion of the gains in grade 10 TAAS pass rates is illusory. The numbers of students taking the grade 10 tests who were classified as "in special education" and hence not counted in schools’ accountability ratings nearly doubled between 1994 and 1998.  A substantial portion of the apparent increases in TAAS pass rates in the 1990s are due to such exclusions. In the opinion of educators in Texas, schools are devoting a huge amount of time and energy preparing students specifically for TAAS, and emphasis on TAAS is hurting more than helping  teaching and learning in Texas schools, particularly with  at-risk students, and TAAS contributes to retention in grade  and dropping out.  Five different sources of evidence about rates of high school completion in Texas are compared and contrasted.

The review of GED statistics indicated that there was a sharp upturn in numbers of young people taking the GED tests in Texas in the mid-1990s to avoid TAAS. A convergence of evidence indicates that during the 1990s, slightly less than 70% of students in Texas actually graduated from high school.  Between 1994 and 1997, TAAS results showed a 20% increase in the percentage of students passing all three exit level TAAS tests (reading, writing and math), but TASP (a college readiness test) results showed a sharp decrease (from 65.2% to 43.3%) in the percentage of students passing all three parts (reading, math, and writing). As measured by performance on the SAT, the academic learning of secondary school students in Texas has not improved since the early 1990s, compared with SAT takers nationally. SAT-Math scores have deteriorated relative to students nationally. The gains on NAEP for Texas fail to confirm the dramatic gains apparent on TAAS.    The gains on TAAS and the unbelievable decreases in dropouts during the 1990s are more illusory than real. The Texas "miracle" is more hat than cattle.

Let me summarize the key points.

1. students (primarily minority) who were likely to test poorly were retained (repeatedly if necessary) in 9th grade (Texas tested only in 10th) until they dropped out, then by manipulating the "leaver codes" (used to report why someone  left your school) they were not counted as dropouts.


2. students in 10th grade were overly classified as special education and hence were excluded from having their scores count in the assessment of the school.

In other words, even beyond the actual cheating that was reported, most notably in Sharpstown [part of Houston], the so-called miracle was fake.  This was more than demonstrated by an examination of contemporaneous scores achieved in NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress  -- which is a sampling of students across the state) and SAT scores, both of which remained flat.

Remember, it was the Texas "miracle" especially in Houston, that was the basis for making Rod Paige Sec Ed and was the basis for Bush claiming that he knew how to fix public education.  Some of us tried to point out how wrong this was to the Democrats working with Bush, but got nowhere.

There is one ironic thing  -- under the rules Bush imposed in NCLB, there could have been no Texas Miracle  -- first, all students had to be tested in grades 3-8 so that the problems endemic in the Texas schools would have shown up.   Second, the disaggregation of scores by groups and the requirement that special ed students be included would not have allowed SOME of the manipulations that gave rise to SEEMING improvements in test scores.

All of this was known in educational and testing circles before the 2000 election.  And it was surely known well before NCLB was passed.  That we have come to this point is the result of several factors, not the least of which is that most of the reporters on the education beat are not competent to cover it  -- that is, if the issue is going to be educational measurement, it might help if they had had some training in the subject so that they did not so often buy into the BS put out by some of the advocates of increased testing.  This shows up in reporting on charter schools, on school vouchers, and so on.   People on the (educational) right, funded by many of the same groups funding the talking heads, put out their non-peer-reviewed studies by press release and get favorable comments in the general press.  The legislative policy makers don’t know any better.

There are individuals and organizations trying to make a difference.  There has been the occasional story, such as that by 60 Minutes on the cheating in Sharpstown.  Local and regional media cover stories in their own backyards, such as the many cases of improperly scored tests leading to kids not graduating or not being promoted.   But there is not a national consciousness on educational issues as of yet.

I am trying to change that.

You will note that many of my articles are on education.   Let me focus on two that are directly relevant to this issue.

“Federal Education law causes cheating?” which analyzes and quotes from a new study that provides clear evidence that the added emphasis on high stakes testing in the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is causing major distortions in the data being recorded because of the pressures on success on scores imposed by the law.

and “A Teacher’s View—the REAL Battleground”, a wide-ranging piece in which I offer my opinion that education is ground zero of the political battles and the future of our democracy, and challenged readers to take action.

Let me add a few more thoughts.

1. Right now the Bush administration is fighting tooth and nail to keep Utah, about as Red a state as you can find, from being the first state to totally withdraw from NCLB.  They have ordered the governor to DC to lobby him to veto the legislation that would mandate such withdrawal.


2.  More and more states and districts are realizing that the costs of the tests exceed any additional Federal aid promised (which is far more than what has been delivered) under NCLB, and thus have been forced to cut programs in order to fulfill their testing responsibilities.


3.  Under the new Secretary, Margaret Spellings (who has never taught at any level, does not have a doctorate {required in many states to be a superintendent at the local level} nor worked in any educational bureaucracy, but instead was a policy advisor to Bush going back to his days as governor  -- but heck, Paige’s doctorate was in the reaction time of Football linemen), the administration wants to move aggressively to extend their testing regime to high schools.  Thus we have seen all kinds of quite distorted stories about high schools, and we have seen far too much credit given to the bloviations of Bill Gates on the subject of high school


4. From a political standpoint, this is an issue on which Democrats have totally dropped the ball.  Properly played, it has the real potential to peel away independent and moderate Republican voters at all levels of government.


5.  From a moral standpoint, it is not the responsibility of public schools to provide compliant workers for American industry that is not willing to pay its fair share of taxes, and which easily justifies moving high paying jobs  -- for which a good education is in theory required—overseas.


6.  for the future of this country, if we allow the continued challenges on our public schools to go unemtn, we are watching the future of our democratic way of life being destroyed.

What are you going to do to protect and preserve and – yes --improve our public schools?