The truth about Texas Schools - per Rand Corporation:
Yuo may not like the author Jesse Jackson but all the info on Rand is accurate. Look it up yourself if you want. The Texas scores were forcibly pumped-up before the 2000 elections to make it look like kids were excelling. Instead, they were basically given the answers ahead of time. And teachers in Texas hated being forced to teach to the test this way.
The Truth About Texas Schools
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
10-29-00 @ Los Angeles Times Syndicate
George W. Bush has trumpeted Texas schools across the country. Test scores are going up, he boasts, and differences between races and children from different economic classes are going down. "As governor of Texas, we [sic] have set high standards for our public schools and we [sic] have met those standards. Our state…provides some of the best education in the nation, not measured by us but measured by the RAND Corporation…." Education and Texas schools have been the centerpiece of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism." But his claims turn out to be a put-on.
The same RAND Corporation that Bush hailed as "objective" has just completed a study of the Texas school system, investigating what the Texas test scores really mean. The researchers found that while the students registered major improvements on the Texas tests, they did not show improvement in national exams. While the Texas tests showed the gaps in scores shrinking between white and minority students, the national tests showed the gaps were "very large and "increasing."
"I think the Texas miracle is a myth," said RAND senior researcher, Stephen Klein. "There is nothing remarkable in Texas education…Gains in Texas in recent years were about the same as in the United States." And the claims that the gap between minority and white students was closing are simply "false." The study concludes there are "serious questions" about the "validity" of claims of educational progress in Texas.
Why did Texas kids show improvement on the Texas test and not on the national test? The RAND study suggested that "one plausible explanation…is that many schools are devoting a great deal of class time to highly specific TAAS preparation." That is the danger of politically driven mandatory testing that makes teacher pay and school funding dependent on student performance on a specific test. Schools begin to teach kids to master the test, rather than teaching them how to master reading and writing.
The RAND study reveals that Mr. Bush's claims about education are a Texas tall tale. In fact, for him to take credit for the improvements in Texas schools has always been a stretch. The major reforms in Texas's schools -- smaller classes, more preschool, better teachers, more equal spending across districts -- were implemented before Mr. Bush was Governor. (And Bush opposes similar reforms at a national level) If any one deserves the credit, it is H. Ross Perot who forged the coalition to push reform through while Mr. Bush was just getting out of his "youthful indiscretion" phase.
As Governor, Bush mostly helped by not dismantling the reforms. He also increased the stakes in the state tests that led to the distortions the RAND study reveals. The improvement in Texas was always exaggerated. Texas remains 47th among states in average combined SAT scores for college admission. Under Bush, Texas dropped from twenty-ninth to forty-eighth in the nation in a ranking of states to raise a child by the nonpartisan Children's Rights Council.
This isn't the first time that Mr. Bush's claims collapse under examination. In the last debate, Bush bragged that he brought Democrats and Republicans together to pass Patient's Bill of Rights legislation in Texas. That was a lie. In fact, he vetoed the bill when it first passed. He didn't want patients to have the right to sue their HMOs. When the legislature passed the law again with a veto-proof majority, he was so angry that he let it become law without signing it. Now he claims to be the father of the very law that he did his best to stop.
He bragged that he worked hard to pass an "affirmative access" law in Texas, that provides automatic admission to college for graduates in the top 10% of their high school class. That too was a lie. The plan was designed by Texas lawyers and pushed through the legislature by a coalition led by Mexican American and African American legislators. It passed by a single vote in the Texas House. One of its authors, UT law professor Gerald Torres notes that Bush "did not actively work for the bill." Bush's only contribution was to indicate that he wouldn't veto it. Now he takes credit for a bill he did not lift a finger to pass.
Bush's claims on the environment also pollute reality. Bush says Texas has made great strides through his program of voluntary corporate compliance. In fact under Bush's watch, the number of days when Texas cities have exceeded federal ozone standards has doubled. Houston has surpassed Los Angeles as the smog capitol of the nation. The air pollution is so bad that a judge ordered schools to use smog meters to warn kids when it is unsafe to play outside.
Whenever the real Bush record in Texas is exposed, Republican operatives cry foul, and denounce negative "attack politics." But exposing the truth about Bush's record in Texas isn't a negative attack. It's just the truth. They think it's an attack because the truth gives lie to the tall tales spun by the Bush campaign. |
