Well, perhaps you should have looked at the Times:
Researchers Cast Doubt on Texas School
'Miracle'
DUKE HELFAND, Times Education Writer
Student test score gains in Texas during the last decade have
been inflated, raising questions about the validity of academic
progress in a state touted as a model of reform, according to a report
released Tuesday by the Rand Corp.
In his quest for the White House, Texas Gov. George W. Bush
regularly cites the rising test scores of white and minority students in
his home state--what some call the "Texas miracle."
Bush campaign officials immediately attacked the Rand report as
shoddy and "dead wrong," while calling its timing suspect. The
release of the study comes just two weeks before the Nov. 7
election.
On ABC's Nightline on Tuesday night, Bush said, "I find it
interesting that kind of a renegade report comes floating out two
weeks to go in the campaign . . . and I reject their findings."
"The Rand controversy has no consequence in this election," he
said, "because it's a report that's got no weight. I mean it's
somebody's opinion, and when people look at the facts, they'll realize
that it's just background noise."
Rand officials said the timing was coincidental and defended the
integrity of the report.
"The soaring test scores in Texas do not reflect real improvement
in students' ability to read and do math," said Stephen Klein, the lead
analyst from Rand, a nonpartisan research organization that funded
the report. "Texas is doing better than the rest of the country in some
areas, but nowhere near the miracle. It's a myth."
The Rand report has important implications for California because
the state has followed Texas' lead in basing its school accountability
system heavily on a single test.
But on Tuesday, most reaction to the study focused on politics.
Bush communications director Karen Hughes pointed out that
another Rand study, released in July, concluded that Texas was
among the most effective states at helping students at all income
levels excel.
The author of the July report also was critical of the new study,
but Rand said both studies were valid.
Campaign officials for Vice President Al Gore, meanwhile, seized
on the Rand report to deride the Texas governor's record.
"Bush's claim to have improved the state of education in Texas
has been called into serious question," said Ron Klain, a senior
advisor to Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman.
"The same independent group Bush once pointed to as proof that he
has done an effective job on education as governor of Texas has
now devastated his claims."
Tuesday's report compared the progress of Texas fourth- and
eighth-graders on the state's own standardized tests with their
performance on federally sponsored exams.
The state test is called the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills
and the federal exam is known as the National Assessment of
Educational Progress. Both covered reading and math. Researchers
reviewed scores from the tests between 1992 and 1998.
The analysts found that students enjoyed far larger gains on
Texas' exams than they did on the national tests. The scores also
showed that African Americans and Latinos posted greater gains
than whites on the state tests. And the historic gap in test scores
between whites and minorities narrowed.
On the national test, however, whites, blacks and Latinos in
Texas made comparable gains and the achievement gap grew
slightly.
The findings led the analysts to suggest that the widely ballyhooed
gains on Texas' own tests may be the result of extensive test
preparation, a low standard for passing and some cheating prompted
by pressure that the system puts on teachers and administrators.
The study noted that Texas uses new versions of the test every
year. Questions on the tests are released after the exams are given
each year, and teachers are known to use the materials for extensive
test preparation. Schools with large percentages of minority and
low-income students may be doing more test prep than other
campuses, the experts said.
The researchers also said that the shrinking achievement gap on
the state test may have arisen from higher-performing white students
"topping out" on an exam that is too easy, thus artificially narrowing
the gap between them and minorities.
Klein and his fellow researchers said all these issues spelled
trouble.
"It raises very real questions about whether you can trust the
gains. . . ," Klein said. "I think the gains are misleading and inflated."
Tuesday's report contrasted with the Rand report in July. That
study, based exclusively on scores from the National Assessment of
Educational Progress, painted a far more complimentary picture of
achievement in Texas.
It found that the state, along with North Carolina and a handful of
other states, posted gains at twice the national average rate between
1990 and 1996. When scores were adjusted to factor out the effects
of students' backgrounds, Texas also came out on top.
That study of state-by-state test data also said that more
resources--such as preschool education and smaller classes--made a
bigger difference in Texas and elsewhere than tough accountability
measures such as those Bush pushed in his home state and now
supports in his race for the presidency.
Klein, the lead researcher on Tuesday's report, said the two
studies are not comparable because they reviewed different periods
and diverged sharply in scope.
But just as Bush and Gore clashed over the meaning of Tuesday's
report, so did the Rand researchers.
David Grissmer, the lead analyst on the July study, criticized his
colleagues on Tuesday. He said that comparing the state and national
tests in Texas may be problematic because the two are designed
with different purposes in mind.
He also said that his colleagues should have reviewed test data
going back to 1990. Had they done so, he said, they would have
found a smaller difference between the state and national test
results.
"There may be nothing amiss about the [Texas] test," Grissmer
said. "They may just be different tests designed to test different
things."
Klein declined to comment on Grissmer's work but expressed
confidence in his own. Grissmer's study was more in-depth and was
published as a book.
Top Rand officials defended the quality of both studies, saying
they each went through rigorous reviews by experts at the
organization and elsewhere. The studies arrived at different but
equally valuable conclusions, they said.
Rand officials also defended the timing of Tuesday's report,
saying its release shortly before the general election was only
coincidental. One Rand official pointed out that the July study, with
its glowing appraisal of Texas, came out one week before the
Republican National Convention.
"We don't produce findings for political reasons, we don't
distribute them for political reasons and we don't sit on them for
political reasons," Rand President James A. Thomson said. "This is a
scrupulously nonpartisan institution." |
