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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ColtonGang who wrote (53126)	10/27/2000 10:51:04 AM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Thursday, October 26, 2000 “Gore Attack on Texas Schools Misses the Mark,” USA Today, Editorial, 10/26/00 “Reporters covering the Bush campaign Tuesday were treated to the equivalent of a four-alarm political fire: Their hotel-room message lights fired up at dawn alerting them to a new report that claims that the Texas education miracle is little more than a Potemkin schoolhouse. “Those phone calls placed by Gore political operatives were followed up with a helpful personal delivery of the 16-page report from the respected Rand Corp. raising ''serious questions'' about the Texas success story. It turns out there's a mismatch between the large gains Texas students show on state tests and the smaller gains they make on national tests, Rand concluded. “So much for claims by Texas Gov. George W. Bush that Texas is successfully closing racial learning gaps, crowed the Gore camp. “But as last-minute October political surprises go, this one's a dud. “Nothing special going on in Texas schools? Then explain a host of other findings, all based on the most reliable data from national tests called the National Assessment of Academic Progress, the same tests that Rand considered. Among them: “If black fourth-graders in every state scored as well on national math tests as they do in Texas, the country's white/black learning gap in math would shrink by a third. “If black eighth-graders everywhere wrote as well as their peers in Texas, the black/white achievement gap in writing would be cut in half. “The most convincing data come from comparing minority students in California and Texas. Latinos in Texas ranked fifth in the nation on national math tests given to fourth-graders in 1996; Latino students in California ranked 47th. Among black students, Texas was in first place; California was in last. “The real message in the new Rand study is that state-developed education tests are lower quality and less useful than national tests. But that headline isn't new. Mismatches such as the one in Texas reported by Rand are routine. “The larger question raised by the report is this: Why do the 50 states insist on writing their own education standards and tests? It would be far easier to monitor quality and make comparisons if all states used the same national tests. But Republicans in Congress are blocking such plans. “Undaunted, IBM chief Louis Gerstner, who leads a non-profit group called Achieve, is working quietly below the political firing lines to develop high-quality national tests. Achieve has signed up 10 states to offer a common eighth-grade math test pegged at world-class levels. “In a politically charged climate, it helps to have the calm voices of business leaders such as Gerstner pointing out the connection between the quality of schools today and the workforce of tomorrow. In fact, in 1993 it was the Texas business community that convinced Texas educators to go along with first-in-the-nation accountability reforms. “These break down students' test results by race, then rank each school by its success in educating all children, a key in shifting educators' focus to the needs of low performers. “So how about this as a substitute October surprise? Bush demands the national testing rejected by his party, and Gore embraces annual tests with results broken out by race. Let's see those hotel message lights start blinking with that news.”