TCTA testimony on STAAR implementation, House Public Education Jan. 23, 2012

Testimony to the House Public Education Committee

Re: Interim charge related to implementation of new state assessment system (STAAR)

By Holly Eaton, Director of Professional Development and Advocacy

January 23, 2012

Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on an interim charge that we view as extremely important as a core issue in our state education system – the implementation of the new state assessment system.

We were among those in the last legislative session calling for a delay in implementing STAAR, especially given the drastic funding cuts that were made to programs like the Student Success Initiative that we view as essential in order to provide the support for students to succeed under a much more rigorous testing system.  As you’re aware, though, calls to delay moving forward with STAAR were met with stiff resistance by key Senate leaders and certain business groups.  As you’re also aware, the more successful attempt last session to mitigate the impact of STAAR, HB 500, did pass on a voice vote by the House, although it failed to ultimately pass the legislature.

But it’s the significance of the HB 500 debate on the House floor that should not be overlooked, in that it showed a growing sense of doubt and frustration, by legislators and their constituents, about whether the amount of time, effort and funding involved in our state assessment system provides a sufficient benefit in light of the costs, both tangible and intangible.  This larger issue is the one upon which we focus our comments, and we hope that attention to this larger and more important issue is not superseded by smaller issues such as the 15% course grade requirement.  The one point we would make about the 15% requirement is that those who are advocating for TEA to come up with a standardized method might reflect back a couple of sessions ago to a bill requiring the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to determine a uniform method of calculating high school students’ GPAs for college admission purposes.  This legislation met with such fierce resistance from school districts wanting local control in grading policies, that it died a quick death the following legislative session and before it was ever implemented.

One of the positions we have long held as an organization is to oppose the increased use of standardized testing in our education system – we have always wondered why our state has required students to take more tests than are already required by federal law.  Apparently we aren’t alone in our query, as one of your own esteemed committee members filed legislation last session to scale back the amount of tests students would have to take, which we supported.  In fact, we have advanced the idea in the past that we should at least consider scaling back to what federal law requires, which would mean at a minimum, eliminating the writing tests and the social studies tests.  There’s even an indication at the federal level of interest in scaling back the number of required tests as apparently current NCLB/ESEA reauthorization drafts in both chambers of Congress eliminate the science test requirement.

Our overreliance on standardized testing has certainly taken its toll, and as observers compare our performance to countries with high-performing students, we’d be remiss not to note that many of these countries, like Finland, have no external standardized tests used to rank students or schools and have, in fact, deliberately avoided them.  We appreciate your continued sensitivity to the issues posed by an ambitious new accountability system at a time of scarce resources.  

Thank you for this opportunity to testify.