StickWithANose

Texas has long been at the forefront of implementing tough accountability measures for students and schools, and the results have been disastrous. However, as with all things related to school reform in the US, empirical realities have done nothing to slow the march toward the thorough corporatization of public schooling. This past week Gov. Rick Perry achieved a victory in “raising standards for high school graduation” beyond the already draconian, test-based ’standards’ currently in place.

I’ve recently covered the problematics of standards and assessments, but an important aspect of the accoutability dynamic that I’ve yet to address is the disproportiante impact these policies have on low-income students. Looking at data from Texas, Helig and Darling-Hammond note that beginning in 10th grade students in Texas take the TAAS assessment as a requirement for high school graduation, and the result has been a perverse set of incentives and gaming strategies that keep the lowest performing students [usually low income students of color] from ever taking the tests.

A major strategy for avoiding the TAAS tests at the high school level was 9th grade retention. At its peak, more than 30% of 9th grade students were retained for 1 or more years. Of those who were retained, only 12% ever took the TAAS, and only 8% passed it. A majority of retained students left school as dropouts or disappearances.

While think-tank tools continually crow about the “success” of standards-based reforms in Texas, the statistical gains emerging from Texas are hollow victories at best; farce at worst. [For more reading: 1 2] The dirty little secret of tough accountability standards for students is that the poorest amongst us are being shuffled out of schools, and the result is the perpetuation of a multi-generational underclass and the largest prison population in the world. Only in the United States could this be viewed as success.