Harrison Bergeron said:
cowboycwr said:
Harrison Bergeron said:
cowboycwr said:
Mitch Blood Green said:
Harrison Bergeron said:
Mitch Blood Green said:
cowboycwr said:
Another example of blaming everything other than the system when schools in Chicago are empty. 27 students TOTAL attend a building built for 1,000 students.....
But people don't want to talk about how much is spent per student, the race of the students, the culture/community the school is in, the leaders, etc.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/chicago-half-empty-schools-reveal-crisis-city-leaders-refuse-confront
There's a lot to unpack here. I went to Chicago Public Schools. I did t but attend the same High School as my siblings. Why? Because we could test and pick our school. We all went to top notch schools. Many of my classmates traveled an out our more to attend my school. (I also had a classmate who's parents bout their kid a Lincoln Park condo so that she didn't have to travel as far).
In any case, my school choice was far superior than the "high income" school my daughter attended.
I don't know why a school fails or is successful. I believe it's more than the money put into it.
100%. I had a similar experience and would make the same contrast between my high school and my kids'.
My school was majority minority, but it was in a smaller city with small town values. Sure we had some bad kids but most kids came from relatively stable homes and parents generally were involved. We also had some of the best academic programs in the state and regularly won athletic and academic competition. And I took Latin.
It's 80% culture and 20% funding.
Not making it a political thing, but schools started failing when corporal punishment was phased out. You see a paddle on the wall in elementary school you behave. That behavior starts to be ingrained. I got three licks for chewing gum in 9th grade - never chewed gum again at school.
Funny now. There was a boiler room that people swore had a whipping machine in it. Of course, as happens with urban legends, people knew someone who had to go in it.
We also had the room where the teachers went to smoke.
The worse thing I think done to education in the last 25 years (in Texas) is that test. I understand that we need to measure progress. Not sure we have the proper mechanism.
The STAAR test is the worst.... the idea of testing in TX has been around for over 30 years.
IF there is going to be a test it HAS to be tied to moving to the next grade, graduation, etc.
As it is now the test only matters in high school. If a kid fails a test in 3-8 it means nothing. They still go to the next grade, they don't have to retake it or anything else. They have to do extra hours of "tutoring" the following year...... which makes no sense why they have to do extra tutoring for 4th grade math while in 5th grade, for example, where they basically just get extra time on 5th grade material.
In high school it doesn't even matter that much either. Kids just retake it until their senior year and then they can do other things to "replace" the test. Since the test (STAAR) has been around since 2012 we have kids graduating HS that have never passed a single STAAR test......
I genuinely do not have an opinion on the STAAR test. But I do not really understand its being used as the "root of all evil" for public education either. I can see the value of some standardized measure of student performance. We've been doing it for probably 50 years - I am old enough to remember the TABS and TEAMS tests
It isn't so much the existence of the test. It is all the "Extras" that go with it.
We need some sort of test to measure what kids know, if they go on to the next grade, etc.
But making the test tied to school accountability rankings and the state coming to take over a district but the kids have zero accountability is a little stupid. Ok A lot stupid.
A kid can fail the math and English test in every grade from 3rd through 8th and still go on to the next grade level. No repercussions. But the teacher will be asked why they failed, how are they going to get more kids to pass the test, maybe even reassigned, etc. and if the school does bad enough for 5 straight years the state comes in to take over.
The test has to have a meaning for the kids. Like the SAT or ACT. IF they do well it helps them get into college, get scholarships, or with the PSAT with advanced high school courses for college credit.
But the STAAR.... nothing. They take it and never look at it again. They take it mid April and don't get scores until the summer. They never look at the questions, their answers, go over why they got it wrong, what the right answer was, or any of that type of stuff you should do after a test (in a class).
TLDR answer- it is the fact that almost EVERYTHING for schools is tied to the STAAR test.
That makes a ton of sense. Seems like if a student fails the STAAR she should not matriculate to the next grade. Not sure what is a good alternative to evaluating efficacy of the education system.
A test could be a good measure of evaluating the education system. But the test has to be good/valid.
Right now it is neither.
As another poster pointed out it uses vocabulary above Grade level. For example, on the 3rd grade math test (8 and 9 year old kids) it uses words considered to be 5th or 6th grade words. Like Expression (in math terms) or equivalent.
Another problem is the pass rates. They can used to change every year. They do still often change.
3rd grade math in 2025 needed 15 out of 37 to pass. 2026 it was 16 out of 37. 2023 it was 14 out of 37.
Then if you go grade by grade the rates change. And can be drastic once you start looking at high school tests compared to middle school.
Biology needs 10 out of 40. 8th grade science is 14 out of 35.
8th grade US History is 22 out of 49. High school US History is 21 out of 78.
But the state/schools want to look at why the pass scores for 8th grade and high school are different. They also want to compare different grade levels of students. If students score 54% on 3rd grade math the state/schools expect that the next year the 3rd grade scores should be higher, even though it is now a new group of 3rd graders. Even tracking the same group from grade to grade isn't applied evenly as it is still math but it is different content in 4th grade from 3rd grade.
Then you have the issue of the state changes what is tested each year. A standard (TEKS) may or may not be tested.
I would have no problem with a test being used to measure how schools are doing if the test were consistent, valid, and comparable. right now it is none of those.
