The Core Knowledge Blog

Some Texas schools and districts have raised their academic rankings without actually improving student scores on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, according to the Dallas Morning News, which files a terrific piece of reporting on the problem.

For example, TAKS reading scores slipped this year at Medrano Elementary School in Dallas. But under a new procedure granted by the Texas Education Agency, Dallas school officials expect Medrano to rise from “acceptable” to the more impressive “recognized” when 2008 rankings come out in August….Critics say this bureaucratic sleight-of-hand can make schools look good on paper when many students still need help. Why, those critics ask, would school leaders strive to improve learning when they can use automatic loopholes as a means to elevate or maintain their ratings?

The paper quotes a Dallas associate superintendent who says, “There are so many measures in an urban district that we have to deal with. When a school gets rated lower because of one group, that is really demoralizing. It condemns the whole school because of one group.”

Am I missing something here? Isn’t the entire point of accountability to guarantee good outcomes for every group of students? Say what you will about NCLB, but redefining failure as success is most certainly not the way to go, as Ed Trust’s Daria Hall points out.

It’s this whole set of decisions that are being made in the interest of adults and not kids. It’s to make schools look better than they are, rather than confronting the fact that far too few students are doing reading or math or science at the level they should be.