September 11, 2014      6:21 PM
Texas schools losing ground to other states in business report on education
“If we’re not getting kids through the system, we probably need to ask about the value” of democratizing Advanced Placement
Texas schools continue to lose ground to other states in the
biannual US Chamber of Commerce’s Leaders & Laggards report,
dropping from the middle of the pack to a grade of “D” when compared to other
states’ progress.
The Leaders
& Laggards report, just like Education Week’s Quality
Counts, varies the outcomes it measures in its reports, making multi-year
comparisons difficult. And the report also reflects the chamber’s own policy
preferences: broader options for school choice; policies that support
high-demand careers; tougher teacher evaluations; and access to technology that
provides instructional options.
“We use a bell curve for a real simple reason,” AEI researcher Rick
Hess said of the results. “We’re not sure anybody knows what the right
number of kids passing the NAEP should be. We could
say every state should be passing AP tests at 100 percent, and then every state
would have an ‘F.’ That doesn’t seem to bring a lot of
effort to the conversation, so we compared each state to other states in the
union.”
By Kimberly Reeves
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