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January 18, 2017 6:32 PM
Senate Education Chairman vigorously defends A-F rating system for schools
Superintendents push back: “Why is so much of this about a label?…When are we going to start talking about what’s behind the label?”
Senate Education Committee Chairman Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, pushed
hard to promote the unpopular A-F accountability system at the Texas
Association of Business policy conference, saying a high school diploma
in Texas needs to mean more than a participation trophy.
The impending A-F accountability system was not popular
when it passed last session and it did not get any more popular when
preliminary grades rolled out this month.
Superintendents across the state have rolled out a
loosely coordinated campaign against the system, which has been made confusing
in some cases because school leaders have recycled talking points from other
states with A-F systems that are not identical to the Texas efforts.
“We’re going to set this thing up, and we’re going to set
the goalposts in the ground,” Chairman Taylor told business leaders. “And right
now, yes, it looks like a bell curve, but everything in life looks like a bell
curve. But if you set the goal posts in the ground, and then you let everybody
know what they have to do to get to an ‘A,’ it all starts moving toward the
goal line.”
The state has continued to move from test to test and
standard to standard, Taylor said. Teachers have complained about it all the
time. Holding the passing standard steady will give school districts the idea
of what might be necessary to cross the goal line, he said.
“We all get touchdowns. That’s the end of the day,”
Taylor said. “Not to give everyone a participation trophy. Not ‘Hey, 12 years
in a Texas public high school? Guess what? You’re ready to go.’ Then you find
out you have to take remedial education or you won’t get that job.”
Taylor’s goalpost argument might be compelling to some.
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright January 18, 2017, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved 