Abby Rappaport is one of our best education journalists, and she is mostly covering Texas politics these days.
In this article, she explains the escalating revolt against testing in Texas, where it all started.
The bottom line: Texas has been obsessed with testing for the past two decades, and people are just plain sick of it. The last legislature cut $5.4 billion from the schools’ budget, but managed to find $500 million for Pearson. Abby estimates that in the next few years, Pearson will collect over $1 billion from Texas taxpayers.
That’s a lot of money by anyone’s reckoning.
The school boards are sick of it. More than 80% have passed resolutions against high-stakes testing.
Parents are sick of it. Legislatures are getting complaints in the grocery store and wherever they run into parents in their district.
Happily, Texas Republicans are sick of all the testing. Many come from small towns and rural areas and their constituents are button-holing them. They don’t want to tear up their local public school and close it down because of test scores.
Last September 30, I spoke to a joint meeting of the Texas Association of School Administrators and the Texas School Boards Association. I got a wonderful, wild, Texas-size reception. They don’t like what’s going on. They talk to their legislators. Nobody had a good word for the reign of Pearson.
So, please, all eyes on Texas. Let’s all cheer for the testing revolt that’s growing there by the hour.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And in the first proposed budgets for the current legislative session, the House budget includes no funds for the standardized testing program (a $98 million reported decrease in this area); at present, the Senate version still funds the program. At least it’s on the table at this point.
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Pearson has a special division just for Texas and they think Texas is crazy but they like the money. Sounds like someone is waking up there maybe as they still have the creationism books and their scores are not that good. Maybe, those rural districts are too much into football and not enough into education. It seems that in Texas all that counts is football and this is where Rod Paige came from who lied about the dropout rate in Houston which he said was 0% and was really about 50%. Eventually he lost his Sec. of Ed. job over this.
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Texas, although very football supportive is NOT all about football. Education, especially public education, is foremost in the majority of Texans. With the change in demographics, and the continuing of growth across the state, we KNOW how important a strong education is going to be for all of our futures. I do not consider Rod Paige as an example of how education works in Texas. With over 1200 districts and 5 million students, there continues to be motivation and dedication to offering an inspired educational experience for our students. Luckily, our Legislature only meets every two years!!!!! It is our responsibility to educate them as well. Texas is very tired of hearing how our students are not meeting the standards of other countries, and especially when it is not comparing apples to apples! We are educating ALL students, and not just those that have passed a test to push them toward a higher level education!!!! I am PROUD of Texas Educational opportunities!!
Bob Covey
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Bob, I am a product of the Houston Independent School District. I will be speaking at the Save Texas Schools rally in Austin on February 23.
Diane
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I hadn’t heard about the cut in the budget regarding testing but, knowing the legislature and how it (doesn’t) works regarding education, I could see them not putting any money in the budget for it, but still requiring school districts to do the testing. The legislature is very good at making mandates for the districts but not funding them. And Rick Perry (our esteemed governor…gag) has already indicated that he is not willing to undo any of the cuts that were made during the last legislative session where he cut the $5.4 billion. I will continue to hope that the pressure from the people will change the current situation, but I’m not going to bet on it.
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The big question is “Why do people vote for politicians who are not in their best interests?
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Well, there are some of us who don’t vote for those politicians. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people hear only what they want to hear (lower taxes) without thinking about what those taxes provide.
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There is, in fact, a significant “revolt” brewing in Texas along several fronts. It does seem that the newly elected batch of legislators are getting the message, not just from school boards, but from chambers of commerce, from business owners, from bristling educators, and from mad parents. You met with the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium while you were in Austin, DR. The little school of which I am the superintendent is numbered among that group (the tiniest school in the consortium). We are working to develop the next generation of accountability systems in Texas, one that we intend to be far more substantive, far less test driven, and with much more integrity with meaningfulness for the students it serves. In our small community we have been having dialogues for a year about what we really value for our students, much of that history documented in my blog: http://nelsonwcoulter.blogspot.com/
Thanks for your work in leading this charge.
nc
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Bob,
So proud of Texas, eh? Then why don’t you all secede from the US?
Duane
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Would rather, in helping Texas, help all American children…as this is a problem for all of us!!! But, if you know Texas, it has been considered….and sometimes quite loudly!!!
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Let us hope that sanity returns to Texas and to all states on these destruction of education issues. How insane do people have to be to destroy their future?
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