Governor Perry of Texas vetoed HB 2836. This was a bill that would have reduced the pressure to test and test and test, then test some more, in the early grades.

He earlier approved a bill to reduce the amount of testing for high school students but the anti-testing moms forgot about the elementary school children.

So Governor Perry vetoed a bill that would have cut back on testing the little ones.

Jason Stanford explains what happened here and why Perry did it.

The bill he vetoed was passed unanimously in both chambers.

This isn’t over.

In a huge victory for students, parents, educators, and local school boards, Governor Rick Perry signed HB5, a bill that reduces the quantity of state-mandated tests. Up until the last minute, activists were fearful he might veto it. But Perry deferred to the huge public outcry against high-stakes testing.

Here is a summary by Texas Association of School Boards.

Here is a statement by TAMSA, known popularly as Moms Against Drunk Testing:

Dear TAMSA members:

Today at 12:30pm, House Bill 5 became law with Governor Perry’s signature. Texas public schools can now begin to implement the positive changes including decreasing the required End-of-Course exams from 15 to 5* and increasing flexibility for high school graduation requirements. This new law also saves Texas taxpayers millions of dollars by limiting state-mandated standardized tests.

Thank YOU for all your time and support of HB 5 over the last few months. All of your calls, emails, testimony, and energy were critical to helping this bill ultimately become law.

We want to also thank the key leadership and staff in Austin for their work on behalf of public education students in Texas: the commitment of Speaker Joe Straus for declaring education a key issue of this legislative session on Day 1; the leadership of Chairman Dan Patrick and Chairman Jimmie Don Aycock for working tirelessly to create and shepherd HB5; to Lt. Governor Dewhurst for supporting HB 5 during this process; to staff members Brandy Marty and Julie Linn for their time fielding our calls and emails on behalf of the Governor, and finally to Governor Perry for listening to his constituents and signing HB 5 into law.

Please take a minute to send an email thanking these people for supporting all of the children in our public schools:

Speaker Joe Straus, Senator Dan Patrick, Representative Jimmie Don Aycock, and staffers Brandy Marty and Julie Linn: [easy cut and paste email list]
district121.straus@house.state.tx.us; Dan.Patrick@senate.state.tx.us; Jimmie.Aycock@house.state.tx.us; brandy.marty@governor.state.tx.us; julie.linn@governor.state.tx.us

Governor Perry: http://governor.state.tx.us/contact/
Lt. Gov. Dewhurst: http://www.ltgov.state.tx.us/contact.php

Again, thank you for all you did. Have a great summer!

TAMSA

* The five EOCs included in HB 5 are: English I & English II, (combined reading and writing) Algebra I, Biology, & U.S. History. Other EOCs (Geometry, Algebra II, World Geography, World History, Chemistry, & Physics) will no longer be required for graduation (including for students that have already taken them).

TAMSA’s mission is to improve public education in Texas through the use of meaningful and effective student assessments that allow for more productive classroom instruction and more efficient use of public funds.
(Forward this email to your family and friends – ask them to join too: http://www.tamsatx.org)

Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment
TAMSA Board of Directors:
Kim Cook Susan Schultz
Susan Kellner Theresa Trevino
Dineen Majcher
Laura Yeager
Joanne Salazar

Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment | 9337B Katy Freeway, #107 | Houston | TX | 77024

A reader from Houston suggests that we watch the PBS documentary on Houston’s Apollo program and watch the faces of the students:

He writes:

To see how many kids react to an overemphasis on testing, watch Dropout Nation. PBS Frontline’s Dropout Nation series featured HISD and its Apollo Program in its September broadcast. While there are some good things about Apollo-individulized tutors, more support staff, etc., it’s data driven focus contains the seed of its own destruction. Talking about tests all the time, doing test prep all the time, making kids take tests that they are not relevant to them and that they are not prepared for is wrong.

Watching these kids tell their stories is painful. Watching what some staff are willing to do help kids is heroic. Seeing testing be a focus is exasperating. I was not surprised by the emotional and physical reactions of these kids as staff kept trying to get them and keep them in school. The kids keep saying that the learning is irrelevant. They keep saying that school is boring. They keep saying that no one understands them and their plight. Telling them, “No Excuses!” is disrespectful. Children are not responsible for the circumstances that they are born in and a pat phrase is offensive.

At one point a kid shows up after being gone for days and the staff try to get him to take an SAT test that is about to start.

The Apollo program is in its 3rd year and only the featured high school, Sharpstown, has shown slight improvement. Much of those gains may be to student attrition. Teacher attrition has been high as well. Perhaps that is why Frontline did not show one classroom teacher in the whole episode.

Superintendent Dr. Grier has asked for 17 million more from the Board. If only there were a way to make sure that money went to anything but testing. Social workers, psychologists, teachers, etc. but not a dime for testing.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dropout-nation/

In my list of categories on this blog, the words “Texas” and “testing” are side-by-side. One of the biggest stories in the nation today is how ordinary folks–moms, dads, and students–in Texas are slaying the monster that ate their education.

Over the past 20-30 years, Texas became drunk on testing. The lobbyists for Pearson–headed by Sandy Kress, the architect of NCLB–made sure that Pearson won a five-year contract for nearly $500 million in 2011 at the same time that the legislature striped away $5.4 Billion from the public schools.

After I wrote a post about the last minute flurry of bills about vouchers and charters and online charters in this legislative session (which ends May 26), I received this informative comment about the state of education in Texas:

“Texas public schools will survive. Sen. Patrick is doing some good things by shepherding HB5 through the Senate. He learned from his mistakes in past sessions when he championed the expansion of testing. I should let him use my time machine to see what a confusing and hopeless mess expanding charters and vouchers will be leading to graft and corruption.

There’s lots of bills that need help! HB5, HB2836, HB866 primarily. Not only will HB5 reduce standardized testing, but it will put some controls in place such limiting benchmark testing by districts and removing testing company lobbyists from state education committees and other policy making bodies. Sandy Kress and others were allowed to sit on various committees while being paid by Pearson. The others will strip testing in lower grades as HB5 only deals with the 15+ End-of-Course exams in High School which my daughter is taking now along side her AP exams.

Thanks to other groups as well, one of which is in the chambers tweeting updates including photos-Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessments. They are active on facebook and send out regular and timely email calls to action. They’ve also been out barnstorming around the state for nearly a year having just spoken at Eanes ISD to parents and other interested members of the community.

The other group is Houston’s Community Voices for Public Education that stays in touch with Houston’s local communities producing and holding meetings in multiple languages. CVPE members have packed Houston Independent School District Board meetings and motivated students, teachers, parents and professors to testify about the damage that standardized testing does to those that need a real education most. Besides the State required tests, HISD has been doing benchmark testing for years adding to the testing mania. At some campuses benchmarks are given on a 2-3 week cycle. CVPE just last week spoke again before the Board requesting limits on this and pushing for HISD to track and report the time and expenses related to benchmarking. This is a district that slashed nearly 1,000 staff two years ago and then adopted a TNTP inspired teacher appraisal tool within months that required way more of everyone left.

Texans are realizing that we’ve been doing the accountability thing the longest, (spending 90 million a year on testing alone!) and have little to show for it. The spending inequity is stark in Texas and to think of all the services and opportunities that we could have provided to kids that went to Pearson’s bottom line is heartbreaking.

The first school I worked at in Houston was on the East Side and already by the late 1990’s the band was gone. The school paper eliminated. The auto tech space was being converted into classrooms for the extra math and reading teachers and tutors that were on their way. I scratched my head thinking that a healthy journalism program would be great way to inspire kids to write. Administration decided that workbooks were the way to go. Wealthier schools and districts did not do this as parents would not have stood for it. Those schools and districts are still doing fine. In suburban Dallas, Allen High School is about to break ground on a 60 million dollar football stadium. Man, what I could have done with a piece of Pearson’s 90 million or Allen’s 60 million.

Make those calls to your representatives and then to Governor Perry and Lt. Governor Dewhearst. They need to hear from real Texans, not Bloomberg, Broad, Gates and Waltons.”