Overall, I came away from listening to the interview with an enormous of amount of relief and gratitude that Hochberg is in the Lege tending to education. He has a deep understanding of our schools and our student population, as well as of the nuances and minutiae of education policy.
I want to clarify one thing that was discussed. Kuff asked Hochberg about Texas high schools going from four accountability tests to twelve next school year. Hochberg corrected him saying that's not true, we currently have ten and we are only increasing that number by two (go to the 12 minute mark in the interview to get to this topic.)
Well . . . technically that's true. But the reality is we are going from requiring students to take four high stakes tests to graduate to twelve, beginning in the 2011-2012 school year. Currently, all Texas high school students take ten TAKS tests during their 9th - 11th grade years. Their graduation requirement is that they have to pass four Exit tests in order to graduate - English, Math, Social Studies and Science.
These are taken during their 11th grade year, and if they don't pass, schools are required to offer remediation (which they offer during the summer and during the senior year), and students can retake those tests up to four more times to try and pass. But, they have to pass those four in order to graduate. Those other six 9th and 10th grade TAKS tests? Students can fail those, and as long as they pass their four Exit TAKS, they graduate from their Texas high school.
What's changing is that current 8th graders will have new, more rigorous testing requirements in their graduation plan. If they don't pass end of course exams in these twelve courses, they don't get a high school diploma:
Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics
Math: Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II
English: English I, English II, English III
Social Studies: World Geography, World History, U.S. History
Like Exit TAKS, schools will be required to remediate when students fail, so starting in the spring of 2012, schools will embark on the complex task of determining for every student if they failed any of their first round of three end of course exams and if they need remediation. At the same time, students will be taking their next round of courses in the next grade with an end game of having to pass end of course exams for those new courses. And, so it will go for each of 2000-3000 high school students on a campus, until they reach the spring of their senior year, where some will have passed all of their high school courses and twelve end of course exams and some will not. A system that currently requires one testing coordinator on every high school campus is going to require at least one full time testing coordinator per grade level.
If this makes you wonder how this doesn't cause the high school drop out rate to increase, you are not the only one puzzling over that.
What makes these end of course exams even more high stakes is that the Texas Education Agency has made it very, very clear that these exams will have harder questions than TAKS and the minimum score to pass will be higher than TAKS.
I recently had the opportunity to be on a TEA educator committee that examined field testing data from the Spring 2010 Biology end of course field testing. At the end of that two day adventure, the TEA assessment division gave us a detailed briefing on the upcoming end of course exams and pointed us to a presentation they made at a recent math education leadership conference as a reference (go to this link, then click on the July 14, 2010 TEA assessment update.) What TEA told us (with my commentary in italics):
Will the EOC's (end of course exams) be harder than TAKS? Yes. (For those of you who think TAKS is easy, we can go over how the current Science Exit TAKS is not a minimum skills test. Another blog post for another day.)
The minimum score to pass each EOC will be higher than TAKS.
The test items will be more rigorous - more detailed questions over more curriculum than TAKS. (Don't be fooled by new "readiness" TEKS being "fewer, deeper, clearer" - the more accurate description is "more, harder and pickier." Trust me on this one.)
The EOC score will count as 15% of the grade for the course. (Can you see the double jeopardy here? Not only do you have to make a passing score on your EOC, but your low score may cause you to fail the class, causing you to retake it, as well as the test.)
Students can retake the EOC an unlimited number of times to try and pass. (Districts will have to set a policy on whether a student who passes the EOC can retake it to try and make a higher grade in the course. Think of high performing students who are concerned about their GPA.)I'm not sure how easy it is for those not neck deep in public education to understand how much more high stakes the EOC program will be for each and every Texas high school student, but I'll do my best to paint that picture as we go forward in this school year. One thing that concerns us in science education is that while at the same time the state is ratcheting up the stakes on our testing, they are not providing us with new science textbooks to go along with our brand new, shiny Science TEKS we are implementing this year.
I'm really curious if the Lege, while trying to correct the real problem of the four 11th grade Exit TAKS covering subjects taught in 9th and 10th grades, intended to raise the stakes this much on high school graduation.
If you've got a struggling 8th grade or younger student in your own home, buckle up, because you are in for a roller coaster experience in high school, with the real possibility of crashing. If you are concerned about children in general, and the economic future of Texas, you should be paying attention, as well.
More on the Hochberg interview and my reactions in future posts.
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