Update: Sandy Kress responds

About 10 days ago I posted “Let them eat tests,” a column about this basic unfairness:

1. Texas taxpayers are paying Pearson $470 million for the STAAR test.
2. Sandy Kress, the father of No Child Left Behind, lobbies for Pearson in Texas.
3. The school taxes I pay fund a system that corrupts the classroom experience for my two sons who attend an elementary school in Austin by requiring them to learn test-taking skills to pass Sandy Kress’ tests.
4. Sandy Kress, enriched in very small part by my tax dollars, chooses to send his children to private schools where they don’t have to take his standardized tests.

You can read the whole column here if you like. It was syndicated around the country, tweeted by leaders of the grassroots rebellion against the tests, and cross-posted by education researcher Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. on her blog.

On Jan. 16, 2012, Sandy Kress posted a comment under my column on her blog, and it appears the good doctor is displeased:

A decade before I had any relationship with Pearson or any company I helped push Texas’ first accountability system, including the use of annual standardized tests. The legislature approved that system, in part, because the ever-increasing inflation of grades made grades unreliable as a sole measure of student achievement. Plus, districts felt little pressure to be accountable to the state and its taxpayers to improve student achievement and close achievement gaps. The late 80s and early 90s saw stagnation in student achievement and an increasing droput rate. All this had to change.

Since 1995, Texas has seen its NAEP scores rise faster than almost all other states, and its graduation rate has gone up 9 points from 66% to 75% (the Average Freshman Graduation Rates cited in federal statistics).

Yet, the state has seen little improvement in its high schools and its success at getting students to postsecondary readiness. This is why the legislature passed HB3 over 3 years ago. Now, with end-of-course exams in high school (which ALL interest groups clamored for to reduce teaching to the test), the hope is that teaching in Texas’ high schools would become more aligned to Texas’ standards and that these measures would be more honest and transparent as to the real condition of our students with respect to their postsecondary readiness.

Fewer than 30% of our students graduate ready for postsecondary education of any kind without need of remediation. Yet, the grade inflation has only grown. 82% of grades given out in our high schools are As and Bs.

It does our children no good to have these false reads. And it does them no good to have teaching out of sync with our standards. Yet, some want to “shoot the messenger” when it comes to the tests. Let’s consider the recent poor results that have been reported on writing. Are we sure the results are wrong? Or might they validate the college teachers and employers who say in unison that most of our high school students are not taught how to write well?

End-of-course exams should function as finals, and indeed, if they were finals, we could have an actual reduction in testing. We also might find that teaching in high school would become more faithful to state standards and that our students earn diplomas that mean more than they currently do.

Now, as to this false and malicious charge that I want tests for others’ children that I would never have for my own:

Our son is a rising senior who wouldn’t take the STAAR exams wherever he went to school. He’s in the only school in Austin where he was assured four years of an advanced curriculum in Latin and a possible opportunity for some Greek in his senior year, which are his passions. As to tests, I wish his school had finals more like STAAR, but that’s another matter.

As for our daughter, we’d prefer a public high school with the Texas standards and the STAAR exams for her. Her preference was either one of two schools in our district or the virtual charter school run by the HISD. Because of policies that make no sense to us she is not eligible for any of these three schools. So, we have tough decisions to make in her case.

We can talk about the specific political and bureaucratic practices that led, and continue to lead, our children away from the public schools available to us after elementary school. But, among all “the sugary soda” we could find on that list, the standards and the tests are NOT among them.

If you don’t like HB3, fine. If you want to debate me on it, fine. You can even keep up the ad hominem attacks on me and Pearson. But keep away from spreading lies about why my wife and I make the decisions we make for our children.

Sandy Kress

I propose giving Sandy Kress a reading comprehension test. After all, he’s given my kids and millions of others that sad excuse for pedagogy for years now. And this will be easy. I won’t charge him hundreds of millions of dollars to write the test. I won’t make him hire a consultant to teach him to take the test using the “chunking” method, or a way to pass a reading comprehension test without really reading comprehensively. This lesson, like so few in your world, is free: Find in Let Them Eat Tests where I made the “false and malicious charge” that his motive in moving his kids out of traditional public schools was so they could avoid taking Pearson’s standardized tests. And as a bonus, unlike the STAAR test this isn’t timed. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Sandy Kress is a smart man and surely knows the important distinction between inferring and implying. Kress inferred that I was commenting on why he and his wife made the education choices they did for their two children. I implied nothing of the sort. In fact, I apologize for the unintended offense. What the Kress family does for its children is its business, and I salute Kress on being an obviously considerate and attentive father who cares for his children’s educational opportunities.

I’m just mad my taxes are helping pay for their opportunities while my kids have to take Pearson’s tests that Kress sold. You see, this isn’t about what I am saying about Kress’ children. This is about what Kress and Pearson are doing to my sons and the millions of other Texas schoolchildren whose classroom experiences have been corrupted to serve the false idol of high-stakes standardized testing.

Moreover, I do not begrudge the freedoms Kress gives his children to make the best educational choices for themselves. I think it’s great that Kress’ son gets to take four years of Latin and maybe a year of Greek. If Texas schoolchildren weren’t taking time out of art class to drill for Pearson’s standardized tests, they might have the same opportunities. And if taxpayers weren’t paying Pearson $470 million during a time of unprecedented and crippling budget cuts, we’d even be able to afford them!

Kress presents a dizzying array of numbers that almost makes a parent forget that our kids come home from public school bragging about the test-taking skills they learned.  Rod Schroder, superintendant of the Amarillo ISD, recently testified before the House Education Committee that scores are being inflated because kids who were at-risk for failing Pearson’s tests were held back in anticipation that they would drop out and not count against a school’s scores. (Schroder’s four children, by the way, graduated from Amarillo public schools.)

But those dropouts are only part of the reason the scores are rising. Later in the House Education Committee’s hearing a UT professor named Dr. Walter Stroup testified that 72% of the test is based on test taking ability. In other words, Texas kids are becoming the Derek Zoolander of standardized testing. They’re really, really, really, ridiculously good at taking Pearson’s tests and, for the most part, unprepared for the rigors of college.

Sandy Kress and I agree on a few things: The stagnation and lack of accountability in education in the late 1980s and early 1990s “had to change.” Agreed. Also, after 20 years of following Kress’ theory of standardized testing, “teaching to the test” had become a problem. Agreed. And too few children graduate ready for college. Agreed. But I think the state’s over-reliance on standardized testing is the problem, as well as chronic underfunding of schools, poverty, and a State Board of Education that thinks the Inquisition was a good start. Kress thinks more testing is the solution.

What we also agree on is that his kids have nothing to do with any of this. I just wish since Texas is paying Pearson almost half a billion dollars when we have to cut $5.4 billion from schools, that we could find the money for all children to have the first-class education the Kress children get. His kids might get to take Greek. My kids get Greek-style austerity, and Kress says, “Let them eat tests.”

Update: Last night Dr. Valenzuela cross-posted my response to Sandy Kress on her blog, whereupon he responded once again.  I’ll paste his entire response below before addressing each of his points.

Stanford is asking where he makes the false charge I don’t send my kids to public schools so they can avoid the standardized tests.

Let’s consider: “If Kress really believed that the tests made schools better, he’d send his own kids there.” Or, when he likens our family’s school decisions to “forbidding” my own children “from rotting their teeth out.”

Stanford now associates me with the practice of pulling children out of art class to drill for an end of year test. That’s yet another false charge!

I totally oppose any such practice. Indeed, the local school boards ought to ban the practice and, more, they ought to ban all generalized benchmark testing. The state tests ought simply be a two hour exercise for which virtually all preparation should be effective teaching to state standards.

I can hear the cry already: “they” set such high stakes for the test, “they” have “made us” do these stupid things. No! Nonsense! The tests should have consequences. But drill and kill is no solution. Good teaching to the standards is the only solution that works, and I refuse to be identified with the crap that is done instead.

Stanford is right: we shouldn’t make an idol of these tests, any more than the test to get a driver’s license or the test to enter the military or the SAT or the test to get a license to practice law or any of the dozens of tests my children and Stanford’s children will have to take in their lives.

But for over 20 years, more than half of which I represented no one but myself, I have believed that the state and its taxpayers have a right and a duty to know objectively whether students are learning to its standards in return for the funds they spend on education. I believed this long before I represented Pearson, and I suspect I’ll believe it long after I represent Pearson. So, do me the favor of arguing with me on the merits and not based on yet another false charge that this is my view only because I now do work for Pearson.

While you’re hurling charges my way, have you ever considered that I work for Pearson because they do work that fits with views I’ve held my whole career? Well – like my views or not – that’s a whole lot closer to the truth if the truth interests you.

And now, to respond:

Stanford is asking where he makes the false charge I don’t send my kids to public schools so they can avoid the standardized tests.

Let’s consider: “If Kress really believed that the tests made schools better, he’d send his own kids there.” Or, when he likens our family’s school decisions to “forbidding” my own children “from rotting their teeth out.”

This is a case of Sandy Kress inferring what I am not stating, though given his understandable defensiveness about discussing family business in a political context I can sympathize with his reaction. I did not state that the purpose of him taking his kids out of the regular public-school system was to avoid them having to take the Pearson tests he sold to our school system, but this is an inevitable consequence. And if Kress believed that taking these tests provided a superior education, then it would be logical to put his children in public school. But it does not follow that the only reason to take his kids out of school is to avoid Pearson’s tests. Why Kress took his kids out of public school his his business, and I wish his family well.

I will grant his point about my “sugary soda” metaphor. A disinterested bystander could easily draw the wrong inference from my attempt to express the hypocrisy of this whole mess. It would be accurate to say that Kress, through his lobbying for No Child Left Behind and for Pearson, has required my children to drink sugary soda. But it would not be accurate to give the impression that he has forbidden his own children from drinking sugary soda. I regret the miscommunication.

Stanford now associates me with the practice of pulling children out of art class to drill for an end of year test. That’s yet another false charge!

I totally oppose any such practice. Indeed, the local school boards ought to ban the practice and, more, they ought to ban all generalized benchmark testing. The state tests ought simply be a two hour exercise for which virtually all preparation should be effective teaching to state standards.

Yes, I do, though I will grant that this is an unintended, if inevitable, consequence of judging our educational system by one test score. Dr. Linda McNeil of Rice University called this “Enron-style accountability” because the now-bankrupt company also judged itself by one measure: its stock price. Nothing else mattered, not debt, not cash on hand, not whether anything they did had any basis in logic. Consequently, Enron rigged its own system to boost its stock price at the expense of the company’s health, much in the same way schools teach test-taking skills at the expense of actually educating children.

But we agree on two things already here: We both oppose pulling kids out of Class A to drill for a test on Subject B, and we both oppose the misuse of what you call generalized benchmark testing. So we’re making progress, though I wager we would be making more progress if Pearson weren’t making money they way things are.

I can hear the cry already: “they” set such high stakes for the test, “they” have “made us” do these stupid things. No! Nonsense! The tests should have consequences. But drill and kill is no solution. Good teaching to the standards is the only solution that works, and I refuse to be identified with the crap that is done instead.

Stanford is right: we shouldn’t make an idol of these tests, any more than the test to get a driver’s license or the test to enter the military or the SAT or the test to get a license to practice law or any of the dozens of tests my children and Stanford’s children will have to take in their lives.

He had me at “Stanford is right”. And I don’t think Kress intended to create the false ideology of high-stakes standardized testing that has corrupted Texas classrooms any more than Dr. Frankenstein wanted his monster to terrorize the village or Dr. Oppenheimer wanted to kill Japanese civilians. But teaching to the test is the direct and inevitable consequence of attaching high-stakes to standardized testing.

Tests, like elections, should have consequences. I’ve always thought that a consequence of a diagnostic test would be to teach the student what he or she doesn’t know, and maybe Kress agrees with me. But that begs the question: Why won’t I, my children, or their teachers ever see the graded tests so they can learn from their mistakes? They’ll get scores, but no constructive feedback.

High-stakes do not improve a faulty theory or a bad test. (Kudos to Kress, by the way, on Pearson using the pineapple question in other states. Taxpayers all over the country are paying for the same test problem that was so laughable Pearson didn’t bother to score the answers.) If college readiness is important, then why don’t we require college-bound Texas public school students to take the ACT or the SAT, two tests colleges consider valid? Taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay to write it, and we could judge our progress against students in other states. One problem I can anticipate is that Pearson would lose money. Pity.

But for over 20 years, more than half of which I represented no one but myself, I have believed that the state and its taxpayers have a right and a duty to know objectively whether students are learning to its standards in return for the funds they spend on education. I believed this long before I represented Pearson, and I suspect I’ll believe it long after I represent Pearson. So, do me the favor of arguing with me on the merits and not based on yet another false charge that this is my view only because I now do work for Pearson.

While you’re hurling charges my way, have you ever considered that I work for Pearson because they do work that fits with views I’ve held my whole career? Well – like my views or not – that’s a whole lot closer to the truth if the truth interests you.

Tagged as: Enron, Sandy Kress, STAAR, standardized testing