New TEA Chief Faces His Own Test

Try as he might, incoming Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott won’t be able to reform the Texas Assessment of Knowllege and Skills.

Today he’s announced an ambitious strategy to reduce cheating on TAKS. It’s the latest strategy in a line of policy moves begun under his successors. His own proposed solutions include putting state-based monitors in schools which submit ‘suspicious’ test scores. To his credit, Scott recognizes that school district personnel themselves might be causing their own problems. Kids are not the only ones cheating.

A school’s accountability ratings could be pulled over these cheating allegations. Few things can raise a parent’s eyebrows as quickly as an ‘unacceptable’ rating attached to their child’s school.

Despite lacking an education background, Scott has an impressive resume. Most recently he served as chief deputy for former TEA head Shirley Neeley. He started at TEA as an assistant to another agency head, Mike Moses. Bridging party politics, he’s worked for U.S. Representative Gene Green during Green’s Texas Legislature days.

So it’s all the more puzzling why he has not transferred such political savvy to this newest position. With an emphasis on ever-higher scores and one exam as the end-all-be-all of academic knowledge, TAKS only continues to undercut the quality of Texas education. Students and their schools cheat because they absorbed the State’s own admonition that a high TAKS score is what matters.

Scott thus should not act surprised they want to pass at any cost. And he should not enact punitive measures against them either. They are, after all, pursuing that ‘perfect score’ that the public education system demands. The veteran policy wonk should not want such a corrupted system to remain, in any format.

Nobody likes to admit when they’ve been sold a bad product, but the only true reform of this testing program is throwing it out. These programs are only about keeping the testing companies and testing scanners perpetually in business. It’s not at all about giving kids a love of learning or even acknowledging that there are different — and equally valid — styles of learning.

TAKS is broken. We would not continue to drink expired milk and wonder why we stayed sick. TEA will only recover through the elimination of TAKS.