Integrity Testing

[Jedoyon@aol.com]

<A HREF="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/134765801_monlets19.html";>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/134765801_monlets19.html</A> 

Integrity Testing 

Erasing problems 

Rod Paige, the secretary of Education, points to his achievements as 
superintendent of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) as evidence 
that relentless testing as required by the No Child Left Behind Act will 
improve the education of all children ("<A HREF="http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=paige13&date=20030513";>Accountability's the key to 
revitalizing our schools</A>," guest commentary, May 13). 

What Paige doesn't tell you is how he raised test scores in Houston. HISD 
enrolls 212,000 students, about 34 percent of the students in Harris County. 
According to the Intercultural Development Research Association, a research 
center in San Antonio, 52 percent of African-American teens in Harris County 
who started high school in 1997 were no longer in school in 2000-01, what 
would have been their senior year, and Paige's last year. Sixty percent of 
the Hispanic teens were also gone, as were 29 percent of the white teens. 

Paige tells us that "accountability works," but how was he accountable to the 
thousands of students who dropped out from his schools? Paige brags about how 
HISD raised test scores. It's easy to raise test scores if you can get your 
low-scoring students to drop out. 

We do need accountability in schools, but No Child Left Behind will turn 
schools into test-preparation factories. More kids will drop out, and more 
wealthy parents will put their children into private schools, where being 
educated is not synonymous with test scores. 

- David Marshak, associate professor, School of Education, Seattle University