When accountability systems fail Texas Public Accountability Consortium works to create next-gen assessment and accountability By Dacia Rivers
Texans are known for their colorful idioms. Evocative and to-the-point, many Texas turns of phrase are applicable in countless situations. One of the most famous of these is “all hat and no cattle,” as in “Boy, that A-F accountability system is all hat and no cattle.” Or how about: “If you don’t like the weather, give it a minute.” In Texas public schools, the weather is due for a mighty big change, especially when the climate you’re talking about is the one surrounding public school accountability.And it’s been a long time coming. In 2006, after decades in which the Texas public education system had grown increasingly reliant on punitive, compliance-focused accountability centered around a single, standardized test, 35 public school superintendents began working together with TASA to build a new vision for Texas’ public schools.Twelve years later, the visioning document they created is the driving force behind TASA’s transformation initiative, a large part of which focuses on a change away from a focus on standardized testing to multiple measures of assessment and a more comprehensive community-based type of school accountability. Although the state’s public school accountability system has only grown more punitive with the 2015 adoption of A-F ratings, which will brand schools and districts with letter grades based largely on the results of a single standardized test, there continues to be pushback from those who know a more comprehensive, less “one-size-fits-all” type of system is the better solution. They are the driving force behind the Texas Public Accountability Consortium (TPAC), a group of 51 school districts working together to come up with a new, well-rounded and inclusive way of assessing schools based on the needs of Texas’ many diverse communities that will be more accurate and instructive than the current system.
The failure of A-F accountability TPAC was formed in 2017, after John Tanner, founder of Test Sense, wrote a series of articles on accountability for TASA as a response to the unpopular A-F accountability system. The articles grew into a conversation, which led to the creation of a consortium of 44 school districts looking to change the way Texas school districts measure success.
Many school leaders across Texas agree with this thinking. In 2017, 566 Texas school boards passed resolutions opposing the A-F rating method, pointing out that besides being culturally biased, similar rating systems have not fared well in other states and give districts limited feedback on what they’re supposed to do to improve.
“There are no A-F success stories,” says Eric Simpson,TASA’s director of learning and leadership services. “The foundation these accountability systems are built upon is seriously flawed.”
Five years before that, 881 school boards adopted a resolution that noted the state’s over-reliance on standardized, highstakes testing and called on the Texas Legislature to reexamine the public school accountability system to develop a system that relies on multiple assessments and more accurately reflects what students know, appreciate, and can do.
Simpson says that Texas’ A-F system was introduced to give power to privatization, and it is harmful since it relies in large part on data from a standardized test that is being misused. “The STAAR was never designed to predict college readiness, and it was never designed to measure growth,” Simpson says, “but those are two things that it’s being forced to do within our current state accountability system.” 16
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Those who lead Texas public schools are saying that public school accountability — and the way students are assessed — must change.To bring about this change,TPAC has partnered with multiple groups, including the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Learning, Envision Education, NWEA, the Great Schools Partnership and the Research Triangle Institute.