Every Student Succeeds Act and the Texas System of Educational Standards

EDUA 6380 - Digital Assessment of Learning

This week’s assignment focused on student testing conducted by the State of Texas and the detail on the transition process from TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge Skills) student testing and a descriptive process of the transition from TAKS into the STAAR (State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness) student testing. The STAAR bridge study was a three-stage process: content overlap analysis, empirical analysis, and impact data analysis and this was authorized by the 80th and 81st sessions of the Texas Legislature and would replace the TEKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills). Vertical Scale Technical Report (2013) The state summative assessment redesign is a result of House Bill (HB) 3906 passed by the 86th Texas Legislature in 2019. The Texas Education Agency (TEA), working with a wide range of education stakeholders, including the Assessment Education Advisory Committee, has been exploring the most instructionally supportive approach to implementing these changes. TEA State Summative Assessment Redesign FAQ (2022)

Viewing the efforts made to improve student testing and more accurately measure performance and to the degree that students are mastering the course work, it is apparent to me that politicians, school leadership, school administrators, and teachers are under tremendous pressure to close the achievement gap. As researched by Amadeo (2023) and further reviewed by Somer G. Anderson, they contend that the United States isn't investing as much in human capital as other developed countries and its comparative advantage has fallen behind as a result. Further, U.S. students' math skills have remained stagnant for decades and our country is falling behind many other countries that have greatly improved, such as Japan, Poland, and Ireland and U.S. test scores are below the global average. Furthermore, Amadeo (2023) infers that the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science for testing year 2018 and U.S. students’ math scores have remained steady since 2003, as well as science, which has remained about the same since 2006 without significant improvement.

One of my takeaways is the awesome responsibility of educators and those individuals who are in the profession of Educational Instructional Design and curriculum development to evaluate current teaching methodologies and practices and assess “what’s working well” and determine “what is not working and why”. The state’s efforts to collect accurate empirical data was an important step and their process was very methodical because it ensured a smooth transition from the TAKS into the STAARS testing program. It is incumbent on Educational Instructional Designers and Curriculum Specialists to take a deep dive review the empirical data and attain conclusions that can direct us on what can be done better to close the achievement gap. France (2023) shared her experiences in this area and reported that while it seemed intuitive, the more individualized the curriculum was, the more personalized it would be, but implementation was not quite as simple. She learned that overindividualizing curriculum has unsustainable consequences. She further found that this approach of personalization failed to create conditions for empowerment, students were working on different activities—taking away opportunities for learners to connect. France also stated that creating, monitoring, and assessing individualized learning plans – even a class of fewer than 20 students—created an excess of data and a great deal of work, without a proportional return on the teacher’s time investment, thus creating a chaotic running around the classroom, putting out fires, clarifying misconceptions, and helping learner became physically, emotionally, and cognitively draining. Finally, France (2023) A minimalist mindset toward designing learning experiences encourages efficiency by cutting out practices that benefit neither teachers nor students and amplify mutually beneficial practices. Educators can simplify instructional design by being intentional with learning design and taking an embodied approach, as opposed to the disembodied approach that breaks the curriculum down into pieces and industrializes it. I found this instructional approach very enlightening; all my teachings have been that learner individualization is key for learners’ success and while I still hold to this approach, I agree with France in that too much of one thing can be detrimental. Somewhere in between, there is a balance and following a minimalist approach, I do believe we can maximize learner opportunities while empowering them and promoting peer engagement.

The efforts undertaken by Texas to move from TAKS into the STAAR testing system have been slow and painful and because the results of STAAR’s student testing carry so many implications for teachers, administrators, schools, and districts, agreeing on how to implement a fair rating system will be difficult to implement without pushback from the school districts across the state. I chose to investigate this further and found an article that challenges the Texas Education Agencies report on school district ratings. Lopez (2023) reported that a Travis County judge temporarily blocked the Texas Education Agency from releasing this year’s annual school ratings after finding that the state’s new rating system—which was to debut this fall—is unlawful and would harm districts across the state. The TEA reported that it would appeal the decision and further defended the report by saying that “this ruling completely disregards the laws of this state and, for the foreseeable future, prevents and A-F performance information from being issued to help millions of parents and educators improve the lives of our students.” My interest in this topic is based on a more pragmatic approach, and while the rating system of A-F appears to be the best option for differentiating student performance and achievement, how we analyze and draw conclusions from the data needs a lot more work. Meanwhile, the TEA and schools have to figure out a compromise on how STAARS data can be shared with educators so they can analyze and form their conclusions and develop approaches to mitigate or improve the instructional design of student learning opportunities.

For Future Reference:

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/10/27/texas-school-ratings-blocked-judge-ruling-tea/

I chose this reference because the outcomes of how Texas finally reports on the A-F rating system will have a reverberating impact on our educational system and the data reported will be an educator's north star for creating continuous improvement instructional models for the students.

References: