Accountability/Accreditation
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK -- TEXAS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
By Donna Garner
Feb 14, 2008, 08:35

The Texas State Board of Education ended its meeting today with a
compromise.  Basically, the motion said that the chairman of the  SBOE
 would appoint a balanced subcommittee (i.e., Gail Lowe,  
 Lawrence Allen, Tincy Miller, Don McLeroy, and Robert Scott) to work  
 with the Texas Education Agency staff.  They will consider the  
 Standards Work document and input from all interested parties  
 including the teacher work groups. A facilitator will be chosen to  
 write the final English / Language Arts / Reading document which  
 will include the work of the college-ready vertical teams.  The  
 final document will be reviewed by the Committee of the Full Board  
 and presented for First Reading on March 27 and for Second Reading  
 on May 22, 2008.

 This sounds fair and equitable, doesn't it?  However, let me tell  
 you what this really means.  Back in 1997 when the present ELAR/TEKS  
 were adopted, it was the "Coalition" who pushed our schools into  
 whole language (i.e., balanced literacy), process over content,  
 performance-based projects, grade inflation, lack of attention to  
 detail, holistic writing, no emphasis on grammar, and invented  
 spelling.  Today these Coalition people dusted off their same  
 strategies and used them once again to browbeat the SBOE into  
 submission.

 Recently the SBOE conservatives realized that the Standards Work  
 document was a muddle and could not be reorganized nor rewritten to  
 produce a seamless delivery of curriculum to K-12 students.

 Last week the Substitute Amendment (http://ednews.org:80/articles/22801/1/Substitute-Amendment-to-English...
 ) was revamped and rewritten based in large part on the Texas  
 Alternative Document which had been produced by Texas classroom  
 teachers in 1997.  They wanted to stem the tide of mediocrity in the  
 schools and wrote a document which was clear, explicit, grade-level-
 specific, and doable in a year's time.

 Because of Gov. Bush's race for the Presidency at the time, Karl  
 Rove wanted no controversy in Texas; and the Coalition was allowed  
 to prevail, costing ten years of Texas children a quality  
 educational background in English / Language Arts / Reading.  Hence,  
 we have Texas students doing progressively worse on the SAT Writing  
 section and on the ACT, and over 50% of Texas graduates have to take  
 remedial classes in college.

 I listened online to the testimony given at the SBOE meeting today,  
 and I took careful notes.  Nearly all of the 25+ testifiers were  
 members of the "Coalition."  Their sole intent was to cast  
 aspersions on the Substitute Amendment and on me personally, stating  
 frequently that I was the lone author which is absolutely not true.  
 A list of contributors and a bibliography are attached to the  
 Substitute Amendment which clearly show that many educators and  
 experts from across Texas and the country had input into the document.

 Yes, of course, I was the lead writer; but someone has to be.  A  
 document does not just hop out of a computer all by itself!  After  
 all, Thomas Jefferson was the writer of the Declaration of  
 Independence; yet no one credits him alone for that document.  It  
 was written by a group of dedicated people just as the Substitute  
 Amendment was.

 Interestingly enough, in the course of the testimonies given by the  
 Coalition members, they accidentally revealed that the Standards  
 Work document has serious flaws, particularly taken together as a  
 group. These flaws seem very significant to me:

·         is full of gaps

·          repeats itself without being carefully scoped and sequenced

·          emphasizes process over content

·          is poorly organized

·          has unclear and inconsistent terminology

·          does not have a tight progression of scaffolding across the grade  
 levels

·          contains skills which are out of order

·          is so heavy on reading comprehension skills that students will have  

·          almost no time to read for content knowledge

·          is developmentally inappropriate in Grade 3

·          lacks a glossary of terms

·          assumes students have learned important skills without delineating  

·          when those skills should have been taught previously

·          takes almost no notice of the college-readiness standards

·          contains no list of literary suggestions

·          misplaces the teaching of biographies

·          lacks higher-level thinking skills requiring students to integrate/
 evaluate/critique

·          contains unmeasurable/untestable elements

·          uses inappropriate cues which show lack of progression of skills

·          does not help struggling readers

·          needs to be refined with better coherence of skills

·          does not have a distinct grammar strand

 Ironically after this litany of complaints against the Standards  
 Work document which were given in passing by the Coalition  
 testifiers, they always ended on the same note. "It is more  
 important to spare the feelings of the teacher groups who spent two  
 years creating this inferior Standards Work document than to  
 consider the superior Substitute Document."

 In essence, these Coalition members decided the process of writing  
 the standards became more important than what was in the actual  
 document itself.  Unfortunately, Texas children could care less  
 about whether a few English teachers get their feelings hurt.  The  
 important thing for these students is what is found in the standards  
 document which determines what type of education they are going to  
 receive.

 During the course of the day, it was revealed that the teacher work  
 groups who worked on the draft with Standards Work did not meet  
 longitudinally K-12 but instead met in small grade-level groups.  
 That is why the final document is so disjointed and full of gaps.  
 The right hand did not know what the left hand was doing, yet the  
 student is supposed to navigate the chasms with ease.  For instance,  
 Grade 2 students are expected to "identify and use progressive, past  
 progressive tense, and irregular verbs" even though they have not  
 had careful instruction on how to locate a verb.

 The Standards Work document emphasizes process over content with the  
 New Jersey Writing Project dominating the classroom. The Substitute  
 Amendment emphasizes content and the students' acquiring a strong  
 knowledge base of foundational skills.

 Nothing is going to change in our state's public schools until all  
 teachers know what it is that they are supposed to teach at each  
 grade level, and they should not have to run to a consultant or  
 curriculum director to find out. Students' skills are not going to  
 improve until they can mentally connect new concepts with previously  
 learned concepts. The Substitute Amendment does both; it gives  
 clear, systematic direction to teachers and students.

 What will happen now to the ELAR standards?  I honestly do not  
 know.  I guess anything is possible. – Donna Garner