| Texas Education News – January 2011 |
Advertisement Final results show 86 percent of schools meet AYP Almost 86 percent of Texas schools met or exceeded the federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards, according to final results released today by the Texas Education Agency. These results show little change from the preliminary results. Fifty-six schools and 25 districts appealed their preliminary AYP results, which were issued in August. Forty-one schools and seven districts won their appeals and had their AYP status upgraded from Missed AYP to Meets AYP. The final results show that 7,241 campuses or 85.8 percent earned a Meets AYP status, while 368 or 4.4 percent Missed AYP. The remaining schools were not evaluated for a variety of reasons, including being a new campus charter or only serving prekindergarten and kindergarten students. The federal evaluations are based on: New AEIS reports released • Results of Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS); by grade, by subject, and by all grades tested;
Performance on each of these indicators is shown disaggregated by ethnicity, gender, special education, low income status, and limited English proficient status. The performance of at-risk students is also shown on the district, region, and state AEIS reports. In addition to the performance indicators, the reports provide extensive information on school and district staff, finances, programs, and student demographics. A new section was added to the district, region, and state reports beginning in 2008-09 that shows performance for selected AEIS indicators disaggregated by bilingual and ESL instructional models. Texas experiences exceptional increase in Advanced Placement program More Texas students are taking Advanced Placement (AP) tests and more students are earning top scores on the exams. Results released by the College Board, which owns and operates the AP testing program, show that 179,320 Texas students in public and private schools took AP exams in 2010. That represents a 12.8 percent increase over 2009. There was an 18.1 percent increase in Hispanic students in this state who took AP exams and a 17.3 percent increase for African-American students. Many Texas students took multiple AP exams last spring. Texans took 325,571 exams, an increase of 13.1 percent over 2009. Five school years ago, 224,168 tests were taken by Texas students. The vast majority of tests are taken by public school students. Students receive a score of 1-5 on an AP test. Many universities will award course credit for scores of 3, 4 or 5, but the scores needed to obtain course credit vary from university to university. Of the tests taken by Texans, 153,539 earned a score of three or higher. That represents an 11 percent increase over the previous year. The percentage of African-American students who earned a high score increased by 20 percent, while Hispanics had a 16 percent increase in scores of 3-5. Texas leads nation in SAT participation increase Texas alone at the top; only state to meet all college and career readiness measures Texas is the first, and so far only, state to meet all the American Diploma Project’s five key college and career readiness measures, Achieve, a national bipartisan organization, announced today In a report called Closing the Expectations Gap, Achieve said “Texas has the most comprehensive approach to college and career ready accountability.” “With the passage of HB 3 in June 2009, Texas became the only state that meets the minimum criteria Achieve believes necessary to measure and provide incentives for college and career readiness,” the report says. Texas Commissioner of Education Robert Scott said, “Texas has worked strategically and comprehensively to adopt college and career readiness curriculum standards, increase graduation standards, develop end-of-course exams, enhance our data collection systems and expand our accountability system to report college preparation information. By aligning all of these elements, Texas is clearly leading the race to prepare its students for a successful life after high school graduation.” Texas was one of the 13 charter member states to form the America Diploma Project Network, which Achieve oversees, in February 2005. Today, the network includes 35 states which educate nearly 85 percent of all U.S. public school students. As part of this project, Achieve, a bipartisan, non-profit organization created by the nation’s governors and business leaders to help states raise education standards, conducts an annual survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia on key college and career readiness policies. This year’s survey found that Texas was the only state that met all the accountability measures that were determined as necessary to assess college and career readiness. Those include publicly reporting the percentage of students who graduate from high school with a college and career ready diploma, which in Texas means graduating on the Recommended High School Program or Distinguished Achievement Program. It also looked at whether states report student performance on state high school tests anchored to college and career ready standards. Texas students who earn a score of 2200 on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) meet the Higher Education Readiness Component (HERC), which indicates their readiness for college courses. Texas’ new testing system, now under development, will also address this by linking the grades 3-8 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests in reading and mathematics to performance expectations for English III and Algebra II end-of-course assessments. Texas also allows students to earn college credit while still in high school through Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and dual enrollment programs. It provides remedial courses in college for those who need them. The study also evaluated whether states had high school English language arts and mathematics curriculum standards aligned to college readiness standards. Texas adopted such standards in 2008. Texas is one of 21 states that have increased graduation requirements to better prepare students. Achieve’s research shows that for high school graduates to be prepared for success in college and careers, they need to take four years of challenging mathematics – including content typically taught in an Algebra II course or its equivalent – and four years of grade-level English aligned with college and career ready standards. Today’s high school juniors will be the first group of Texas students who will graduate under the state’s “four-by-four” program, which means they are required to earn four credits in each core content area – English, math, science and social studies. Critical to the success of a college and career ready agenda is the ability of states and school districts to monitor how they are doing. Texas has long had one of the most extensive education data collection systems in the United States. Projects are under way now to make data available in real time to help district officials make timely instructional decisions. Texas’ strong showing in the Achieve evaluation comes on top of its grade of “A” for its curriculum standards, assessment and accountability system in Education Week’s annual evaluation called Quality Counts. Last fall, the National Governors Association in a report called Achieving Graduation for All noted that Texas has implemented many of the necessary steps recommending for tackling the dropout problem, including providing a variety of support systems to students who are at risk of dropping out. This multi-faceted approach is paying off. A recent Texas Education Agency analysis found that Texas had the fourth highest graduation rate for the Class of 2008 among the 16 states that reported rates based on the methodology endorsed by the National Governors Association. In 2005, the governors of all 50 states agreed to begin calculating on-time graduation rates using this methodology. Eventually, all states will report graduation rates using this methodology, making accurate comparisons readily available. “Texas has taken concrete steps to ensure that more students graduate, and that those graduates will be successful after high school. These recent reports confirm that strong progress is being made,” Scott said. Are Texas' English Language Arts and Reading Standards College Ready? College readiness has recently emerged as a national issue, driven in part by repeated findings that many first-year college students are required to take remedial courses. In response, several sets of national college readiness standards (content statements defining what students should know in specific areas) have been developed. Discussions of comparisons between state and national standards continue to evolve. This study compares how closely two national standards sets—the ACT and the American Diploma Project (ADP) English language arts and reading college readiness standards — align with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills English language arts and reading (TEKS ELAR) standards for grades 9–12. It finds that: • A majority of the content in the ACT and ADP college readiness standards sets is addressed to some extent by the TEKS ELAR standards. Specifically, 14 percent of ACT statements and 48 percent of ADP statements fully align with TEKS ELAR statements and 75 percent of ACT statements and 45 percent of ADP statements partially align. • The TEKS ELAR standards demand higher levels of reasoning (on a four-level cognitive complexity scale) than the ACT or ADP standards. For example, higher levels of reasoning are required to make complex inferences (level 3) than to retrieve facts (level 1). This study will inform Texas policymakers, state and district educators, English language arts and reading curriculum directors, higher education professionals, and other stakeholders as they examine the alignment and strive to ensure that all Texas students are prepared for college. This REL report was released by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance in the Institute of Education Sciences. Updated Best Practices Clearinghouse released The Texas Education Agency has launched a redesigned Best Practices Clearinghouse (BPC) Web site that includes a range of dynamic new features such as a searchable database and additional research information. The site is available here: African-American students in Texas earn sixth highest score on NAEP reading test African-American fourth-grade students in Texas earned the sixth highest score on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading test, results released today show. The exam, often called “the nation’s report card,” was taken by 172,533 fourth-grade students in the nation’s public schools, including 5,954 youngsters in Texas. A NAEP reading exam was also given to 155,392 eighth-grade public school students across the country, including 5,733 in Texas. Overall, the 2009 scores were statistically identical to the 2007 scores nationally and in Texas at both grades. NAEP exams are given every two years. Texas’ fourth-grade students earned a scale score of 219, while the national average was 220. In 2007, both the national and Texas score was 220. Texas students had the 34th highest score among 52 states and jurisdictions. However when the scores are examined by ethnic group, the ranks were significantly higher. African-American fourth graders earned a score of 213, which is statistically significantly higher than the score of 204 posted by African-American students across the country. Only students in Department of Defense schools, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Delaware earned higher scale scores. White fourth-graders in Texas had the 12th highest score in 2009, earning a 232 compared to the national average of 229. Hispanic Texans earned the 19th highest score with a scale score of 210, which was significantly higher than the 204 earned by Hispanics nationally. The highest scoring ethnic group in Texas was Asian/Pacific Islanders who received an average scale score of 242, compared to a national average of 234. Eighth grade results At eighth grade, Texas students earned an average scale score of 260, compared to a national average of 262. NAEP officials do not consider that difference statistically significant. That score ranked Texas 35th among the 52 states and jurisdictions that take the NAEP. In 2007, both the state and nation had average scores of 261. However, when the scores are examined by ethnic group, all of Texas’ major ethnic groups outscored their counterparts nationally. The scores of white Texas eighth-grade students were the 11th highest posted. These Texans had an average score of 273, compared to 271 nationally. African-American Texans earned a score of 249, compared to a national average of 245. They had the 18th highest score. Hispanic Texans had an average scale score of 251, which is statistically significantly higher than the national average score of 248. Hispanic Texans ranked 20th among the states and jurisdictions. Asian/Pacific Islanders in Texas had the highest score, earning an average score of 280, compared to a national average of 273. “Texas and the nation have focused a great deal of attention and resources on reading improvement over the past decade. Our state has become much more ethnically and economically diverse during this period, yet we have managed to hold our scores steady. When the NAEP scores are examined by ethnic groups, Texas students’ performance stacks up favorably when compared with students across the country,” said Commissioner of Education Robert Scott. “We know there is more to do. We expect that our revised curriculum standards, the college and workplace readiness standards, and new testing program will move this effort forward,” he said. Texas offers free SAT/ACT tests to high school juniors Thanks to funding from the Texas Legislature, the Texas Education Agency has contracted with ACT and The College Board, which oversees the SAT testing program, to make free tests available this spring and early summer. This is part of a larger effort to increase college preparation efforts in the state. The first part of the initiative begins immediately with the college admissions testing. High school juniors may register for either the May 1 or June 5 administration of the SAT or the April 10 or June 12 ACT, and the state will pay the cost of their regular registration fee. The registration period has already closed for the April ACT test. However, if a student has already registered for that exam or any of the other designated tests offered in May or June and has already paid for it, the vendor will reimburse the registration fee. The registration deadline for the May 1 SAT is today, while the deadline for the June 5 test is May 5. The deadline for the June 12 ACT is May 7. Officials with the SAT and ACT testing programs are contacting students, parents and counselors directly to provide information about how to access this program. “This program provides a great opportunity for our high school juniors. It saves their families money and erases one of the financial hurdles that could keep some students from pursuing their college dreams,” said Commissioner of Education Robert Scott. The standard fee to register for the ACT plus its writing exam is $47. The standard fee for the SAT is $45. Registration information for the SAT is available at www.sat.collegeboard.com. Information about the ACT is available at http://www.act.org/aap/texas/. Among the Class of 2009, 112,485 Texas public school students took the SAT and about 74,000 public school students took the ACT. In addition to the state-funded admissions testing, Texas’s new college preparation program allows a school district to work with the vendors to offer an eighth-grade test this year and eighth and 10th grade tests next year. These norm-referenced exams can be used to diagnose the academic strengths and weaknesses of students as they prepare for college. Each vendor will also provide professional development to districts in the use of this data to improve instruction and raise student achievement. The ACT’s eighth grade test is called EXPLORE and covers English, reading, mathematics and science. ACT’s 10th-grade test called PLAN covers the same core subjects, which are also the subjects tested on its college admissions exam. The SAT’s eighth grade test, called ReadiStep, covers reading, mathematics and writing. SAT’s 10th grade test is called the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). This test measures reading, mathematics and writing skills. Students who take these exams tend to score substantially higher when they take the college admissions exams. Latest version of social studies curriculum standards available for review State launches online program to help students navigate college admissions process The Texas Education Agency, in conjunction with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, is launching a pilot program this month that will help high school students manage the complex college selection and application process. Approximately 20,000 to 30,000 high school students, drawn from all regions of the state, will participate in the Online College Preparation Assistance Pilot Program. The pilot program will provide free college and career preparation tools for students and families in Texas in a single online resource. Counselors, teachers, and administrators will also benefit from using the program. As a result of this pilot, information to assist students in preparing for college, currently available from a variety of sources, will be brought together in one easily accessible place. This resource uses state-of-the-art technology and individualized student information to help students stay on track to graduate, simplifies the college search, application, and selection process and allows students to take the steps necessary to successfully transition to other types of career training or directly to a career. Research shows that, particularly for minority or low-income students, availability of information, access to financial aid, and parental involvement and knowledge about college are strong predictors of college attendance and completion. This pilot program will provide students and the adults that support them with the necessary tools to help them transition from high school to college and career. Barbara Knaggs, TEA’s associate commissioner for state initiatives, said, “We are excited about working with our higher education partners to provide this opportunity to the thousands of Texas students who will be participating in the pilot program. We believe this program will help students successfully transition from high school to college or career.” “This pilot project complements the joint work that the TEA and Coordinating Board has done with the College and Career Readiness Standards,” said Dr. Judith Loredo, Coordinating Board assistant commissioner for P-16 Initiatives. Districts and their selected high schools will soon be notified of the opportunity to participate in the $1.5 million pilot program. ConnectEDU, a nationally known provider of college readiness services, was the vendor selected for the project, and will work closely with the two agencies in making the program a success. Fall 2010 marks the first semester engineering counts as a Nearly 100 Texas middle and high school teachers will learn how to bring math and science to life in the classroom with high tech engineering curriculum that meets the new Texas Education Agency's 4th year science requirement. The Infinity Project's established engineering curricula allow students to choose engineering as a graduation credit to better prepare them for the rigors of college-level engineering. Before students begin lessons this fall on electrical, mechanical, environmental, and biomedical engineering, teachers will gather at SMU's main Dallas campus. Instructors represent 30 Texas school districts, from Aldine to Wichita Falls. High school teachers, on campus July 26-30, will on Wednesday, July 28 learn the engineering principles students need to design and build a robotic rover that could function on the surface of Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Middle school teachers follow August 2-6, when they will master the process of designing and building a prosthetic leg. The crash course in biomedical engineering takes place Wednesday afternoon, August 4. In a year with cutbacks imposed to account for budget shortfalls, 60 teachers received a grant from the Texas Engineering and Technical Consortium and Texas Workforce Commission to fund the cost of weeklong instruction, as well as support materials, and a technology kit to implement the project-based curriculum. "With the push to compete globally in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) revolution, the new 4X4 allowance for engineering couldn't come at a better time," says Tammy Richards, Associate Dean of SMU's Lyle School of Engineering and Executive Director of The Infinity Project. "Further, grant funding for The Infinity Project training helps relieve the fiscal burden on school districts faced with cutbacks and budget shortfalls without sacrificing teacher professional development." Since its inception 11 years ago, The Infinity Project has trained 700 instructors and impacted over 8,000 students. "Inquisitive young minds develop STEM skills best by doing - building robots, designing prosthetic limbs, creating digital music players, improving the environment, and even launching rockets," adds Richards, who helped at the State level advocate for adding engineering as a 4th year science. "Infinity Project students learn to relate key math and science concepts to the technologies they use every day." About The Infinity Project: The Infinity Project, created by Southern Methodist University (SMU) Lyle School of Engineering and Texas Instruments, uses hands-on curricula to bring science and math to life for secondary and early college students. Nearly 450 middle schools, high schools and colleges in 38 states and 7 countries utilize The Infinity Project to build the technology leaders of the future. www.infinity-project.org. Katrina students show strong performance gains after four years in Texas schools When compared with all Texas students, the Katrina students perform as well or better than the Texas students on reading performance and the gap in mathematic performance narrowed substantially. “I was so proud of the Texas public schools when they took in the students who evacuated their homes because of Hurricane Katrina. But today, I am even more proud of these schools and our educators because they have made a real and lasting difference in the lives of these children,” said Commissioner of Education Robert Scott. When Hurricane Katrina slammed into coastal states in August 2005 creating major damage across the southern United States, 46,504 evacuees from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida suddenly enrolled in Texas public schools. Texas schools opened their doors and provided not only academic services but clothing, counseling and other services to the children. Recently, research staff at the Texas Education Agency examined how a subset of students who remained in Texas fared academically after four years in the Texas public schools. The study looked at Katrina students who were in grades 3, 5 and 8 in 2006 and still enrolled in Texas schools in 2009, and compared them to students enrolled in Texas schools who matched the group based on gender, ethnicity, economic background, and by geographic region. Additionally, the researchers looked for Texas students who had Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) scores similar to the evacuees in 2006. Along with this matched student comparison, the researchers also compared the Katrina students to all Texas test takers. The students’ performance on the TAKS was tracked and studied from 2006 to 2009. In 2006, the percentage of Katrina students in the study passing the TAKS reading test was 80 percent for the third-grade group, 63 percent for the fifth-grade students and 71 percent for the eighth-grade students. After four years of Texas education, the percentages of Katrina students in the study who were passing the TAKS reading tests rose to 93 percent for the third-grade cohort, 94 percent for the fifth-grade cohort and 91 percent for the eighth-grade cohort. In 2006, the percent of Katrina students who passed the TAKS math test was 67 percent for the third-grade cohort, 61 percent for the fifth-grade cohort and 48 percent for the eighth-grade cohort. By 2009, the percentage of these student groups passing TAKS math tests was 75 percent for the third-grade cohort, 73 percent for the fifth-grade cohort and 69 percent for the eighth-grade cohort. Results indicated that, in general, the performance of Katrina students across the four years in which those students were educated in Texas was slightly better than the performance of the comparable set of Texas students. The timing of the hurricane may have resulted in many of the Katrina students being educated less than a full year in Texas and the stress of the experience may have led those students to perform poorly that first year, the study said. “The improved performance of the Katrina students over the last three years of the study relative to their matched peers may also reflect the recovery of these students, the increased stability in their schooling, the commitment of additional state and federal funding to meet the needs of students and families impacted by Hurricane Katrina and the focused attention of Texas educators on this specific population of students,” according to the study. Over the four years of the study, the average reading performance of Katrina students increased so that the passing rates for these students was similar to or better than the average performance for all test takers in 2009. In mathematics, the achievement gap between the Katrina students and the Texas students in 2006 was larger than the performance gap in reading. By 2009, the gap in mathematics performance narrowed substantially but lagged behind the performance of all test takers. “These students have made remarkable gains over the past four years. All Texans can be proud of our service to these students,” Scott said. Frenship ISD The district is located immediately to the west and southwest of the city of Lubbock, encompassing 128 square miles and approximately 46,400 individuals, with a portion of the district in the city's boundaries. The district is part of the larger Lubbock MSA, which is an economic hub in West Texas. The area economy is relatively diverse and stable, with unemployment rates consistently below state and national averages. While area wealth levels are below average, they are affected by the large student population at Texas Tech University and somewhat mitigated by a lower cost of living in the region. The district contains the city of Wolfforth, which had a 2007 population totaling 3,400 residents, up by almost 40% since the 2000 Census. Comal ISD Galena Park ISD LATINO AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNER STUDENTS IN TEXAS CHARTER SCHOOLS A joint report released today by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and NCLR (National Council of La Raza) examines how charter schools are improving educational outcomes for a growing number of Latino and English language learner (ELL) students. The report, Next Generation Charter Schools: Meeting the Needs of Latinos and English Language Learners, assesses the role of charter schools in the education of Latinos and ELLs and reviews state charter school policies that create a recipe for positive results, as well as those that can unintentionally hinder effective instruction. Next Generation Charter Schools profiles four high-performing charter schools: El Sol Science and Arts Academy in Santa Ana, California; Raul Yzaguirre School for Success in Houston, Texas; YES Prep Gulfton in Houston, Texas; and International Charter School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The report examines the best practices of these schools, including how they recruit students and work to engage communities and parents. The Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition and school turnaround efforts have moved charter schools into the public spotlight. “These four charter schools show that it can be done—that charter and traditional schools that have a large Latino and ELL student population can meet high academic standards and excel,” said Cyndi Brown, Vice President for Education Policy at CAP. “As states revisit their charter laws in response to Race to the Top and school turnaround efforts, we encourage them to consider how their charter laws might further support what these schools are doing.” “Charter schools offer a strategic model for how to improve the educational outcomes of Hispanic and ELL students, who are currently disproportionately represented in troubled schools,” said NCLR Vice President of Education Delia Pompa. “All public schools can better serve their students by adopting the strategies highlighted in this report.” The most recent data suggest that one-quarter (23.8 %) of charter school students are Latino, a number that is expected to keep growing at a rapid pace. Forty percent of Latino students are also ELLs, so the role that these schools have in serving ELL students will take on a larger significance in coming years. All four schools offer lessons for better recruiting, educating, and preparing Latino and ELL students, such as: - Establishing high expectations for all students’ academic, intellectual, and social growth Interested in education research? Check out Education Research Report - it’s free! Subscribe today. |