XicanoPwr at ¡Para Justicia y Libertad! saw this befor I did because HE'S in Texas. Still a nice catch, though.
The "Texas Miracle" Strikes Again
...One would think, school districts around Texas, especially in Houston, would have learned a lesson once people realized that the "Houston Education Miracle" was nothing more but an illusion based on Enron style math. However, such is not the case. Recently, The Daily Morning News reported that Texas Education Agency (TEA) officials has just released the names of 669 schools that were flagged with suspicious TAKS scores discovered by Caveon, the test security company hired by TEA to look for TAKS cheaters.
Houston has the highest number of suspicious schools, 83, in the state, next is Dallas with the second highest, 49, suspicious schools. In other cities through out Texas, El Paso has 20 schools, Austin has 12, Fort Worth has 11, and San Antonio has six...
The Morning News uncovered inconsistencies in scores and a faculty conspiracy. A former teacher from Wesley, Donna Garner, told The Morning News teachers were "expected to cheat."
"You're expected to cheat there," said Donna Garner, a former teacher at Wesley who said her fellow teachers instructed her on how to give students answers while administering tests. "There's no way those scores are real."
The only difference from the first investigation, more schools are getting caught cheating. If there is anything the Texas miracle story can teach us, it is the hazards of high stakes testing. How long will it take for us to understand that every child is being left behind?
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