State Education Commissioner Michael Williams came under fire from members of the Senate Education Committee Tuesday over his decision to retain low passing standards on state achievement tests for the fourth year in a row.
Some committee members suggested that social promotion of many students would result from the commissioner’s decision, while others said Williams retreated from an earlier plan to gradually raise passing standards on the STAAR as has been done in previous testing programs.
Williams insisted that Texas students are not ready to be graded by higher standards because the instruction they are receiving in core subjects is not up to the rigorous level of questioning on the STAAR.
“Our instruction has not yet risen to the level it needs to be,” he told committee members. “We haven’t jumped high enough in the classroom.”
When the STAAR was introduced in Texas schools in the spring of 2012, the cut scores for students to pass were set low to help them transition to an exam that was more difficult than the TAKS test they had been taking for several years.
For example, ninth graders have to correctly answer just 37 percent of the questions in Algebra I and biology to pass those end-of-course exams. Fifth graders need to answer 54 percent of the items in math and reading to pass.
Although the low passing standards were originally supposed to be in effect for two years, Williams has extended them twice, for the 2013-14 school year and recently for the 2014-15 school year.
Among those who questioned Williams about his decision were the two candidates for lieutenant governor, Republican Dan Patrick of Houston and Democrat Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio. Patrick is chairman of the Senate Education Committee and Van de Putte is a committee member.
“If we haven’t raised the level of instruction and are giving students in the classroom an A, B or C for Algebra I, based on a 70, 80 or 90 grade, then we are apparently giving social promotion to kids who aren’t really prepared,” Patrick said, noting that students are only required to answer one out of three items correctly to pass the Algebra I exam.
“We have reduced the passing cut score down to half of what we expect in the class,” he said, noting that a 70 is typically required to pass the course. “That makes no sense to me that we are saying to a student that this test is based on what you learn, but we don’t think you can actually get a C on the test to graduate from high school.”
Van de Putte said she was “greatly concerned” that the same low passing standards have been extended for the first four years of the STAAR, unlike on previous tests where the standards were raised after two years.
“Our STAAR exam is not working for parents and teachers. It is not working for employers and it is not working for our accountability system,” she said. “If it were working, the commissioner would be moving us up to the next level” of passing standards. She called for eliminating the high-stakes requirements of the STAAR, such as demanding high school students pass five end-of-course exams to receive a diploma.