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9486 in the collection
What Juanita Learned About School
Ohanian Comment: This looks like just one more sad hard-luck story about the evils of high-stakes testing, but then it turns into something else. Read the outrageous quotes of the former Presidential education advisor and the policy analyst at Education Commission of the States. Read these quotes and vow to fight this atrocity!
You'll also want to reach out and hug Juanita Saenz, who seems to have learned more from the experience than all the Standardistos in Texas.
Juanita Saenz was ranked in the top 10 percent of her senior class, was a B student and a member of her high school honor society when she learned she wouldn't graduate.
Juanita Saenz was unable to graduate with her class in 1994 because she didn't pass the exit exam. She finally passed the exit exam and received her diploma in 2002.
Saenz had completed her coursework at Fox Tech High School but had not passed a state-mandated exit test.
Still, state law allowed her to continue taking the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills after she left school. And she did — for eight years.
"I tried. Every time they offered it, I would sign up for it," said Saenz, now 27 and a mother of two. "I went through several depressions because of it, because I felt like I couldn't do anything right."
Since Texas lawmakers mandated a graduation test in 1984, as part of a host of sweeping education reforms, tens of thousands of students like Saenz have left school without a diploma.
Although the number of non-graduates has declined with successive classes, it's likely to rise with the new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, a more challenging series of exams with a tougher exit-level test.
"I feel really unlucky," said Anthony Narvaez, an O'Connor High School junior who is part of the first class required to graduate under TAKS. "Like I wronged somebody in another life."
For Narvaez and his classmates, who will take the graduation test for the first time this school year, the climb toward their high school diplomas begins as they return to classes today.
While Texas has long required high school students to prove themselves on an exit test, the Lone Star State is among a growing number implementing more rigorous tests based on higher academic standards.
Texas' class of 2005 will be the first to take a graduation test that covers everything from algebra and geometry to world history and geography, biology, chemistry and physics.
Previous exit exams covered only reading and math with writing added later, and were considered to be minimum-skills tests, basically at the eighth-grade level.
"It's tough," Laura Benavides, another O'Connor junior, said of the testing policy. "If you have good grades, then I think you've earned the right to already pass."
Because students will have multiple opportunities to take the four-part, untimed exam, it is difficult to predict how many will not graduate because of low scores.
Results from the first administration of TAKS last spring showed that teachers and students have serious challenges ahead.
Nearly half of all sophomores statewide (this year's junior class) flunked one or more sections of the exam, including disproportionate numbers of African American, Hispanic, poor, special-education and immigrant students.
Many local districts performed even worse. Six of 16 Bexar County districts had failure rates of 60 percent or more. In the South San Antonio School District, nearly three-fourths of 10th-graders were unable to pass all sections of the test.
"These test results are showing you that these youngsters are not prepared for a good paying job or college," said Sandy Kress, a former education adviser to President Bush and longtime advocate of public-education reform in Texas.
"Our high schools are not performing, and they need to be changed," Kress said. "The districts and the high schools themselves are about to be in for a big-time awakening."
Despite the specter of wholesale failures, many high school principals support the higher standards.
Joanne Cockrell, now principal of Sam Houston High School, helped lift Fox Tech from a low-performing campus to a nationally recognized school by focusing more on the test and what it demanded from teachers and students.
When she took over the dis-established campus in 1995, more than two-thirds of seniors hadn't passed the graduation test. By the time she left in 2002, nearly all were passing the exam.
"I saw children who were supposedly the brightest and the best come home after one semester of college saying it was just too hard," Cockrell said. "Just like with Juanita (Saenz), they thought they were getting a good education. Unless you have some standard to put that through, how would you know that?"
Exit testing caught on in the 1980s as part of a national movement to hold educators more accountable for student learning.
Jennifer Dounay, a policy analyst with the Denver-based Education Commission of the States, said the tests act as a "seal of endorsement" for diplomas.
But some say states are relying too heavily on the exams and the tests ignore other qualities that students may not be able to demonstrate on a standardized exam.
Paul Kelleher, chairman of the education department at Trinity University, said Saenz's persistence in taking the test is a good example.
"The discipline she displayed — that's pretty powerful," Kelleher said. "That's somebody that you can have fairly high confidence that she'll continue to have learning in her life. Shouldn't that count for something?
"By defining everything in terms of the test, we ignore all of that," he said.
Experts say it's too early to tell whether the latest push for higher standards will improve student achievement or if the potential for massive failures will spawn a public backlash.
In the past year alone, a number of states faced with considerable failure rates added student waivers, lowered score requirements, voided tests thought to be too difficult or postponed implementing their policies altogether.
Despite the high failure rates, a majority of the Texas State Board of Education opted not to ease TAKS passing standards when they reviewed the results in July. But members expect to review them again after this year's tests.
"States are struggling to find the balance between firmness and fairness," said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based group that has studied exit exams. "They want to make sure that high school diplomas mean something, but how do they ensure that they're not pushing kids out of school?"
According to the center's second annual report on exit exams released last week, there has been evidence that such tests are encouraging schools to raise academic standards. However, there are also indications that minority groups and the poor are impacted disproportionately because they often fail the exams at significantly higher rates.
Such do-or-die exams also may lead some students to drop out of school. That's why states have to be careful, Jennings said.
"You can't just put in a high bar or a higher hurdle and expect everybody to jump over it," he said. "You have to understand that kids are at very different levels of achievement and that schools are unequal."
Still many, including parents, seem to agree with the get-tough policies.
"If there aren't any consequences for things, how do you build in the accountability to get the job done?" said Carol Mitchell, whose son Chad will be a junior at O'Connor this fall. "Teenagers will be lazy if you let them. If he thinks there's some pretty big consequences, he'll look at it more seriously."
Saenz finally earned her diploma last year after passing the writing portion of the TAAS on her sixth attempt. Encased in a bright red cover, the diploma bears a gold seal denoting Fox Tech's national "blue ribbon" status.
While Saenz was overjoyed, she sometimes wonders if the consequences were too great — if too much time was wasted.
She would have graduated near the top of her class in 1994 and could have gone to college, if it hadn't been for the test. Only now can she begin taking courses to become a teaching assistant, nine years after she left Fox Tech.
— Bridget Gutierrez
TAKS renews exit test debate
San Antionio Express-News
2003-08-18
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=1041340
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