With Texas school districts facing state funding cuts of as much as $30,000 per classroom, demands for larger classes and 4-day school weeks are echoing through the halls of the Capitol.

But, before we rush into changes that we know will cut educational achievement, we should put everything else on the table, including the huge amount of time and money that we spend on standardized testing of every student every year.

I believe we can reduce testing for most students without hurting educational quality or accountability. That’s why I’ve filed House Bill 233, which would exempt fourth-grade students from TAKS testing in reading, math, or both, if they scored well in those subjects in third grade, and similarly exempt sixth and seventh-grade students from TAKS if they scored well in fifth grade.

This is a reform that makes sense because after years of testing and collecting data, we now know that a student who scores well on the third-grade reading test will pass the fourth-grade reading test more than 95% of the time. That’s true for math as well as reading, and it’s true for every grade where similar comparisons have been studied. Data show that there’s barely any difference from school to school, or classroom to classroom.

Before we even give the fourth-grade test, we know very reliably that a large group of the students will pass, and we know which students they are just by looking at their previous year’s scores. So, why spend so much valuable class time, and real dollars “preparing” them for a test on which we already know they will do well?

Under HB 233, all students would continue to be tested in third, fifth and eighth grades. But in fourth, sixth and seventh grade, our schools would only be giving TAKS to those students who failed, or barely passed, the previous year’s test. Our accountability system in those grades would be focused on just those students most at risk of dropping out later. Rather than masking their testing outcomes by a school’s higher performers, the academically at-risk students will become the basis of the calculation of school ratings.

Supporters of more testing will argue that we must test in each grade to measure the performance of each teacher. But, since almost all high-performing students pass TAKS each year, the test really doesn’t tell us much about the teacher’s value for those kids. And, besides, isn’t the true measure of a fourth grade teacher how well her students perform in fifth grade, not how well she prepares them for a one-day test in April of fourth grade?

We’ve followed basically the same testing process for 20 years. It’s time we learned what all that testing has told us, and focus our testing on those students who really need extra help and evaluation.

HB 233 will take us a long way in that direction.

Sincerely,

Scott Hochberg
State Representative
District 137 - Southwest Houston

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