Falling STAAR

"Messy STAAR season causes education commissioner to scrap 5th-, 8th-grade results." Can standardized testing in Texas schools fall any lower? That's a rhetorical question.

Standardized testing in Texas has a long history. It predates even the George W. Bush governorship in the 1990s. Standardized testing and accountability was given credit for narrowing the achievement gap between whites and minorities. The New York Times had good things to say about Texas in 1999 when Governor Bush was leveraging Texas's reputation in his own bid for the White House.

This has stemmed partly from a unique accountability system that predates Mr. Bush's tenure and requires all Texas schools to give an array of standardized tests and record the results for each subgroup -- white, black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged. The schools are judged on the performance of each group separately. Other states give tests but no other uses the performance of subgroups separately to determine success.

Source: New York Times, May 28, 1999.

Late Spring in the Steger Garden (2016)

From Flowers

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

IMDB

Sunset Blvd. (1950): Billy Wilder classic. As out of date today as silent movies were when this was made. But dead-on casting and cameos. C+

POTD: Biff Henderson

From 2016 02 09 Jaipur

Today's photo-of-the-day is from City Palace in Jaipur, India. In case you ever wondered whatever happened to Biff Henderson, stage manager for "The Late Show with David Letterman," ever since Dave retired, well he's working as a security guard at the City Palace. Or maybe the guard only looks like Biff Henderson. In any case, here's another example of the nice, bright colors that make India so photogenic.

Bonus photo after the jump.

RISD Shell Game

Last week, I brought up my fear that magnet schools in the Richardson ISD were leading to an increase in segregation along socio-economic lines. I didn't have data to test whether my fear is warranted (and I still don't) because as far as I know, the RISD doesn't make such data easily accessible to the public. As long as that's the case, my fear, grounded or not, persists.

The feedback to my article suggests that magnet schools may only be a small component of a larger problem with transfers.