Thursday, January 24, 2013

UPDATE: Latest FLDOE Finding + Republican Texas House Says No to Jeb Bush on Testing | Scathing Purple Musings

Republican Texas House Says No to Jeb Bush on Testing | Scathing Purple Musings:



Latest FLDOE Finding: Poverty and Race Didn’t Matter in Teacher Evaluation Scores

From Associated Press reporter Bill Kaczor in the Miami Herald:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Studies show students’ race and socio-economic status have virtually no correlation with their teachers’ performance evaluation scores, a top Florida education official told a legislative panel Thursday.
Teachers are being evaluated during the current school year for the first time using what’s known as a value-added model. Half of each score must be based on how much a teacher’s students have improved on reading and math tests from one year to the next.
A hotly debated 2011 law that created the evaluation system prohibits students’ race, ethnicity, 



Republican Texas House Says No to Jeb Bush on Testing

In late December last year, Jeb Bush penned an opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News I which he wrote the following:
Today, Texas has the chance to lead again. Moving above and beyond the testing of basic academic skills, the new STAAR exams include end-of-course exams. This is a common-sense improvement to the Texas system of accountability and transparency.
If Texas taxpayers are going to invest in the classroom facilities and personnel to provide students with a physics or history class, it follows that they have the right to know how much students learned about physics or history.
The STAAR exams represent a logical and necessary next step for reform. End-of-course exams