Raising The Grade: Teaching the Test

Every year hundreds of Oklahoma teacherâ€™s head south of the Red River for better salaries and benefits. But one Oklahoma teacher was driven back across the state line. <br/><br/>In News on 6 anchor

Thursday, May 20th 2004, 10:35 am

By: News On 6

Every year hundreds of Oklahoma teacherâ€™s head south of the Red River for better salaries and benefits. But one Oklahoma teacher was driven back across the state line.

In News on 6 anchor Scott Thompsonâ€™s Raising the Grade story, he takes a look at the fallout from Texas testing pressure.

"Listen up I'm going to hand out your reports." After more than 20 years in education, Curt Risner said good-bye to Oklahoma schools four years ago and headed to Texas. "I went to work as a middle school principal in South Dallas.â€

Curt Risner led his Texas school to its highest test scores in a decade. But after just two years, he quit even before his contract was up. His reason, Texas testing pressure. "It was more important for a building's test scores to be raised than it was to educate every child." Risner's Texas students had to pass the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills or TAAS to graduate from high school. And he said the pressure to pass really mounted in middle school. "Academically TAAS reached into every aspect of every subject area, woodshop teachers, music teachers had to include TAAS skills into their weekly lesson plans."

Critics complain that requiring students to pass a test to graduate leads to teaching to the test. And curriculum outside of the state exams are ignored. It's a claim the Texas Education Agency denies.

Lisa Chandler, Director of Texas Student Assessment: "The state position is that if school districts teach the entire curriculum well, the students will be prepared to take the test and will do well. There's no need to teach specifically to the test or narrow the curriculum or invest in some gimmicky products that may or may not help students.â€

Curt Risner: "the curriculum is the test." Risner says teaching to the test causes educators to lose focus on students. He says students scoring from 60-75% on the state exam get most of the attention, money and resources. "So I saw students in the 40-50% level not getting near the amount of attention because raising them to the 80% level was much more of a challenge."

Now, Risner is back in an Oklahoma classroom. And thankful for the Sooner system. "I will tell you as a 31 year educator I believe in what we're doing and I think it has proven itself."

He says he believes in accountability and testing. But the Texas system didn't pass his test for improving education.