Category: DMN | Education

Tom Luce, the Dallas attorney who has been one of the prime movers in state and national education reform for the last two decades, is stepping down from his federal post for health reasons.

“It has probably been the most rewarding experience of my life,” Mr. Luce, 66, said yesterday. “I didn’t want to step down, but it’s something I need to take care of.”

Mr. Luce had been the U.S. Department of Education’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development for the past year. He said he has a pain disorder that requires physical therapy three or four days a week.

“I’ve found Washington be a difficult place to take care of your health,” he said. “I’ve cancelled therapy so many times. The demands are 24/7.”

Mr. Luce is one of a number of Texans who have had substantial sway over federal education policy during the Bush administration. Sandy Kress, the Austin attorney and former Dallas school board president, was a prime architect of the No Child Left Behind law.

Former Houston superintendent Rod Paige served as education secretary in the first Bush term. Current education secretary Margaret Spellings has been a Bush education advisor since his days as governor. […]

Read More… from Luce, a ‘giant in education circles,’ leaving federal post; Dallas lawyer cites health reasons, will return to North Texas

Reversing course, the Texas Education Agency said Tuesday that it wants a complete list of schools with suspicious scores on last year’s state exams. But officials made no promises to investigate those additional campuses.

Officials said Tuesday they have asked for the names of all schools that were flagged as suspect by Caveon, a Utah test-security company. The agency hired Caveon to look for evidence of possible cheating on the 2005 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

On Sunday, The Dallas Morning News reported that the TEA’s list of suspected cheaters left off at least 167 schools that Caveon had flagged. Neither the TEA nor the schools knew which campuses they were.

Last week, agency officials said they did not ask Caveon for the names of the additional schools because they did not consider them worthy of investigation. That’s because Caveon used a different type of analysis to identify the additional schools.

“I think that over the weekend, people thought about the situation and just realized we need the complete list,” said Debbie Graves Ratcliffe, a TEA spokeswoman.

“And whether we take further action – we’ll have to decide once we see that list.” […]

Read More… from TEA wants full list of suspect schools; But expanded inquiry into TAKS cheating not certain, state says

Some Texas superintendents have complained that state officials haven’t given them enough information to investigate their schools’ appearance on Caveon’s list of schools with suspicious TAKS scores.

State officials say that’s because they don’t have the information themselves.

But Caveon’s contract to analyze Texas’ test scores seems to give state officials substantial access to the data necessary to investigate potential cheating.

“Consultant agrees that all Works are, upon creation, works made for hire and the sole property of TEA,” states the contract, obtained by The Dallas Morning News. “Consultant hereby assigns to TEA all worldwide ownership rights, including the Intellectual Property Rights, in the Works, without the necessity of any further consideration.”

Caveon has said its methods and algorithms are proprietary and can’t be shared with the TEA or the public. But the contract pledges to provide the TEA with substantially more data than Caveon has apparently turned over.

It promises “summary and detailed results” from its analysis, including detailed information on “the incidence of test fraud/theft by classroom and school” and “cheating and piracy activity in individual examinees.” […]

Read More… from State seems to have had right to see cheat data; Contract with Caveon appears to grant info superintendents want

The list of schools suspected of cheating is longer than Texas education officials have reported – and those officials say they aren’t interested in tracking down the latest suspects.

A Dallas Morning News analysis has found that at least 167 unidentified schools were flagged as potential cheaters by Caveon, the company Texas hired to hunt for TAKS cheaters. That’s in addition to the 442 schools named by state officials. None of the other schools have been notified that they are on the list.

Texas Education Agency officials say they don’t know which schools they are – and they have no plans to find out.

“The only list of schools we have is the list that has been made public,” said TEA spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman. “That’s the list we plan to work with.”

Superintendents with schools that have been named have complained that the TEA hasn’t given them all the information they need to investigate Caveon’s findings. But at least they know their scores are suspicious.

“That is so grossly unfair,” said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. “If you’re going to accuse someone of cheating, look them in the eye and do it.” […]

Read More… from Not all suspect schools on list; Exclusive: Firm flagged 167 more on TAKS, but state not looking into it

When Dan Hamermesh heard that Northwest ISD was paying rookie teachers $44,159, he was thrilled. “That’s phenomenal! In Texas? I’m happy to hear it.”

But within 30 seconds, he’d switched gears: “That’s just pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. It’s exactly wrong.”

What was he talking about? Who is Dan Hamermesh? And why does he think that well-meaning North Texas school districts are making choices that will drive promising teachers out of the profession?

He’s a renowned labor economist and professor at the University of Texas. He studies, among other things, the ways in which wages impact the decisions of employers and employees.

His concern is that school districts have poured millions of dollars into raising the salaries of starting teachers – but haven’t done nearly enough for the more experienced. The result is that teacher salaries start high, but barely move after that.

“A big increase at the low level may look impressive – that’s the number that gets published in the newspaper,” he told me last week. “But who’s going to wind up staying after the first few years?” […]

Read More… from Column: Slim raises won’t keep teachers here for long

When he saw that six Richardson schools were on the state’s list of potential TAKS cheaters, Superintendent Jim Nelson wanted to investigate. But to do so, he needed to know how Caveon – the company that built the list – did its work.

He e-mailed state Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, whose agency paid Caveon to do the analysis: “Commissioner, how do I get detailed information as to how Caveon reached their conclusions? All we got were the conclusions.”

He added, according to documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News: “Anger and frustration aimed at the agency is palpable. I want to help, but we must have access to their analysis.” Without those details, the Texas Education Agency is doing “nothing more than a hit and run,” he said.

Mr. Nelson and other Texas educators have tried to get the information they think they need to clear their schools’ names. But the TEA hasn’t been able to give it to them. That’s because agency officials never got the data themselves.

As a result, few, if any, thorough cheating investigations have begun – nearly two months after Caveon determined that 609 schools had suspicious test scores. […]

Read More… from Districts on TAKS cheat list in dark; State didn’t seek data on why firm flagged schools, preventing investigation

The earthly remains of Wilmer-Hutchins were, in the end, few.

A few broken buildings. Some debts, some indictments. A few thousand kids who learned less than they should have.

Everything that could be put in boxes was Thursday, as the Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District slipped into the past tense. After decades of mismanagement and crisis, Wilmer-Hutchins will legally cease to exist when the clock strikes midnight tonight. Under orders from the state of Texas, it will be absorbed into the Dallas school district.

“It’s a sad day for the district, but it’s also a new day,” said Donnie Foxx, one of the state-appointed managers who have shepherded the district through its declining days.

The district’s skeleton staff – down to 10 from more than 400 two years ago – went out for a nice lunch at Truluck’s and said their goodbyes Thursday afternoon.

They would have locked the doors one last time. But Dallas staffers were too busy carting off the district’s remaining items of value. […]

Read More… from Wilmer-Hutchins’ door closes, another opens; Broke, scandalized and a failure, school district shuts down; At midnight, what’s left of agency becomes part of DISD, which took in its children last fall

If you own stock in a company that makes No. 2 pencils, now might be a good time to sell.

After a few years of tiptoeing, Texas is preparing to take its first big step into online testing. School districts have the option to administer next spring’s TAKS test by computer.

“Students have become more and more accustomed to a computer environment,” said Susan Barnes, associate commissioner for standards and programs at the Texas Education Agency. “That has become the mode of how they interact.”

Some worry that the shift, designed to eventually save money and time, could have substantial implications for the tests’ fairness. Not every school has access to the same quality or quantity of computers.

It could also be a solution to Texas’ cheating problems – or make them worse, depending on who’s talking. […]

Read More… from TAKS online testing option raises concerns; Aim is to save money, time, but cheating, fairness are worries

Why do some parents make such stupid decisions?

That was the question that kept popping into my mind last week as I walked around the KIPP TRUTH Academy in South Dallas.

(For the moment, please forgive their over-commitment to capital letters.)

Here was a middle school, in a poor part of town, that put academics first. A free charter school with a demonstrated record of taking struggling neighborhood kids and putting them on a path to college. A school whose graduates will get scholarships to Dallas’ most elite private high schools and who will eventually be successful in life.

And it opened school this month with 20 empty seats in its fifth-grade class. […]

Read More… from Column: Good schools available for parents who care; If your child’s education is a priority, you have an option

An alarming number of students who graduated from Texas high schools last month probably cheated to get there – and state education officials are in no hurry to catch them.

A state-sponsored analysis found thousands of suspicious scores on the 11th-grade TAKS, the test students must pass to graduate.

The study found 96 Texas high schools where groups of last year’s 11th-graders turned in unusually similar answer sheets – suggesting they may have been copying each other’s answers. Scores in almost every Dallas neighborhood high school raised red flags.

Eleventh-grade classrooms were more than eight times more likely to have suspicious scores than those in other grades, researchers found.

The study’s results don’t surprise experts. “Levels of cheating in high school are at astronomical levels,” said Tim Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. […]

Read More… from TAKS analysis suggests many graduates cheated; Exclusive: DISD, other districts unlikely to look into suspicious scores