Want to Know How State Tests are Affecting HPISD?
Highland Park students historically sweep their standardized tests each year, sure — STAAR is the current one — but HPISD supe Dawson Orr has never been one to sit quiet about Texas’ accountability system.
“In the state’s eyes,” he wrote in the latest issue of Insight, the publication for the Texas Association of School Administrators, “it’s not whether you cross the goal line; it’s how many yards you gained on the plays before reaching the goal line. You can’t be a late bloomer in the state’s version of accountability.”
Whatever your take, there’ll plenty of new information to mull over during a public forum tonight about testing and accountability. The event begins at 6 p.m. in the high school cafeteria. And as Orr said in a recent newsletter to parents, he’ll “share the district’s goal of a community-based assessment system that goes beyond the state’s standardized testing approach.”
The state’s mandated standardized tests are a waste of time and money. As a parent, I’m offended at the number of days my HPISD students spend preparing or taking standardized tests – about 45 days our of the year. The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars on these tests – who is the lucky lobbyist who got Rick Perry and his behind-the-times cronies to agree to this? The tests are a poor measure of accountability, as the pro-test lobby claims. I very much appreciate Dr. Orr’s passion and knowledge about the subject of standardized testing and the abhorrent waste of time and money associated with it.
Not a lot of action on the blog since Bradford left.
@Avid Reader: No doubt. We’re breaking in some new employees, we’re still shaking the effects of our Christmas hibernation, and I’ve been at home all week running a flu ward. Give us a week or so to get up to speed.
Thanks Dan, seems like we are back up to speed with todays flury of posts. Need my pc people to help the medicine go down.