Texas' Big Test.

• Author: Jesness, Jerry
• Position: Texas Assessment of Academic Skills

Why public school progress in the Lone Star State is less than miraculous

According to Gov. George W. Bush, his state has enjoyed a "Texas miracle" in education under his watch, a renaissance in learning that could sweep the United States if he's elected president. With nonwhite students' scores rising on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test sometimes called the nation's report card, friendly pundits have declared Texas a scholarly Shangri-La for blacks and Hispanics. Douglas Carnine, a professor of education at the University of Oregon and a Bush adviser, has boasted, "If you're a minority, move to Texas."

But as Bush touts this record and other states move to mimic his state's approach, a closer look at test scores in Texas reveals a more enigmatic picture. According to the state's own basic skills tests, young Texans have made tremendous academic gains in the past decade. Scores on college entrance exams, however, have stagnated during the same period. In SAT scores Texas outperforms only Georgia, the Carolinas, and the District of Columbia. ACT scores, while a bit better, are tied for 39th place--hardly an impressive showing. Texas SAT scores have risen slightly in the past decade, but not as much as the scores of the nation as a whole. And while fourth grade math scores and eighth grade writing scores are near the top of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, other NAEP results are middling or below average.

Heaven knows, things could be worse. When I began teaching in Texas in 1983, a large chunk of the population was simply written off as either unteachable or unworthy of an education. These "low-group" classes bore little resemblance to the academic-track classes just a few hallways over.

In the low-group ghetto, one of my colleagues showed popular movies four days a week. A class down the hall was constantly basing art projects on the works of literature the higher-track students were actually reading. Interruptions were frequent. The intercom blared constantly. Afternoon classes were dismissed for even junior varsity sports events, and large numbers would be excused to be practice heads for cosmetology class. Frequent absences were tolerated.

Back then, supposedly enlightened educators "understood" that the poor, the disadvantaged, and the culturally different learned in their own way and thus were to be held to a lower standard. Just as the legal system meted its weakest punishments to those who committed minority-on-minority crime, the state paid scant attention to minority administrators who mismanaged minority schools. Most important, the students themselves accepted, in fact sometimes demanded...