Commerce Independent School District Superintendent Steve Drummond stopped by KETR recently to discuss the changes to public education coming from the current session of the Texas Legislature. You can hear the conversation in the audio player above.
Mark Haslett: We're visiting with Steve Drummond of the Commerce Independent School District. And perhaps the biggest news out of this year's session of the Texas Legislature -- a longtime goal of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s was finally realized when both chambers passed school voucher, “education savings account program” legislation. It went to the governor's desk. He signed it earlier this month. And so that's coming down the line. Steve, what does that mean for school districts like Commerce?
Steve Drummond: For any public school, it is an extremely negative blow. It will directly take public funds and transfer those to private schools. Now, for Commerce itself, we do not have an established private school within our district. But, the governor also made this to where they can also just give people a little bit of money to keep their kids at school if they want to do homeschool for them. Not as much as if they will put them in a private school.
Also, when we talk about this, the most interesting thing to note is that they still have not put any accountability standards on private schools or home schools. And what we see as a district on a regular basis is, we will get homeschooled kids, parents take them up to a certain level. Maybe they take them up to sixth, seventh, eighth grade, and then they decide they want them to get the benefits of all the extracurricular activities at a public school.
And then often times according to the state of Texas, then they will be behind on their accountability. And I say accountability according to the state of Texas, because the tests that the state of Texas used for accountability have been research proven to be invalid tests.
They're not nationally norm-referenced tests. They're developed by private companies for profit, private companies and. I'll say on the record that the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) test was developed in, in, in my opinion and my, I think my opinion of public schools, it pretty educated since I've been doing this for 38 years. Those tests were developed, in my opinion, for political purposes, to drive Governor Abbott's desire to have private school voucher money which is an extremely for-profit business. There are already -- the donors who give money to the governor, those donors will profit from this because they will be managing the voucher funds and they will get a percentage of those funds. And the percentage that they gave to the governor's campaign will pale in the amount of profits that they make in managing the money.
Haslett: So there are some big changes coming for schools across the state. And do you have any metrics that you trust that you consider more reliable to measure the academic skills of these home homeschooled students who are coming into the public school system around high school?
Drummond: We can only gauge, officially, based on the STAAR test or the test that we're given. Sometimes these students perform very well in our classrooms with a normal curriculum. And the curriculum that the state of Texas deems important. And when I'm critical of the state of Texas and TEA (Texas Education Agency), I also want to preface that by saying that the new curriculum that the state is coming out with and we're adopting the Bluebonnet curriculum, it is actually TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) based. But our star tests have not necessarily been TEKS-based. The curriculum was not matching the test.
I do believe that now that the governor and the state has pushed across their referendum to get private school voucher money that they will actually probably come across with a more norm-referenced, national-type-based test which will do a better job of gauging where our students are at. I feel like we've been, as a state, as a public education, we've been extremely slammed by the State of Texas. To reach these goals that they had to get their voucher money. And I'm going to call it a scam. That's what it is to get those scams in place. Now that they're in place, we hope that maybe they'll come back to a testing system that makes a little more sense and is actually TEKS-based.
Haslett: Now for the benefit of those who aren't familiar, TEKS, that's an acronym, T-E-K-S, so if you could explain that.
Drummond: It's Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills and those “teaks,” some people call them “techs,” I call them “teaks.” They were developed by committees made up of educators to help Texas teachers, take a third grader to a senior. And have a set of TEKS at each grade level that those students need to know to go out and be real world ready and know, those TEKS are, they're valuable. They're important. The problem is that the STAAR test weren't TEKS-based. So you can either teach to the test or you can teach to the TEKS. It just didn't make any sense.
Haslett: And the TEKS is more in line with the curricula that are state approved.
Drummond: And now that the state has come out with what they're calling Bluebonnet curriculum they will be even more aligned. So kudos to the, to TEA, and Governor Abbott - who I've been very critical of here this morning - for the improvement with a Bluebonnet curriculum, we do think it's going to be much better for our kids.
Haslett: A separate discussion that we can have maybe some other time is about these standardized tests in general, because it seems to some that if the curricula are fine, then you measure the student's proficiency by how well they do in the class, and you don't even need the standardized test to measure learning outcomes.
Drummond: We would love and would welcome the type of achievement test that we grew up with. Norm-referenced, nationwide testing that actually gauges what students are supposed to be learning, not trick questions. For those who haven't ever taken a STAAR test. You will have multiple choice answers that say things like, answer A, and then option B may be answer A and B. Option C may be, does answer A, B, C, or D answer the question best? You know when we took achievement tests growing up, there was one correct answer. These tests? In my opinion, I don't think it's my opinion, I think ask any educator in the state of Texas, you ask these tests were made to be difficult. They're not knowledge-based. A lot of it is based on test-taking skills that little kids shouldn't have to learn, that they shouldn't feel the pressure of these tests give us a fair test. And then of course, this accountability cycle. The numbers that people are looking at now came out of school year 2022-2023. They're three years behind on the scores that, that they just released for us. And of course, they waited to release those scores right before the voucher vote occurred, because in 22-23, they jumped the standards up significantly. Instead of having to. To get 55 out of 77 questions correct. On a test they maybe went to 66 questions you had to get correct. So it was very convenient to throw out the 22-23 scores right before the voucher vote. Because once again, statewide scores dropped because again, they moved the goalpost for us. It's hard to hit a moving target every year.
Haslett: I think just about everybody can think back to high school or perhaps junior high, where they might have had one instructor who preferred those kind of squirrely questions where it wasn't so much measuring your understanding of the material, but your ability to navigate the confusing wording and things like that. That's got to be awfully frustrating for those young folks.
Drummond: It is awfully frustrating and it's, it is just pressure that little kids shouldn't have.
Haslett: It's definitely putting lots of pressure on students and educators and everybody else in the picture. The release of those scores was not from the TEA. The reason why the release was delayed was because there was a lawsuit filed by districts that slowed the release. And so, you had the court system, which was in control of the timing of the release, which you just mentioned.
Drummond: Yes. But I would argue again how convenient that it's been tied up in court all this time, but they got it settled right before the voucher vote.
