What is the Texas State Board of Education?

When I think about the Texas State Board of Education, I think about two things: lawn signs and stars. ⭐

First comes to mind the dozens of lawn signs I see during election season, more often crowded together at busy intersections than decorating private plots of grass. Sometimes the signs are so tightly packed that I wonder if they’ve just missed their bus, huddled together on the curb shouting names and slogans with varying degrees of urgency. But no one ever seems to be running for the Texas State Board of Education. Or if they are, perhaps their volunteers arrived too late to the scene, struggling to climb over four foot posters and stake their sign into unclaimed territory.

 

This is not my photo, but I feel like it's a good representation of the "campaign signs waiting for the bus" phenomenon. (taken from Freedom Forum)

The second thing I think about is the STAAR test. I attended private religious schools growing up, so I’ve never taken a STAAR test. I was only tangentially aware of the concept in my youth, understanding it to be worse than the (completely optional) SAT experience. I would nod sympathetically along to the laments of my friends without a clue what they were truly suffering. It wasn’t until I reached adulthood and began listening to the stories of my peers - parents of children and those who work in schools - that I gained a better understanding of how problematic our current testing environment really is. This is not to say that my peers in public high schools were unaware of the systemic issues, or that only adults are capable of expressing the problems with this system. But I was not in a place to fully comprehend these concerns until I gained a bit of maturity and looked beyond my own self-interest. 

We will dive further into my grievances with the STAAR test in my next blog post, but for now I want to investigate the organization that oversees the use of this testing instrument and regulates the testing environment. Today we’re talking about the Texas State Board of Education.

What is the Texas State Board of Education?

In the United States, educational standards are really up to each individual state. The US Department of Education says that “it is states and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation.” So federal involvement is more of a financial support via programming rather than oversight about what is taught and how. In this way, each state is able to decide its own best practices, ideally allowing individual citizens a larger role in the design and implementation of curriculum for their local communities.  

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) creates the policies and standards that state schools are expected to follow (excluding colleges and universities). The SBOE has a long history, going back to the creation of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in 1866. The SBOE is no longer part of the Texas Education Agency, but still creates policy for TEA. They're also in charge of budgeting for things like textbooks and making sure the educational needs of the state are met. I think of the SBOE as the arm of the state education department that creates a plan and carries it out.

The SBOE has fifteen members from districts across Texas, and they serve for two or four years. The Board is made up of three committees: the Committee on School Initiatives, the Committee on School Finance/Permanent School Fund, and the Committee on Instruction. For our purposes, the Committee on Instruction is the most relevant. The Committee on Instruction is specifically tasked with setting curriculum standards, reviewing and adopting instructional materials, and establishing graduation requirements. They determine what our students learn and how that learning is assessed. 

This is Evelyn Brooks, the SBOE member for District 11 where I live. I've never seen her name on a lawn sign. Get your name out there, Evelyn! You can find the SBOE member for your region here

The standards of curriculum in Texas are outlined by the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for each subject. Students are then tested over this knowledge every year, in every subject, with the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. According to the SBOE, the STAAR test is “a standardized academic achievement test designed to measure the extent to which a student has learned and is able to apply the defined knowledge and skills in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) at each tested grade, subject, and course.” 

So this board of individuals decides what students need to know, then administers a test to determine how well they know it. If they know the material well enough, students get to graduate. The thinking is that information learned from a standardized curriculum can be measured with a standardized test. I personally have never met a standardized student or seen a standardized classroom. What happens when we throw in other variables, like student needs or classroom difficulties? Can we really measure learning with standardized tests if classrooms and humans aren’t (and really shouldn’t be) standardized?

To be sure, those in charge of curriculum design regularly adjust elements of the STAAR. Although it is a standardized test, it is not a static or unchanging instrument. In my next post we'll dig a bit deeper into these recent changes, and how they impact student assessment.

What is my role in student assessment? 

Whether you are the caregiver of a student, an instructor, or just a nosy citizen like myself, I believe everyone connected to the education system deserves to have a say in how assessment is carried out. Although I do not currently have children or teach in a classroom, these are both things that I aspire to. I am deeply invested in the learning experience of students in my community, and fostering an environment where students and instructors alike can grow academically and personally. Is there room for this kind of development in a standardized learning environment? Are testing instruments like the STAAR assessing students in a way that is fair and equitable? Perhaps they are, and if so that is truly a wonderful thing. But what if they are not? 

I believe it is my responsibility as an academic studying assessment theory to understand and share with others how these testing instruments really work. What are they designed to measure, and what are our policy makers using them to determine? Is it in the students' best interest to base graduation status on test scores? Is there a better way to measure student learning? These are the things we’ll be discussing on this blog. 

I hope this can be an eye-opening adventure for all of us, investigating how these tools work and what they are capable of doing (or not capable of doing). I want to empower you as a reader to advocate for our community and ensure students are encouraged to grow beyond the parameters of a standardized curriculum.