An open letter to Governor Abbott: Your appointee for Education Fax Lists Commissioner, Mike Morath, has consistently failed to perform the duties of his office. In his tenure, ETS has failed to conduct one single STAAR administration without some kind of glitch, problem, or news item. In the latest iteration of this Fax Lists problem, we find out that the 5th grade STAAR test dropped the "F" bomb twice in some versions of the test, a problem which TEA has acknowledged and for which it has apologized. Mr. Morath sat in a senate confirmation hearing and Fax Lists stated numerous times that every single question and reading passage on the.
STAAR test is reviewed thoroughly before being included on the test. This Fax Lists means that either his administration has continued its incompetence in STAAR test administration, or that Mr. Morath willfully approved a test for 10- and 11-year olds which included vulgar Fax Lists language. Furthermore, Mr. Morath's answers to the senate committee were misleading. Out of concern from information that questions and Fax Lists passages on the test were 2-3 grades above level, Mr. Morath was asked over and over by the committee how questions were reviewed for readability during the design phase of the STAAR test.
Each time, Mr. Morath answered to the committee that every question was Fax Lists reviewed by grade-level teachers. The problem with that is that grade level teachers are qualified to evaluate grade level in respect to alignment with the TEKS, and with the depth of knowledge required to answer the question. Fax Lists Teachers are NOT, however, trained to simply look at a passage or piece of writing and assign a lexile to it. We depend on charts provided by vendors for that, as that is a very specialized algorithm. What Mr. Morath ACTUALLY Fax Lists said is that TEA does NOT review readability of test questions and passages.