Dump STAAR, probe TEA, former school board member says

HOUSTON — A former board member of Katy I.S.D. and the Texas Association of School Boards has called for a targeted federal judicial takeover of the Texas Education Agency (TEA), a ban or court-approved restrictions on any voucher program approved by the Texas Legislature, and the abolishment of the STAAR student accountability testing program.

George Scott, a retired community journalist and president of a major Harris County public policy nonprofit organization, says the actions are needed because the TEA has never been a “genuine friend of the genuine civil rights of Texas disadvantaged students statistically dominated by children of color in the three decades of its formal testing and accountability systems.”

Scott published his remarks and a substantial amount of historical data on the testing and accountability programs on his website Academic Equity Advocates (AEA) calling the TEA’s entire 30+ year track record of meeting the genuine needs of at-risk minority students “a tragic trail of academic deception.”

The AEA website has shown what Scott calls “conclusive evidence” that the TEA has manipulated the grade-level integrity of performance standards even actually using its own statistically projected failure rates by Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students to set and reduce the passing or grade level performance thresholds so higher ‘passing’ rates could be shown.

“There’s no single press release that can fully demonstrate the historical accuracy of what the website reports,” Scott said. “However, from the initial TAAS scheme through today’s STAAR system, the TEA’s manipulation of academic integrity has harmed children but particularly students of color.”

Scott has published three videos to re-launch his website that offer brutal criticism of the TEA’s institutional integrity. “The victims of the TEA’s schemes have been students, parents, classroom teachers and dedicated educational professionals and taxpayers,” Scott said.

“That’s the story our website tells in uncompromising language supported by a mountain of historical data and facts,” Scott said. “I can’t make civil rights attorneys, journalists, or rank and file citizens read this. But they need to do so. The full story we tell is very powerful and very tragic particularly for at-risk minority kids the TEA has not well-served.”