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On the stage of the San Antonio Christian School in February, Mandy Drogin with the Texas Public Policy Foundation listed the pillars of what she calls the parent empowerment movement.
“The first pillar is transparency. Every single child across the state of Texas, their parents should know what they are learning in their classroom and why they are learning it,” Drogin said.
“The second pillar is quality,” Drogin went on to say. “Every single child in Texas, regardless of the street they live on, the money in their parent's bank account, the color of their skin, or any other factor, deserves access to a high-quality education.”
Drogin shared the stage that night with Gov. Greg Abbott and key state lawmakers to expound on their commitment to creating a school-voucher-like program that would give families public dollars to pay for private school.
But the Texas voucher bills Drogin and the politicians were there to promote wouldn’t give parents the transparency they need to know if their children are getting a quality education.
The proposals under consideration in the Texas House and Senate include identical language requiring students in the program to take an annual test. But they say private schools can choose between either the state exam or any nationally norm-referenced assessment. That “or” weakens the requirement so much that it’s almost useless.
“It's all but impossible to compare students in different schools or different school sectors unless they're using the same exam,” said Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University.
He said a norm-referenced test is better than nothing because students can at least be compared with others across the country who took the same test.
“But that is maybe helpful for the school's board of trustees, or maybe helpful for their principal or something like that. But what it isn't is helpful to parents, and it's not helpful to taxpayers,” Cowen said. “The only way to know how a parent's child would be doing in the public school today, or how they have grown since being in a public school last year or the year before, is if they're taking the exact same exam that the Texas public schools have to do.”
There’s a whole field of study called psychometrics dedicated to ensuring valid measurements on the same standardized tests over time. Researchers who study student outcomes always compare the results of students who have taken the same test in order to ensure accurate comparisons — it’s just common sense that when students take different exams their results can’t be accurately compared. But Drogin rejects that entire premise.
“You absolutely can compare apples to apples and not have the exact same test,” Drogin said in an interview with Texas Public Radio. “I think that is a false claim, and there is no reason why anyone should be arguing to have the exact same test when schools are not the exact same.”
Drogin said she is in favor of the bills giving private schools a choice of tests to administer to voucher recipients, and she doesn’t think that position conflicts with her pillars of transparency and quality.
“There must be academic accountability, of course, whenever we are spending taxpayer dollars, but to say that everything should be the exact same, the one-size-fits-all system has proven to not work,” Drogin said.
Cowen said before the pandemic several states with voucher programs required the state exam, but now that requirement has all but disappeared.
“I take the position that the reason for this is because over the last decade, when private schools taking vouchers were required to take the state exam, we saw some of the worst academic declines ever in the history of education research,” Cowen said.
“The typical voucher-receiving school really isn’t all that good,” Cowen added. “The idea that there’s all these elite private academies out there just waiting to take voucher kids is really a myth. They're still going to remain out of access to most kiddos."
Cowen worked with voucher advocates early in his career and participated in research on the impact of vouchers on student learning. He became an outspoken critic of the large-scale programs popular now after multiple studies found those types of programs don't improve student achievement.
Drogin said she doesn’t think private schools should be required to administer the state standardized tests to voucher recipients because the Texas tests are based on the state’s academic standards called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS.
“Private schools are not following along — and homeschoolers are not necessarily following along — with the TEKs, nor do we want them to,” Drogin said.
The Republican authors of the Texas voucher bills, Rep. Brad Buckley and State Senator Brandon Creighton, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. But during the House committee hearing on Buckley’s bill, Democrat Harold Dutton Jr. asked Buckley how the legislation will track student outcomes.
“Is the assumption that doing this will cause student outcomes to be improved?” Dutton asked.
“That's the assumption,” Buckley replied.
“I looked at the bill, and perhaps I missed it, but I don't see anything in the bill that measures that,” Dutton said.
“Well, there's norm-referenced testing that's required and reportable where we can look at that,” Buckley said. “And so, we'll have measurements, but then we'll also have the fact that this is parent directed. The ultimate accountability system.”
Buckley and other voucher supporters say parents will hold private schools accountable by choosing where to send their kids.
But, as the bills are written now, parents would likely be making that choice in the dark.
