LTISD Info

“Lies, damn lies and magic statistics” sounds just like the LTISD doesn’t it? A recent article published in the Houston Chronicle by Rick Casey about TAKS test scores and the TEA ratings that result from these test scores. Rick aptly named the article “Lies, damn lies and magic statistics.”

You should read the entire article, it is very interesting. Here are the first few paragraphs to get you started:

“If you were depressed by last Sunday’s discussion in this space of the fact that Texas students could pass the TAKS test with scores as low as 44 percent, consider this:

Even with such low standards, the Texas Education Agency decided to rate hundreds of Texas schools and scores of Texas districts as “academically acceptable” last year — the lowest “passing” category – by counting thousands of students who flunked the TAKS as passing it.

This academic alchemy was achieved through a statistical exercise called the “Texas Projection Measure.”

This complex formula, based on statewide TAKS scores from the year before, is said to identify students who failed this year but are likely to pass next year. Or maybe the year after that. Or possibly the year after that.”

- “Lies, damn lies and magic statistics,” Rick Casey, Houston Chronicle, June 21, 2010

Be sure to read the comments about the article as well.

After reading this article, it makes you want to ask just how well did the LTISD really do this last year? Academically that is.

Even with inflated numbers, the LTISD could only pull out “Academically Acceptable” (again), yet Rocky Kirk’s pay keeps on sky rocketing. Let’s not forget the sky rocketing pay of our Deputy Superintendent, Susan Bohn who will probably get another pay raise real soon.