Biology Staar 2020
Hasan Fogg
Parents and teachers are used to Miles and his lies. He has lied about reckless spending, about students with disabilities receiving extended time as required by law, about libraries and even telling students at the Houston Landing student panel that they did not have to carry traffic cones to the bathroom.
A passing score on the STAAR assessment as defined by the Texas Education Agency means that the student received a score in one of three categories- approaches, meets or masters. Here is the preliminary high school data for HISD and the state.
The table shows that HISD had more growth in high school STAAR pass rates for Algebra, English I, and US History before the takeover than since Miles became superintendent. This was not the headline Miles wanted.
Every ninth grade student must take English I as their first high school course with no exceptions. For math the first course must be Algebra although some students (4-8%) take Algebra in middle school. A student takes the STAAR the year they take the course. Thus, Miles could not fudge the data for STAAR Algebra or English I by excluding students from these courses.
This past year, only 70% of English I test-takers also took Biology, compared to the usual 90%. One can posit that, in NES schools, Miles placed newcomers, ESL students, and students with disabilities who were performing poorly in eighth grade into a non-tested science class (IPC or environmental systems). As a result, students least likely to pass the Biology STAAR did not take it in NES schools this year.
Miles has regularly said that his curriculum only goes to the tenth grade. Most Texas and HISD students take Biology in ninth grade and chemistry in tenth grade. Why then do his slide decks for science include environmental systems and biology but no chemistry?
High school students, mainly freshman and sophomores, took end-of-course exams in Algebra I and II, geometry, English I and II reading, English I and II writing, biology, chemistry, physics, world geography, world history and U.S. history, the release stated.
The areas district officials want to improve on are seventh-grade math scores and English I and II writing scores, he said. Seventy-one percent of Round Rock seventh-grade students met the passing standard on the math portion of the test, the release stated. The state average in this subject area was 71.4 percent.
Sixty-nine percent of high school students taking the English I writing EOC met the passing standard while 72 percent of students taking the English II writing EOC met the passing standard, the release stated. The state average for the English I writing EOC was 54 percent while the state average for the English II writing EOC was 53 percent.
The state has implemented phase-in passing standards, and students are expected to demonstrate more in-depth knowledge than what was expected on tests of the previous Texas of Assessment of Knowledge and Skills system, the release stated.
For the 2013-14 school year, high school students will take EOCs in the five subject areas of Algebra I, biology, English I and II and U.S. history, Chvez said. Because Gov. Rick Perry signed House Bill 5 last week, high school students will not have to take 15 EOCs like previously expected.
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