Texas Education and Standardized Tests

A colleague of mine, Malak Raad, recently blogged about standardized testing in Texas in his post "Standardized Tests in Texas". The core of the blog is about parent's recent complaints about the time their children spend in the classroom preparing for standardized testing. 

I strongly believe that Texas parents need to "slow their roll" a little bit here. Standardized tests play a huge role in the financing that schools can receive due to the No Child Left Behind Act. If schools are meeting the requirements set by the governments at both state and federal levels, they could be in some serious trouble. Raad, however, agrees with the parents that time is often wasted preparing for tests. He resorts back to his school experience by writing, "In middle school we spent days at a time taking practice exams even though the middle school I went to had a 97% commended rate on all subjects. As students, we enjoyed review days because that meant we didn't have to learn new material." Now even though Raad's school may have had a 97% commended rate for all subjects, that is definitely not the case for the majority of Texas schools. Texas ranks dead last in education! In addition, school districts often struggle to find ways to finance schools, relying mainly on property taxes. I would find it hard to believe that anyone would disagree that studying and preparing for tests can help improve your grade on that test. If students enjoy review days, then that's great! It's important that students get a break from learning new material day after day after day. The review days will help students recall material they learned months prior and will help refresh their memory going into the test. Why do colleges give students "dead days" and a week full of final exams without having to attend class?? It's so they can study and recall the information they have learned over the past semester in order to perform at a higher level on the exam! This is exactly what the education system is doing with students in elementary, middle, and high school in order to prepare them for their standardized tests. 

Raad brings up a good point though, when he discusses the relation between what is taught in the classroom and what is found on the standardized tests. He writes, "in all my AP classes the teacher would focus on the material we needed to do well on for the AP exam versus covering all the material for the course." In my opinion, this points out a huge flaw in the Texas education system. Teachers and schools need to start centering their classes and courses around the material found on the standardized tests. This will prevent a gap occurring in the students knowledge, between what they're taught in the classroom and what is found on the standardized tests. If the Texas education system and teachers focused their course content on the material covered on the standardized tests, it will help eliminate extra "preparation days" for the exam, and also improve student's test scores. These changes could help Texas remove itself from the bottom of the barrel in education, as well as help ease the financial burden on school districts.

Planned Parenthood Aborts the "Whistleblower lawsuit"

Following the recent heated debates in the legislature over the new abortion bill, Planned Parenthood isn't receiving any publicity to help its cause. Near the end of July, the Texas Attorney General's Office concluded that State's Medicaid fraud investigation into Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. Planned Parenthood was exposed for fraudulently over-billing the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had been filing improper billing practice. The investigation revealed the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had been billing the Texas Medicaid program, "for products and services that were never actually rendered, not medically necessary, and were not covered by the Medicaid program." The investigation has led to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast paying 1.4 million to the Medicaid program for their fraudulent activities. (To read more on the investigation, visit Big Jolly Politics)

This is absolutely the last thing that Planned Parenthood needed following the recent abortion bill that closed down the majority of their clinics in Texas. Throughout the entirety of the legislature's discussion over the bill, Planned Parenthood was making their case around the fact that their clinics would be shut down if the bill passed because of the lack of federal and state funding. This can be seen with Planned Parenthood's press release following the bill, "Planned Parenthood has provided health care services in Southeast Texas for almost 40 years. We care deeply about your health; and are saddened the funding cuts forced us to close these health centers." After making such claims, the last thing you would want is to be caught in the middle of fraudulent acts. Planned Parenthood just lost a huge amount of credibility.

The best part of this whole story is that Rochelle Tafolla, the spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast said that continuing the litigation would have been too lengthy and costly given "the hostile environment for women's health" in Texas. The hostile environment for women's health? Since when did public debate and argument all of a sudden become hostile? I'm pretty sure I've always learned in my college courses that debate and alternative views on issues are productive and can lead to better solutions to problems. The only thing that's hostile in this situation is stealing 1.4 million dollars that would go towards helping women and their health! Tafolla goes on to say, "We are ending this lawsuit in order to devote all our time and energy to delivering high-quality, affordable health care." Interesting that with all the recent "funding cuts", Planned Parenthood is willing to just fork over $1.4 million without a fight. It just goes to show that they were caught red handed. It sounds to me that Tafolla and her organization need to devote more time and energy to becoming a credible company and improve their integrity if they want to represent women in a positive manner in future women's health debates. With Planned Parenthood being such a crucial women's health advocate, they just did all women a huge injustice with this recent scandal by possibly jeopardizing the credibility of women's health representation in the future. It will be interesting to see if the Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast branch is the only Planned Parenthood branch in Texas that has committed these fraudulent acts.