If schools literally have only one measure that determines their performance, you can’t blame them for emphasizing it. Their jobs rides on those scores. If my school doesn’t perform, I will be replaced with a quickness (by someone who will get scores).
I highly recommend getting involved and advocating for change. I’m not anti standardized testing - just that it’s the only measure that is used to judge us.
Passing the test is no longer enough. Students must make progress from one year to the next, meaning that you often have the most pressure for your highest kids to do well. AND the school is placed in a group of schools with similar demographics to compete for “distinctions”. That means my aisd school has to beat out the westlake, south lake, and any other fancy lake schools. More pressure for high scores.
Another sad reality is that we have learned that staar prep helps scores. Teaching the content and having it understood by students is not enough at the elementary level. They need to see it in the same format that they will see it on a standardized test. It sucks because we are talking about 8 year olds.
Poor schools bitched forever about staar but we only saw TEA change anything when rich white parents got involved. They walked back a lot of the end of course testing requirement. If that’s your demographic and you aren’t happy you have an obligation to say something. TEA will listen.