ABSTRACT
Both Haney and Klein raise a number of issues about the evidence that we use in “Accountability for Equity” to support our position that state accountability can, in some configurations and in certain circumstances, promote, support, and actually leverage increased educational equity in U.S. public schools. Klein and Haney are both particularly concerned about our use of Texas student achievement data, specifically the improving Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) performance for all student groups and the narrowing of performance gaps between groups from 1994 to 2000, as evidence of increasing educational equity in Texas. Klein’s primary issue with our use of TAAS scores as evidence of improved equity is that a study he conducted on National Assessment of Academic Progress (NAEP) performance of Texas students in reading and math did not show the same narrowing of achievement gaps between the performance of White students and that of students of color that has been
seen on the TAAS results. Klein uses these findings as evidence that the gains on TAAS are “not real” or represent only “superficial” levels of learning. Haney, similarly, raises issues about what the improvements in TAAS performance represent and what the narrowed gaps between students of color and White students on the TAAS mean. Specifically, Haney questions whether changes in passing scores in 1999 and 2000 artificially inflated achievement gains, and he argues that rising retention rates and declining graduation rates for AfricanAmerican and Latina/o students in Texas demonstrate that educational equity in Texas is diminishing rather than increasing.
