ABSTRACT
A Washington Post reporter wrote a story, in the summer of 2000, during the heat of the presidential campaign, describing the standardized testing program in the state of Texas. The Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) had been introduced in the early 1990s to test the basic skills of elementary school students, and passage was required for graduation from high school. A small group of researchers at the Rand Corporation whose two most lucrative sources of contracts were likely to be threatened if George W. Bush was elected president decided to conduct an analysis of the Texas testing program. They said it was pure coincidence that their report was released just before the presidential election. The most sustained, and creative, anti-testing, anti-Texas research of the year 2000 was Walter Haney's. This Boston College education professor labels the "Texas Miracle" a "mirage," and the TAAS a "sham.".
