Deer Park ISD Meets State Standards, All Schools Outperform State Standards

DEER PARK, TX — All of the campuses in Deer Park ISD met the state's standards, according to accountability ratings recently released by the Texas Education Agency.

The scores also showed that none of the district's campuses missed the mark in any of the four assessment areas — student achievement, student progress, closing performance gaps and postsecondary readiness.

The annual ratings are designed to provide a snapshot of a school's performance, but the system has come under fire for relying on scores from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, exams — the latest model of Texas' high-stakes standardized tests.

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Given the problems that plagued this year's tests — glitches in online tests, testing materials being sent to other schools and in one case to a church, scores being attributed to the wrong schools, flimsy answer sheets — it's a stretch to think that this year's fill-in-the-blank could be used to measure anything other than how much money the state saved by switching vendors.

Expect legislation to change the ratings game to be introduced when the filing period opens at the end of the year. Given how much time is guaranteed to be devoted to the three "G's" of Texas state politics — gays, guns and God — whether or not education bills will get a hearing when the Lege gets back next year is a bit of a crap shoot.

Given the shortcomings of this year's tests perhaps all the schools should get a round of applause for even getting in the end zone, what with the goal line constantly shifting.

Image credit: via Shutterstock