Humble ISD Meets State Standard, One School Needs Improvement

HUMBLE, TX — All but one of the campuses in Humble ISD met the state's standards, according to accountability ratings recently released by the Texas Education Agency.

Although one of the district's campuses made it on this year's list of low performing schools, overall the district met state standards.

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.

The campus that didn't hit the state's mark was River Pines Elementary. It just missed on student achievement, only getting a 59 when it needed a 60, and almost had student progress — needed 32, got 31.

Houston Elementary was able to squeak through closing the performance gap with two more than the necessary 28 and built up a little pad in postsecondary readiness, got 17 needed 12.

However, given the shortcomings of this year's tests perhaps River Pines Elementary should get a round of applause for even getting in the end zone, what with the goal line constantly shifting.