Texas Testing Gets Bigger and Badder

With 1 of every 12 Texas schools suspected of cheating on the pressure cooker TAKS each year, Rick Perry is about to kick the heat up a notch or two on the big testing range. He plans to sign a measure this week that strengthens the racist testing policy that Texas has been so instrumental in shaping: Reward the privileged schools and teachers that are doing well and need the least help, and punish the disenfranchised schools where the shortage of family income and school resources could just as easily predict their failure. And when that doesn't doesn't work, shut them down or turn them over to the cognitive rape room artists with their sadistic scripted curriculum.

Will Texans support this kind of open racial profiling, just as they have the more covert varieties of the past? From the Austin Statesman:

High-stakes tests are already too important in the eyes of some parents, teachers and politicians — are poised to grow even more significant under legislation that Gov. Rick Perry plans to sign into law this week.

House Bill 1, which lowers school property tax rates by one-third over two years, will also create a new merit-pay plan for teachers based largely on student performance on tests such as the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. And it will toughen penalties for schools with low ratings, which also rely heavily on test scores.

"House Bill 1 ratchets up the stakes on testing, even though there are some folks who believed that wasn't possible," said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association. . . .