When Texas public school students start their STAAR tests this week, they’ll face a far different testing and accountability system than was set at the beginning of the prior school year. For 13 legislative sessions across 34 years, every time Texas passed laws about school testing, the numbers and stakes had grown. That ended in 2013, when a series of laws passed that not only demanded changes in testing, but also challenged the legitimacy of the test-based accountability system. All without a single dissenting vote. That enormous shift in attitude is still raising echoes nationally. And as legislators prepare for the next session, they’re discussing ways to further reduce the number and influence of tests. How did that happen? This is the story of how the Texas testing bubble popped. 15% of your grade In weather forecasting, there’s a saying that the flapping of a butterfly wing can eventually cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. Small things can have huge and unforeseen consequences. The battle over testing in Texas public schools was upturned last year because of four lines in a 35-page law. That and a back-to-school night at an Austin high school. NAME Dineen Majcher D

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Austin lawyer, co-founder of Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment. Anderson High School is a campus that consistently shows up on state and national “best” lists. On Sept. 23, 2011, Dineen Majcher settled in to hear what her daughter, an incoming ninth-grader, would face in history class. The teacher explained there was something new: The score on a state-mandated end-of-course exam would represent 15 percent of the course’s grade. And no, the teacher wouldn’t be allowed to see the test in advance. Majcher and Susan Schultz, another freshman mom, met with the principal a few days later. The principal explained that the history class was one of a dozen that would include the state’s new EOC tests and the “15 percent rule.” NAME Susan Schultz S

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Austin lawyer, co-founder of Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment. The effect of the exam might pull up a grade. But it might also drop a good student from an “A” to a “B” or tumble a struggling student into failure. Majcher was incredulous. “I knew at no point in Texas history had a standardized test been part of a grade,” she said. “Obviously, if you affect the grade with a standardized test, that affects GPA. For the high-performing kids, that affects college. For the mid- or low- performing kids, that may affect graduation.” Incredulity turned to anger. And anger into action. The “15 percent rule” was the flapping butterfly. It was the spark that pushed Majcher and Schultz — both experienced, high-energy lawyers — into banding with other parents and creating Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment. In less than a year, TAMSA was a no-kidding grass-roots movement — a low-budget, Internet-linked, statewide network of mobilized parents. Austin power brokers quickly came to know TAMSA, a.k.a. “Mothers Against Drunk Testing,” a.k.a. “the Mean Moms.” Fans and foes agree TAMSA was the last necessary ingredient in changing state testing policy. Test scores have no exceptions, no appeal. Home prices and the reputations of entire cities hang on the results. They can decide the fate of students, teachers and administrators. What happened as a result is a deal much bigger than even the fate of the 5 million Texas public school students. For more than 30 years, no state has been more important than Texas in the growth of standardized testing. The exams promised accountability, an incorruptible measure that put kids of all races and incomes on the same playing field. Test scores have no exceptions, no appeal. Home prices and the reputations of entire cities hang on the results. They can decide the fate of students, teachers and administrators. And not just here. Gov. George W. Bush took the model and his education advisers to Washington when he became president. The Texas system provided the scaffolding for No Child Left Behind — and the seed of the new Common Core program that calls for even more testing. In Texas and across the nation, the push for more testing seemed unstoppable. Until it was stopped.

Dineen Majcher and her daughter Elly Smith at their home in Austin. Dineen is a co-founder of the Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment, which pressured lawmakers last session to roll back testing. (Michael Ainsworth, The Dallas Morning News)

Tests and more tests The story of how the 15 percent rule became Texas law helps explain how the state testing system was built. These are the begats of the state’s testing history: The first required test, the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills, was approved by the Legislature in 1979. TABS was followed over the years by a series of other tests known to most people only by their acronyms: TEAMS then TAAS then TAKS. TABS started as nine tests — three given in the third, fifth and ninth grades — with no specific consequences. By 2007, TAKS included 27 exams over nine grades, and the stakes had jumped dramatically. Most students had to pass tests in the third, fifth and eighth grades to be promoted and in the 11th grade to graduate. Schools and districts were issued annual highly anticipated “accountability ratings” based almost entirely on the scores. And woe betide a superintendent or principal whose school dropped a notch. In 2007, the Legislature approved another testing reboot. Once again, the new program would be harder. It would include as many as 32 exams. And the penalties for failure would be higher. NAME Florence Shapiro F

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Former state senator from Plano. Chaired the Senate public education committee when STAAR was designed and approved and rejected attempts in 2011 to change the system. Prime architects of the changes were the powerful chairs of the House and Senate public education committees. Plano Republican Florence Shapiro led on the Senate side. She’d heard teachers and superintendents complain that high school students weren’t taking their tests seriously enough. Easily fixed. “I believed that in order for kids to take the exam and take it seriously, they had to have some skin in the game,” she said recently. For Shapiro, that meant the scores had to have an impact on the final course grade. Was careful research done to figure out if that was an effective idea? Nope. Did investigation determine whether 10 percent of the final grade would be too little or 20 percent too much? Nope again. And so the 15 percent rule was one small item buried quietly in the pages of the lengthy Senate Bill 1031. In 2009, another major education bill set final details for the new State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness — STAAR. The 15 percent rule survived a nasty conference committee fight. From the school district perspective, the 15 percent rule was an administrative nightmare. But not until mid-2011, just before it was set to kick in, did district officials really start hollering. What were the problems? Start with the fact that few Texas schools issue “final grades” in high school. Semester grades are almost always the ones that matter. Did they all need to change their grading system to be legal? Then consider the variety of ways Texas grades are presented: Letter grades, four-, five-, six- or 100-plus point scales. But STAAR scores are a four-digit number that fits none of the district systems. How to match them up? Neither the Legislature nor the Texas Education Agency offered guidance. Had anybody from the TEA or any lobbying or advisory organization gone to Shapiro in 2007 or 2009 to explain how tough it would be to digest this bit of legislative sausage? “Nobody,” Shapiro said recently. “NO-body. Nooooo-body.”

Plano Republican Florence Shapiro studies notes before presenting a bill to the Texas Senate in 2007. Shapiro now admits that the 15 percent rule and numerous EOC tests were a mistake. (Harry Cabluck, The Associated Press)