REPORT FROM THE DIRECTOR OF COUNSELING IN 1998:

The following is a report from the KISD Director of Counseling in 1998.  That sounds like a long time ago, but in the scheme of things, it isn't.  KISD does every thing it can to obscure and otherwise hide any information about testing of students and always has as long as I've lived here. They DO NOT want the public to know what tests they give and to whom and what the results of those tests are.

This article from the Katy Times is revealing because usually this information is not given to the public.

"...KISD Director of Counseling, Artis Hinds, pointed out during Monday's Board of Trustees meeting that it's the state, not the local school district, which sets exception standards and chooses not to include the scores of students with limited English proficiency, recent move-ins and students in special education.  The numbers Hinds showed Trustees indicated that 6.74 percent of KISD students in grades 3-5 did not take the reading TAAS during the spring, 1997, administration of the test.

Of 6,466 students in grades 3-5, the district tested 6,030, Hinds said.  Of that number tested 91.97 percent district-wide met minimum expectations (scored 70 percent or better on the test.)  [Please note that the percent of actual students in the District is not given here! The number is short 436 students or 9.3% of all the studnts. MM]

Counting students exempted for limited English proficiency who took the TAAS in Spanish and those in special education, individual schools' scores dropped only slightly. [We can only guess how much they would have dropped if everyone had been included.  When the Director gives the excuse that the "State decides on the numbers," what she didn't say is that the State is the TEA, and the superintendents from all over the state clearly and collectively make those decisions, so passing the buck, while not a transparent activity, can be traced back to the source.  These superintendents have a vested interest in keeping scores high. No one in their right mind would want their children in Katy ISD schools if they knew the truth!MM]

Peters [the Board president] criticized The Times Editorial as "looking only at the negative and ignoring the positive."  [The editor at that time was Dave Mundy who clearly understood the STW initiative (and the current dumbing down of the curriculum and thus the students) that was going on right under Mr. Peters' nose.  MM]

Also released during Monday's meeting were results for KISD students in grade 3, 6, and 9 on the February Stanford Achievement Test. [The Stanford Achievement Test (before it was also dumbed down to fit the protocol) was a true measure of the curriculum being delivered at the time to KISD students. MM]  KISD third graders scored at the 77th percentile on the Basic Battery, with sixth-graders at the 73rd percentile and ninth-graders at the 70th percentile.  Scores on individual sections of the test ranged from a high of 84 for third-graders on the math section to a low of 61 for ninth graders on the spelling section."

[These scores would indicate that Katy ISD, contrary to popular belief and press releases from the school district and subdivision developers, is just mediocre and average--just like every other school district in Harris County and Texas!  I'm guessing that if the same Stanford Achievement Test were given to today's students, the scores would be much worse. Educationists would have us believe that the 50th percentile is "average," but I'm not buying that! MM]