And he found that minority students were more likely to drop out in that grade than in any other. Furthermore, the TAAS makes no attempt to account for limited proficiency in English. Mr. Valencia, of the University of Texas, testified that holding minority students and schools accountable for low scores is unfair. In the end, the trial judge ruled that the benefits of accountability outweighed the drawbacks of the test's disparate impact on minority students. Criticism of the policy's inequities, however, may accelerate.
Some scholars believe that the flaws of high-stakes testing have been exaggerated.
Jay P. Greene, an education researcher at the Manhattan Institute who once taught in the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin, describes himself as a former skeptic who testified for the Texas plaintiffs against the TAAS in 1999. As independent evidence, he cites Texas students' improved performance on the NAEP, a national test with no high-stakes consequences. And he maintains that the dropout rate for minority students, though comparatively high, has declined throughout the 1990's. Unlike Mr. Haney, who calculated the attrition of high-school students from ninth grade on, Mr. Greene tracked students' fates from the seventh grade. There are many good reasons not to like accountability tests, Mr. Greene concludes.