Opinion ID: 1320911
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Problems With PBMAS

Text: The district court identified two overall problems with TEA's monitoring procedures: (1) the kind of data collected by PBMAS inaccurately reflects how well a district is performing and cannot adequately detect deficiencies at the campus level; and (2) TEA's inadequate response to problems flagged by PBMAS contributes to the denial of educational opportunity. In particular, the court determined that data collected by PBMAS show that some school districts are likely under-reporting the number of LEP students, and TEA has done nothing to verify these numbers. The court also found that although TEA compared the bilingual-ESL indicators to state standards for all students, TEA has no procedure for comparing the performance of LEP students to non-LEP students directly. The court further found that PBMAS's aggregation of scores for multiple grade levels as well as for entire school districts distorted the performance indicators and masked problems at specific schools. With respect to on-site visits, the court determined that TEA had not conducted any on-site monitoring for some years and had no bilingual-ESL certified monitors at the time of the trial. The court also considered other ways TEA monitors LEP students, such as monitoring that it performs under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program and the Texas accountability rating system. The court found that, although some of these monitoring programs disaggregate student performance data, they do not overcome the deficiencies in PBMAS because they do not target all relevant criteria for evaluating LEP students.