Contact: Anthony de Bruyn, (512) 499-4363

Date: September 7, 2004

Testimony to the Senate Education Committee

Pedro Reyes, Ph.D.

The University of Texas System

Introduction

Thank you madam Chairman and members of the committee for inviting me to testify before you today on behalf of The University of Texas System on the TRACK program – TRACK stands for TAKS Readiness and Core Knowledge. I am Dr. Pedro Reyes, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the UT System, and I am responsible for the TRACK program and related K-12 initiatives within the System. Prior to joining the UT System administration, I was a dean in the graduate school and professor of education policy and statistics at UT Austin. I was also a high school social studies teacher wrestling with the same issues we do today.

As an academician whose teaching and research has long dealt with these issues of learning, I know that for decades leaders in higher education and in public policy used to talk about the various pieces of the education "pipeline" as separate entities with separate goals and separate challenges. But in recent years, education leaders, researchers, the Federal Government, and Legislatures throughout the nation have made it clear that the higher education institutions are integral to the improvement and success of the education system. For the education system to work, institutions and Systems of higher education must work collaboratively with the K-12 system in order to improve the success of students throughout the entirety of the education pipeline. The time and the need for closer collaboration and alignment of the education systems of the country were never greater than it is today. That is why Chancellor Mark Yudof created an office of "Educational System Alignment" at the UT System to lead the many initiatives and efforts taking place at our 15 institutions and at the System administration itself.

One response to this national effort to collaborate, the UT System established the "Every Child Every Advantage" initiative in 2002 which calls for

1. Strengthening university-based teacher preparation programs,
2. Creating high-quality training and instructional tools for public school teachers,
3. Initiating an aggressive research agenda to improve instruction in reading, math, and instructing students where English is a Second Language, and
4. Creating broadly accessible student diagnostic tools and effective intervention to promote TAKS success … the online TRACK program.

By providing this broad support, we hope to ensure that all of the institutions of higher education in our state will admit a more diverse and larger number of better prepared students in to its future freshman classes. This initiative is very much in line with the State's P-16, "Closing the Gaps" goals, as well as fulfilling the mandate of the Legislature in SB 1108 which called for the Texas Education Agency to work with institutions of higher education to create an online diagnostic and intervention program to help promote student success on the exit level TAKS.

The urgent need for TRACK became apparent when the 2003 10 th grade test results showed that barely one-half (52 percent) of all 10 th graders would meet the minimum standard for passing the exit-level TAKS to be administered statewide for the first time the following year. Only 36% among minority students and 12% among limited English proficient students met those minimal standards for passing the test based on the 2003 results. These startling statistics were a wakeup call for the State … and made implementing a program like TRACK that much more critical in order to aid students who would have to pass the exam the next year. At a time in which the state was grappling with a several fiscal crisis to address an estimate $10 billion shortfall in the coming biennium, the likelihood of state funding to meet this immediate need was remote. For that reason, the UT System was able to marshal up sufficient private sector support to build a diagnostic tool online – a task we projected could take three years to fully implement. But with immediate private support we were able to accelerate the TRACK project to be fully ready to help last years 11th grade class in slightly less than one year. Rushing the project created real challenges in implementation but, happily, those challenges were overcome, and real success was achieved when we launched the online website in early 2004.

The UT System, through its award-winning UT Telecampus distance education office, dedicated its time and resources to developing a tool that could easily be used by students free of charge and also made available to teachers to identify areas of needed intervention across the TAKS subject areas. We were able to develop TRACK on this accelerated basis due to these extraordinary efforts of the UT System and TEA, and because of the extraordinary generosity of Houston Endowment and the Meadows Foundation, and we are deeply grateful to them for supporting this important program benefiting our state's schools, teachers and students. As Chancellor Yudof has stated many times since TRACK was first launched -- “This website is an important element in the UT System's broad efforts to support the K-12 education system as we work to help increase the number of college-bound high school graduates statewide.”

And I am happy to report to you today that this tool was an immediate success with schools across the state. Just after the TRACK diagnostic test became available online we experienced close to 10,000 hits. This early activity was evidence of the schools' desire and need for support and assistance in helping their students succeed on the exit-level test. After Senator Shapiro and Commissioner Neeley and Chancellor Yudof officially announced the program at a press conference in Austin in (Month) 2004 the online activity on the website increased dramatically to 30,000 hits in that one week.

Senator Shapiro, you stated. "When I passed Senate Bill 1108, one of my main goals was the online diagnostic assistance program to help students prepare for the 11th grade exit-level TAKS test." You commended the Texas Education Agency and the UT System for their efforts in implementing the TRACK program as an essential asset to all students prior to administration of the new and more demanding statewide TAKS test.

State Rep. Kent Grusendorf, chair of the House Education Committee and also a co-sponsor of the bill, issued this statement: "I applaud the UT System for the launch of the TRACK program. By taking advantage of current technology, students and teachers can now use this valuable diagnostic tool as a resource to identify strengths and weaknesses in preparation for the exit-level TAKS tests."

And Commissioner Neeley has pointed out in her public statements about TRACK -- this online study Guide is free, it is easy to access, and it is cutting edge. A true "win-win" program for Texas and for its students.

We have also received many positive responses from school districts. For example, San Antonio Independent School Superintendent Dr. Ruben Olivares has said that TRACK (QUOTE) "is a terrific tool to help teachers and students understand academic strengths and weaknesses and target instruction to those areas of need. The district will save a lot of money by using this piece of technology. I sincerely appreciate the effort of the University of Texas in this matter."

To date, we have had over 5 million hits to the website – visits to the website by parents, teachers, administrators, students, and the public in general. More importantly, we have right now close to 60,000 11 th graders registered taking all the diagnostic tests available to them on the TRACK website. We have also close to 50, 000 students actually studying the learning materials we have online to assist them in the review of individual TAKS subject areas in which they need additional assistance in preparing for the TAKS exam. This we believe is an indication of the tremendous success of this program and this tool available at no charge to students, teachers and parents because student participation in using TRACK is totally voluntary.

And the process for taking advantage of this online tool is simple. The student registers on our TRACK website for those of you who care to try your own skills in practicing for a TAKS exam. Once registered, you can then proceed to take a battery of diagnostic tests or go directly and study highly interactive and engaging learning materials.

If the student goes through the diagnostic test … they will then get immediate feedback on the TAKS objectives they missed and need additional support and learning materials to review. The feedback is also organized by student expectations. Thus, the student and the teacher can download this report and target instruction to the areas the student has not mastered. The teacher can also develop an individual graduation plan given the information they generate from this assessment.

By the way the diagnostic test we have found is HIGHLY predictive of actual TAKS performance. We just received some post TAKS test analyses confirming predictive validity of the online diagnostic test available through the TRACK website. So, kids or parents listening to this hearing or reading about it – go to the TRACK website and get a step ahead in preparing for your TAKS exit exam!!! It works!

I do want to thank again all of the officials at TEA, particularly Deputy Commissioner Scott, and, the assessment and curriculum divisions for their support to develop this project. They committed significant time and human resources to it and we are all excited about track record thus far of TRACK.

With the active participation that we are seeing from schools and the feedback we are receiving from school districts, and from teachers, the UT System has decided to take the project further to address the deeper needs of students in the state. We began considering the development of a companion "tutoring" program that could provide more intensive intervention for individual students to teach them the skills they are lacking as identified by the diagnostic test. In looking nationally for “best practices” from which to draw on to benefit Texas students -- we learned that Massachusetts had a highly successful tutoring program on which to we could model our own in Texas.

We will now have "E-tutors" highly trained in Texas TAKS standards that can provide tutoring in English-Language Arts and Math. We now have a pilot test going on with 25 high schools participating throughout the State. We have in our pilot program schools in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Brownsville, El Paso, and San Antonio, among other districts. These tutors are available Mondays through Fridays 12 hours a day – from 9 in the morning until 9 at night. In addition, children can also get online help on Saturdays and Sundays, by posing questions and getting answers online within 24 hours.

We hope this tutoring program will help the State reduce the number of students not passing the TAKS test in the 11th grade through providing more individualized attention and assistance with "E-Tutors" as well as the online TRACK tools. We, along with the school districts, will be tracking student academic performance and their use of E-tutors for broader application throughout the State.

In addition to the diagnostic tools through TRACK and the pilot tutoring program, more can and should be done to assist teachers with professional development and to provide additional assistance to the student. The UT System is addressing both of these needs through two additional programs. First, we are building professional development modules to target teachers teaching in our schools in "out of content" areas for which they have no professional or academic certification. For example, some teachers have who certifications in coaching for example are asked to teach "out of content" courses in science because of teacher shortages in many schools. In fact, we know that in some areas almost one third (30%) of classroom instruction is being taught by teachers who are teaching "out of content" area for their expertise – this is particularly true in districts that with high minority student populations, districts with large numbers of English language learners, and in high poverty districts.

We are working together with the Texas Education Agency to develop and provide online help for those teachers. We will help teachers understand the content, teaching techniques that help struggling learners, and also to meet the State standards in these content areas.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the UT System is working aggressively to help the state and the K-12 system reach the goals set in "Closing the Gaps." We want to help in reducing the academic performance gap and ensuring more students enter and succeed in higher education. In the long run, we all benefit from those two initiatives. We are exploring the possibility of introducing a new writing tool that grades writing skills expected in our colleges and universities. This online tool grades a writing sample according to the State standards and gets it done in less than one minute. This tool can grade easily one writing sample or 10,000 at the same time in one minute. The beauty of this assessment tool is that teachers get help grading essays and an incredible opportunity to learn and target instruction to those needing the most help. We will continue our work supporting K-12 in teacher preparation, teacher professional development, research-based best practices in educating our youth, and in the continued development and refinement of TRACK. While we have been successful in these initial efforts to secure needed private sector funds to accelerate the TRACK program -- at some point, we will need help from the State to sustain this highly successful program. The development phase is the most expensive stage. We have done that.

We will continue helping teachers who are teaching out of content area with 24/7 online content academies to help teachers obtain highly qualified status and teach them how to work with helping language minority students and other struggling high school students. I want to thank TEA for helping us in the development and eventual distribution of these teacher learning materials, particularly Commissioner Neely.

Finally, thank you madam Chair for your invitation. The UT System is very proud of TRACK as just one of the many contributions we are committed to making to the state's K-12 system and to "Closing the Gaps" in student academic performance and participation in higher education.

I will be happy to answer any of your questions.