Jerry Jesness is a special education teacher in a south Texas elementary school. His email address is: jjesness@hiline.net.

The Thomas Fordham Foundation just gave Iowa's teachers an "F," while we Texas teachers got an "A." As a Midwestern transplant teaching in Texas, I find that strange.

The numbers just do not add up. Iowa, for instance, ranked second nationally this year in SAT scores, while Texas was tied for 47th. Iowa was tied for eighth in ACT scores, while Texas was tied for 39th. Although Texas' fourth graders made a good showing in the most recent mathematics National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, most Texas NAEP scores have been middling. Iowa's NAEP scores are near the top in all grades and categories.

As far as teacher quality goes, Texas is one of the few states to let individuals with only high-school diplomas or general-equivalency diplomas to substitute teach, sometimes for a year in the same classroom. Regular Texas teachers need not major in the subjects they teach.

In some subjects, teachers need only 12 college credits to get jobs. Those who lack sufficient credit can add areas of certification through fairly simple subject exams. Yet even with such easy routes to certification, almost half of all secondary teachers in Texas are teaching out of their fields at least part of the time. What was the Fordham think tank thinking?

A test that has outlived its usefulness

Fordham credits Texas for its comprehensive, standards-based accountability system for students and schools while lambasting Iowa because systematic accountability is negligible there. What Fordham does not seem to realize is that the Texas accountability system, while at least appearing to be comprehensive, is seriously flawed.

Does the Texas education accountability system work?

The cornerstones of our accountability system are dropout data and the state-mandated Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). Immediately after this system was put into place, dropout rates plummeted throughout the state ¿- but with no accompanying increase in graduation rates.

After the San Antonio-based Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) published a report pointing out this statistical anomaly, the Texas Education Agency issued a few reprimands to some of the worst offenders. Nevertheless, a number of Texas high schools with more than twice as many freshmen as graduating seniors are still officially claiming to have dropout rates of only 1% or 2%. The TAAS, while serving a certain purpose, is hardly an appropriate instrument for a comprehensive accountability system.

The Houston-based Tax Research Organization -- working with Mathematically Correct and the Harvard School of Education -- and California State University analyzed the TAAS. It determined that the graduation math test was written at a fifth-grade, eighth-month level. The reading test, it determined, was below grade level at every grade and has been getting easier over the years.

The TAAS has served a purpose. When I first began teaching in Texas in 1983, many students were not being taught even the basics. The TAAS requirement has helped end this crisis, and that is a victory for which Texas deserves to brag.

However, the emphasis on basic skills has taken its toll elsewhere. Elementary schools statewide have gutted art, science and social-studies programs, and secondary schools have reduced the time allotted for such luxuries as science experiments and novel reading in order to make extra time to study the "important" tested skills.

Ranking schools with such an instrument is like ranking track teams according to the number of runners that make it across the finish line. Note that some of the schools Texas recognizes for academic excellence have average ACT scores in the teens and average SAT scores in the 800s.

Testing the teachers

Fordham credits Texas for requiring teachers to pass tests in the subjects they teach. It seems that Fordham believes that this testing makes up for the lack of a requirement that teachers have majors in their subjects.

If the tests were more difficult, that might be true. Like the students' TAAS tests, however, the teachers' EXCET exams set only a minimum standard.

On a lark, I took several. Although my college transcript indicates only two classes in biology, one in economics, one in history, one in government and none in earth science, geography or special education, I am now fully certified to teach all these subjects in Texas. The middle-school earth/life science test was particularly easy. That test would be more appropriate for middle-school students than their teachers.

Fordham gives a lot of weight to teacher tenure, or rather the lack of it. It disparages states like Iowa that offer tenure to their teachers, while those that, like Texas, do not require schools to offer tenure are praised. While Fordham admits that 49% of Texas teachers work out of their fields, it downplays this fault, as if to say it is more important for teachers to be disposable than knowledgeable.

Fordham would like to see schools run more like businesses, with principals that have the same powers to hire and fire as do managers in the private sector. We must consider, however, that public education is still a monopoly. A fired employee in the private sector can start his own business and compete with his former employer in the same market. A fired teacher does not have that option.

The few charter schools that now exist in Texas are not enough to make public-sector education resemble private-sector business. Unchecked by market forces, an empowered but incompetent school administrator can become a petty tyrant.

Although tenure does sometimes allow incompetent teachers to remain in a school, lack of tenure can make teaching less appealing to candidates. The fact that Texas has so much trouble keeping appropriately certified teachers in its classrooms indicates that its approach may leave something to be desired. If Texas offered more autonomy and protection to its teachers, it probably would have less trouble attracting teachers who are experts in the subjects they teach.

Not a model to emulate

I have a great respect for the Fordham Foundation. I have been on its mailing list for some time, and I read with relish the writings of Chester Finn and Diane Ravitch. In fact, they have been kind enough to publish two of my articles in their "Selected Readings on School Reform."

Like other think-tank thinkers, however, Fordham researchers view education from an ivory tower. They do not know the young, bright math teacher who left skid marks on the parking lot the last day of school on her way to her new job as an actuary. They have not met the honor students from exemplary middle schools who cannot read more than five pages a sitting or define the words "veto" or "galaxy." And they have not team taught with an out-of-field teacher who cannot understand his own class' textbooks.

Fordham researchers are limited to what they have on paper. I have to admit, Texas education looks good on paper. Take it from someone who works on the front lines, though: Look somewhere else for a model of quality teaching.