Blog Stage Four: Critique an editorial or commentary from a Texas blog

On March 13, 2019, Mimi Swarts of Texas Monthly wrote a commentary titled “Testing the Test: New Legislation Filed to Audit STAAR”.

In this article, Swarts comments on the conflict revolving around the legitimacy of the STAAR test. Newly filed legislature has been filed to audit the STAAR test and its effectiveness in Texas. This is critical to state and local government because it could directly affect the youth that will one day be in office.

Swarts appears to be primarily targeting parents and students that have been through the STAAR process only to receive poor results. Swarts makes this connection when she addresses how the STAAR exam is set at a higher than appropriate level. This is seen when she writes: “During six highly emotional hours of testimony, parents, teachers, and school district superintendents spoke to the failings of STAAR—of kids and teachers demoralized with more and more classroom time given over to “drill and kill” that mysteriously made no difference in scores.” It would appear that in this passage Swarts is sympathizing with the families that have struggled through this outcome.

The author appears to have strong credibility with over 13 years of experience just at Texas Monthly. You can read more about her here.

Swarts writes as if she is against the current standing of the STAAR test. Elaborating on the topic, “If there was an argument to be made for keeping the STAAR reading exam as it is, they [the defendants] did not appear to have one at the ready. (The closest Morath got was to admit that more teacher support was the best way to ensure student success.” To support her claim, Swarts brings of findings from previous inspects of the STAAR test. She writes: “on multiple cases of academic research indicating that the reading portion of the STAAR test was set two grade levels higher than those it was testing”. Her logic is based around this idea that the test is harder than it should be, and thus discouraging students instead of encouraging them.

I agree with some aspects of this article – specifically, that the test should be written such that it is appropriate for the intended student of a certain academic level. I think that this consideration will not only give more accurate results, but also demonstrate the potential of students and encouraging them to do better.

Blog Stage Three: Critique an editorial or commentary from a Texas newspaper

On August 23, 2018, R.G Ratcliffe of Texas Monthly wrote a commentary titled “Beto O’Rourke Is Everywhere. Why Don’t More Texas Voters Know Him?"

In this article, Ratcliffe compaires O’Rourke’s and Cruz’s pole numbers and discusses how O’Rourke is consistently a few points behind Cruz, and possible reasons why.

The author of the article, R.G. Ratcliffe, appears to be targeting the specific group of people that support Beto O’Rourke, and are wondering why he is constantly one step behind Ted Cruz. Though, this article isn’t tailored specifically for that group. The analysis is written in a non opinionated way, such that it is insightful for anybody interested the feud between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz.

Ratcliffe appears to be a credible author. Not only does he work for a well known news source, but he also provides hyper links for all of the data he uses in this article. This allows any reader to double check his work, should they feel the need.

The article focuses on the possible reasons that Beto wasn’t very known (at the time the article was published), despite several viral videos, and television exposure. One of the contributors Ratcliffe pointed out, is that many of the views that made Beto’s videos go viral, came from out of state. In the article, Ratcliffe stated “A viral video outside of Texas might help O’Rourke’s fundraising, but it doesn’t necessarily put him in touch with Texas voters.” This is a very good point. People shouldn’t base opinions solely on numbers, they see were those numbers are coming from.

Ratcliffe noted that the poles he got his numbers from, were taken before O’Rourke’s 1.3 million dollar adverting campaign. Yet, Ratcliffe notes that Beto’s campaign is about “building a band wagon” and that it doesn’t even inform voters on what office Beto is even running for.

Overall, this is a well written article that provides thoughtful commentary, and a well researched approach to the analysis. However, Ratcliffe never really gives his readers a firm answer to his own title question. He ends the article by stating “What the surveys have been telling me this summer is that O’Rourke is a candidate with great potential. He also is a bubble that could easily get popped.” Ratcliffe throws a bunch of numbers at his readers, and interprets them, but he doesn’t talk about how those numbers affect Beto’s following.