TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2009 (copyright 2009 Texas AFT)   Punitive "Accountability" for Struggling Schools   For evidence that the legislature has not yet come close to fixing our state's punitive "accountability" system, you need look no further than the state-ordered closure this week of Pearce Middle School in Austin.   Pearce is a school where, according to the Texas Education Agency, 94.4 percent of students are economically disadvantaged and 38.3 percent of students have limited English proficiency. The Austin school district reports that in spite of these hurdles Pearce this year will meet federal accountability requirements of "Adequate Yearly Progress." Indeed, the district and TEA agree that all student subgroups will meet state standards for 2009 as well, in reading, math, social studies, and writing.   The only area where the school will fall short of state standards is in science--and even there, Pearce falls only two to five percentage points short of an "Academically Acceptable" rating from the state. Furthermore, the district reports, every student subgroup at Pearce "is projected to show performance increases for 2009 in reading, math, social studies, writing, and science."          Yet the positive trajectory at Pearce was not enough to stay the hand of the commissioner of education. Commissioner Robert Scott on Monday informed Austin ISD that he is ordering the closure of the school. His notification letter stressed that no "instructional use may be made of the facility during the 2009-2010 school year," unless the commissioner has first approved a plan to "repurpose" the campus. "Repurposing" entails wholesale reassignment of students and faculty and the all-but-certain demolition of the school-community teamwork that has helped Pearce make documented progress over the past year.   Commissioner Scott in effect discounted the recent improvement at Pearce, preferring instead to dwell on the fact that the school has been rated low-performing for eight out of the past ten years. He chose not to use available discretionary authority to give Pearce an additional year to achieve an "Academically Acceptable" passing rate in the one area where the school barely fell short.   This action came as a shock to community activists like Allen Weeks of Save Texas Schools, a group that worked with Texas AFT members in our Education Austin affiliate on the successful turnaround of another struggling Austin ISD middle school. That recent success has been the model for the school-community campaign to improve Pearce. The commissioner's decision to shut down Pearce, Weeks told the Austin American-Statesman, "is totally unexpected....I just don't think a school or a community could do any more than the staff has done over the last couple of years....It's unjust, and it's a disaster for the kids."   During the past legislative session, Weeks and others involved in Save Texas Schools testified eloquently in opposition to the state's "broken" system of school accountability. As their Web site noted, "There is absolutely no evidence across the nation that closing schools benefits children. What closure does is punish communities and kids rather than solve problems. We believe in accountability when it is done right, but the current system is broken. Now is the time to change the law!" Unfortunately, the legislature this spring merely tweaked the Texas system at the margins rather than fixing it fundamentally, and every bit of that indictment of the state accountability system still applies fully to state policies in force today--as the pointless, punitive shutdown of Pearce Middle School this week makes clear.