This may be among the dumber things I’ve heard of a school doing to “motivate” students for the TAKS test.

Parents at a Katy school were outraged after students were separated by race for TAKS test assemblies.

School officials confirmed that it did indeed happen, leaving parents and students alike wondering why.

At Mayde Creek High School right before spring break, African American students were singled out and called to a special assembly.

Later, an assembly was called just for Hispanic students.

Then, yet another was called for white students.

“To me, that’s segregation. I don’t feel that those kids are getting treated fairly,” concerned parent Deon Franklin, whose daughter is in the 9th grade at the school, said.

It really makes no sense – but the school and district still want to justify it.

The district said the students were brought together to be lectured on the upcoming TAKS test.

It was supposed to be a sort of rally – encouragement for the kids to do well on the test.

And race had what, exactly, to do with encouraging them to do well on the test?

“But why should they have to be separated to have this kind of meeting when they should’ve been having this meeting with all the kids,” Franklin said.

But the district insists the state is the one behind the multiple meetings, calling them “targeted interventions.”

“The state of Texas when they look at how our students perform, they break it down by ethnicity,” Katy ISD spokesman Steve Stanford said.

But the state also breaks the data down by factors like district and campus, among others.

“It’s not about color. It’s about how well they do on the test,” Franklin said.

Yeah, they do break results down along many lines. They do a racial breakdown – which means that Asians and Native Americans should also have had separate rallies. They also break it down by gender – will there be separate male and female rallies coming up? And what about some of the other targeted populations – like low-income, migrant, and special education – will they be having separate rallies, too, due to the various ways students are statistically broken down for reporting and evaluation purposes? Of course not – which makes the district’s argument ring quite hollow.

And it happens to be a test that many of the students were already nervous about taking.

The meetings were only held for students in the district labeled at risk for failing the exam.

HmmmmmmÂ…. If you are really only dealing with a much smaller subset of students, the ethnic breakdown makes even less sense. I suspect that only one meeting or rally could have been held.

And while Mayde Creek was the only school in the district to hold the meetings, Katy ISD officials say it will be up to the individual principals if the meetings will be held again next year.

I wonder what the Texas Education Agency, the US Department of Education, and the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice have to say about doing this next year?

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