TAKS Questions
Texas education officials double-check 609 schools across the state for irregularities in students' answers on the overhyped and undereffective Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, better known as the TAKS test.
The San Antonio Express-News says the Texas Education Agency hired a Utah-based company to examine schools. The business found red flags at 9 percent of the state's public educational facilities:
The San Antonio Express-News says the Texas Education Agency hired a Utah-based company to examine schools. The business found red flags at 9 percent of the state's public educational facilities:
The firm, which was paid $533,334, flagged schools where individual students had big gains in test scores from year to year by using a formula to predict how a student is likely to do based on past test performance.Nineteen school districts in the Rio Grande Valley have campuses that make the list of flagged schools:
It also looked for similar test responses in the same classroom, a high number of erased answers and unusual response patterns, such as students missing very easy questions while answering more difficult ones correctly.
- Benavides ISD: 1 school, 1 flag
- Brownsville ISD: 5 schools, 5 flags
- Donna ISD: 2 schools, 3 flags
- Edcouch-Elsa ISD: 2 schools, 2 flags
- Harlingen CISD: 3 schools, 4 flags
- Hidalgo ISD: 2 schools, 3 flags
- La Joya ISD: 4 schools, 12 flags
- Los Fresnos CISD: 1 school, 1 flag
- McAllen ISD: 2 schools, 2 flags
- Mission CISD: 2 schools, 2 flags
- Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD: 4 schools, 4 flags
- Point Isabel ISD: 1 school, 1 flag
- Progreso ISD: 2 schools, 3 flags
- Rio Grande City CISD: 3 schools, 7 flags
- San Benito CISD: 1 school, 1 flag
- Santa Rosa ISD: 1 school, 2 flags
- Sharyland ISD: 1 school, 6 flags
- Valley View ISD: 1 school, 2 flags
- Weslaco ISD: 2 schools, 4 flags
"Just because a school shows up on the list doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem," TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said. "They could be there because of great teaching."Of course, this misses the bigger picture: That all TAKS does is make educators teach to the test and churn out kids whose main skill is working the system while taking a standardized exam.
posted by Mack T. Harrison at 6:54 PM
2 Comments:
Yes it does. Teachers spend all year going to in-service after in-service to learn better ways to teach to TAKS. My wife is a teacher and I see what educators and students are put through. They sit around tables studying charts like a stock broker studies his portfolio. You see if there is a student not progressing they pull them aside to juice them up with more TAKS knowledge. Its all about percentage and ranking to these districts.
Amen.
I have very rude words for TAKS testing.
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