Under the new STAAR program (which was voted for in 2007 and will only be implemented in the freshman class this year) there are several major changes which will dramatically effect the students being subjected to the new standards, the new test will have more questions, a time limit and the test scores will count for 15% of the students final grades for the year.
This of course is of major concern to many students and parents,given the fact that here in Texas students that are ranked in the top 10% of their class are guaranteed admission into a public college in Texas. These new standards will shake things up a bit to say the least. The law also allows students to re-take the exam for any reason, which in my opinion is a waste of resources because the point of a test is to check your knowledge. If you take it and do poorly then you have a good idea of how to prepare in order to do better the 2nd time around, this seems to me to skew the actual results.
There are many ways in which the individual districts can implement the new requirements. For instance it may be given on a pass/fail basis, where if you pass you are given 100% credit and if you fail you are given 69%, (which to me seems unfair to the students who actually do perform exceptionally well the first time) or it will be weighted according to the actual score and therefore be accurately reflected in their final class grades.
Teachers are also concerned and for good reason too. Texas's teachers already produce some of the poorest performing school districts in the entire nation. With the more rigorous test requirements they will predictably only get worse. The simple implementation of new standards does not change the real problems underlying the poor performance. Issues like; student absences and the automatic promotion from grade to grade of students who are clearly not ready for the advancement in curriculum. These issues create a multitude of problems for teachers who cannot control these factors and do not have the time or resources to adequately focus on the students who are behind the curve so they only fall further behind.
In my opinion standardized tests are not a good idea because there are too many variables regarding the material to be tested over. Variables like; the class size, the schools ethnic and economic make-up, the attendance and drop-out rates and the overall ability of the teachers in the classrooms. Most importantly though is how involved parents are in their children’s educations.
I believe in the current system we place entirely too much emphasis on the destination and not on the journey. Meaning if you only worry about making sure students are ready to take a test then you aren't paying enough attention to teaching students how to learn, which is in my opinion as crucial as any information you could ever be taught. (Honestly how much of your 3rd grade language arts class do you actually remember?), I certainly don't remember much. I could be using terrible grammar and not know it. However fortunately for me I was taught how to learn and now thankfully I have the ability to understand just about anything I focus on due to my ability to systematically process the material.
Also I don't think that the simple memorization of material for a test is an adequate measure of individual students’ abilities. It does nothing to measure the intangibles like; the student’s work ethic or their set of values. Which are more important to employers than how much information you can memorize (just to forget it as soon as it is no longer needed).
Finally my prescription for this ailment in our school system is that we should begin teaching our children how to learn and process information starting at a very young age based on several factors like; how they learn i.e. through hands on application, through text or a combination and their individual learning speeds. Some children just need a little more time to grasp a new concept than others this does not mean they are not as smart it simply means they need more practice conceptualizing new ideas.
We should also devote much more financial and human resources in what I call "community teaching", this is when the community as a whole recognizes the students falling behind and or not attending class regularly and focus intently on not allowing them to fail. It begins with the parents but it is a job for everyone, like the old saying goes "it takes a village". It is crucial for our society that we do this because the cost of allowing one single drop-out from high-school is far too great a long-term cost to society to just let happen.
