Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Texas announces new education reforms

Coming soon to a Texas public school near you will be a new achievement test which will be implemented this coming spring. The new test referred to as the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) test is set to replace the old assessment test the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills).

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.


3 comments:

  1. Late in the month of October, on the 26th, one of my classmates blog entry certainly caught my eye. However it was the subject at hand that reeled myself in to further analyize what he was discussing. This article, " Texas Announces New Education Reforms" talks about the new STAAR program for students that are still in High School. With further reading I honestly couldn't agree more, because in a way it kind of hits me in a personal matter. Well more so the TAKS which has now been re-named STAAR.

    Speaking for myself the one subject I struggled most during my Junior High and High School years was Math. I know i'm not the only one who isn't a fan of that subject either. Anyways I always dreaded taking the Math portion of the TAKS test every year, and unfortunatly did not pass it my junior year of HS. Now this just put me in a major downfall because this meant I had to take it again. If I didn't pass it, that only equaled one thing- not graduating. Briefly summing things up I missed one or two questions on the first retake then, thankfully, passed it the second time.

    Going back on the subject here, I honestly thought they were going to get rid of the TAKS, or well STAAR test away and it would be based on the students courses and subjects that they were taking. Obviously that isn't the case, but by what I read myself in my classmates blog entry the state really didn't. When reading the first paragraph, the STAAR will have more questions and a time limit. A time limit?! Seriously?! Just seeing those two words just puts up a red flag for me. I mean when putting the added stress of trying to prepare for this standardize test and having more questions (which the TAAKS had about 60 I believe, if I remember correctly) then a time limit, I think thats putting the last straw on the camels back. Its going to just make students stress out more than needed, and probably make them rush because their afraid they won't finish in time. Now when the STAAR was TAAKS, students had pretty much all the time they needed to finish the test, which made the test less stressfull.

    In aspect I do agree with my classmate about issues about the STAAR and how to fix this such as too many variables of the material to be tested on (like my classmate stated). Now I really agree what he mentioned in the 7th paragraph close to the bottom of his post. Its so true teachers, and the education board, only worry about taking a standardized test as opposed to actually teaching young students how to learn. I couldn't have said that better than he did. Like my classmate further mentioned how memorization is a key factor, but instead use something for efficiant. For instance, I know for one, some things I know how to get but can't solve the problem if its on paper. However there are some students that know how to do the problem and explaining it is alot easier than say, for instance, a word problem.

    So in conclusion, I do agree with my classmate. Maybe its time for a new system of learning than some standardized test.

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  2. Thank you Eloisa, I am glad you agree with me it really means a lot to me. I also really hope our generation will be able to come up with more practical and creative solutions to the issue of education and I am confident we will!

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  3. A STAAR is born
    In this my most recent post I am going to attempt to capture a couple of the factual and mildly disturbing truths in my colleagues post about Texas implementing the new STAAR Test to replace the TAKS. Mr. Bailey brings some interesting fodder to the fight. His facts seem to be in order and me being the parent of a rather intelligent six year old, I could not agree more with him.
    Some parents will be over the moon with the replacement of TAKS, but that is only because they have not spent enough time teaching their kids what they need to know to advance to the next grade. STAAR is only going to allow kids who are borderline on advancing to the next grade be advanced when they should actually held back or have to attend summer school. Anytime a student is given a test and told it is pass/fail if they know the material it will give them a sense of comfort knowing they can get so many answers right or wrong and still be OK.
    I don't like to brag about my little man being a uber smart fellow but in this case he will not be rewarded in any way by doing better on his STAAR exam than the kids who struggles with it but passes it just the same. How are we going to keep track of the kids who excel if the teacher is lumping their entire class together with a average pass/fail grading criteria?
    Sebastian was just tested and evaluated for the Gifted and Talented Program and he was placed in the top 3% of all first graders in the nation which means he will be advanced to third grade assignments in certain subjects. What does that mean? To me it means he has an aptitude for learning but it also means he will still be a simple statistic on his teachers feedback form for his class when her results come back for her class.
    I am not one for holding a kid back or punishing a child that is meeting the minimum criteria for passing onto the next grade but where is the incentive for learning if a child knows he/she is just required to pass or fail? Its kind of like saying whether or not you make $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year you still have to pay the same amount in taxes! Who knew we were so backward? Oh, that's right, we're already there!

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