Senate Education Leader Files Testing Bill
State Sen. Kel Seliger, the Amarillo Republican who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee, filed a bill Tuesday offering broad changes to student assessment and high school graduation requirements in Texas.
Senate Bill 225 would significantly reduce the number of state standardized tests students must pass to graduate — from 15 to five in reading, writing, biology, Algebra I and U.S. history. It would also leave whether to count the state exams toward anything besides graduation requirements up to local school boards. A rule that requires state end-of-course exams to count toward 15 percent of students' final grade is currently ...
Comments (8)
Jolyn Brand via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Several good points in his bills (the reduced testing and eliminating the 15% rule) but why lower the standard on math and science courses in high school? Those are NEEDED fields and in high demand! More dumbing down of our children...
Lisa Thomas Casillas via Texas Tribune on Facebook
@Jolyn Brand Those are needed fields in high demand for students interested in pursuing those fields in college. Did you take 4 years of math and 4 years of science, including chemistry and physics and have to pass an exit exam in those science courses when you were in high school? I think that we are actually DISCOURAGING students from pursuing math and science fields because standardized testing HAS DUMBED DOWN those courses. Teaching to the test has made them BORING because of the lack of being able to teach thinking outside the box and encouraging creativity and spending time in labs and experimenting with real world applications of science and math instead of focusing on BORING, POINTLESS multiple choice questions.
Michael Clayton via Texas Tribune on Facebook
4x4 has destroyed science and math classes across the state. It sounds good in theory, but those classes are no longer college prep courses. Now that everyone has to take chemistry and physics to graduate, the courses have become a shell of their former selves. The depth of knowledge required for courses is not necessary for one to become a productive member of society. IPC was a great course for general knowledge of chemistry and physics. I believe that we will see an increase in students graduating with the minimum plan or dropping out, because of these courses. All of the same can be said for Algebra II.
Susan Cummings
I'm worried about the elimination of the 4 x 4 plan -- it makes vulnerable any gains we might have made in math and science, two areas for which we desperately need educated workers. But by all means, let's ditch those standardized tests. Teachers can get back to teaching if we do.
Andrew McBurney
Now this is a good idea.
I expect some will think we would be lowering our standards by reducing the number of required credits in the core academic areas, reducing the number of standardized tests that count toward graduation from 15 to 5, and removing the requirement that EOC's count as 15% of a student's final grade in the course; BUT this will actually free up teachers to focus on things like academic & critical thinking skills that students need for college instead of drill & kill.
If you follow the progress of this bill and this issue, please keep three things in mind:
1) Since the introduction of "high-stakes" standardized tests at almost all grade levels (starting at age 6), the number of Texas high school students needing remedial classes in college has sky-rocketted--in other words, the notion that we were raising standards through multiple-choice tests has back-fired in a very real way. In fact, just about the only place "improvement" has shown up is on the multiple-choice tests themselves.
2) Before the advent of TAKS, which is currently being phased out in favor of the more difficult STAAR, our high schools likely graduated students who went on the graduate from college and lead productive lives, but who might not have been able to pass one or more of the TAKS tests. I'm not saying a lot would fall into this category, but it still bothers me to think that there have been even a few students who had trouble going to college because of a standardized test (especially one that evidently has encouraged in some schools the abandonment of teaching skills needed for college). Judge for yourself. Take one of the previously released TAKS tests: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/taks/released-tests/
3) Back in my day (there, I said it) we "only" required 4 English, 3 math, 3 social studies, and 2 science; and yet our schools produced doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists, and even teachers.
Perhaps our schools had room for improvement, but right now we need to get off the track we've been on with the high-stakes standardized crazy train.
Andrew Elliott McBurney via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It would be easy to think adopting this bill would be lowering our standards, but there are a few things to keep in mind about the consequences of imposing high-stakes multiple-choice tests:
1) Since the introduction of "high-stakes" standardized tests at almost all grade levels (starting at age 6), the number of Texas high school students needing remedial classes in college has sky-rocketted--in other words, the notion that we were raising standards through multiple-choice tests has back-fired in a very real way. In fact, just about the only place "improvement" has shown up is on the multiple-choice tests themselves.
2) Before the advent of TAKS, which is currently being phased out in favor of the more difficult STAAR, our high schools likely graduated students who went on the graduate from college and lead productive lives, but who might not have been able to pass one or more of the TAKS tests. I'm not saying a lot would fall into this category, but it still bothers me to think that there have been even a few students who had trouble going to college because of a standardized test (especially one that evidently has encouraged in some schools the abandonment of teaching skills needed for college). Judge for yourself. Take one of the previously released TAKS tests: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/taks/released-tests/
3) Back in my day (there, I said it) we "only" required 4 English, 3 math, 3 social studies, and 2 science; and yet our schools produced doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists, and even teachers.
Perhaps our schools had room for improvement, but right now we need to get off the track we've been on with the high-stakes standardized crazy train.
Texas Parents Union via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Thanks to Senator Seliger for filing SB 225 to provide some needed flexibility in graduation requirements!
blanca fogleman
I am so glad that we are really looking at standardized testing. I was glad to read below that someone realizes that we are testing 6 year olds. In our district the frenzy to test and gather data is also being done in Kindergarten. Because of this trend, expensive programs are bought by districts that actually require pretest and post test for kindergarten students on a schedule every 2-3 weeks. This is on top of the state tests and the very important math and reading tests that we do 3 times a year. So....we never had time to teach. We began to teach to the test. Teacher were required to create the tests to be used each month. More wasted time. Then planning time would be used to sit and analyze useless data that we dared not speak against. What happened to 5 years needing discovery and kinetics learning. No wonder "choice" is gaining ground. No wonder home school is growing at huge rates. No wonder our young talented teachers walk away from education. They say we need to attract better teachers...we cannot keep the ones we have!