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There are problems with the current Texas Assessment of Academic Skills and there is room for reform, both critics and supporters of TAAS agree.
Walter M. Haney, a Boston College education researcher and a frequent critic of school reform in Texas, said Texas Education Agency’s reports showing improving TAAS scores are “highly misleading.”
Haney said that ninth grade retention and rigorous test preparations are the reasons for the higher scores, not improved performance.
“On such pressures to show high scores, increasingly students are excluded from TAAS testing through ninth grade retention,” Haney said.
Haney said 70 to 80 percent of the retained students drop out of school and never get a high school diploma.
Research underway by University of Houston professors at the Department of Sociology indicates that students who are held back in grades eight or nine are less likely to drop out.
“No appropriate kind of study suggests that retention and TAAS testing are the causes of dropouts,” Lorence said. “It’s difficult to make a causal relationship.”
Ed Fuller, senior researcher at the University of Texas, said few districts in Texas are using ninth grade retention as a way of preparing failing students for TAAS.
“High ninth grade retention is not the result of TAAS, but due to a disconnect between middle and high school,” Fuller said. “Kids can be lost in the big shuffle of students in high school.”
Critics of TAAS, including Haney, also criticize schools for placing too much emphasis on standardized testing, causing some schools to spend precious money and instructional time drilling students on practice exams and other test preparation activities.
Haney said that hard test preparation is another factor behind the apparent increase in TAAS scores. However, he said the test results do not generalize to students’ other skills.
“The reported high TAAS scores are not replicated in college admission exams such as SAT and ACT,” Haney said.
TAAS proponents and researchers like Lorence said the correlation proves nothing. According to Lorence, research comparing TAAS and SAT is poorly done. These studies use aggregate TAAS scores because the state does not provide individual TAAS scores for privacy reasons, Lorence said.
He also said, “Students who take the TAAS are not the same students taking the SAT.”
Despite what critics suggest, research by Lorence in 1999 indicates that TAAS test has the same degree of reliability and validity as the Stanford 9 test, a national standardized test of mathematics and reading skills.
“Looking at Houston Independent School District data on 75,000 students, we found a very high correlation between TAAS and Stanford 9,” Lorence said. “Students who do well on TAAS, also do well on Stanford 9 and those who do poorly on TAAS, also do poorly on Stanford 9.”
Carol Holst of Parents United to Reform TAAS Testing is concerned about the way TAAS is used in Texas public schools.
“Last year my son was required to do about 170 practice TAAS worksheets,” she said. “For about six weeks, they were just doing TAAS practice exercises. Other subjects, such as social studies and science, go out the window.”
“Overdrilling for TAAS is just a waste of time,” Holst said. “It has a suspicious resemblance to indoctrination.”
Holst, who is currently home schooling her son because she said “he had enough TAAS,” believes that eliminating TAAS is the best solution. Although she believes that does not seem likely.
The Texas State Legislature had another solution in its 76th legislative session in 1999: revising the current TAAS to include more subject areas, taking effect in spring of 2004.
According to Texas Education Agency’s website, the revised exit-level TAAS will be administered at the junior instead of the sophomore year and will include English and language arts, biology, integrated chemistry, physics and U.S. history.
“The new TAAS will take care of the problem of teaching to the test,” Lorence said, although he believes there is nothing wrong in teaching students test-taking skills as long as that is not the school’s sole focus.
Fuller said the new test would better reflect the high school curricula.
“The test will be at the tenth grade level rather than at the eighth grade level,” Fuller said.
Although the new test will solve some of the problems with the current TAAS, it may create new needs.
Lower graduation rates may be a problem. TEA projects lower initial passing rates for all four sections of the new exit-level TAAS. However, the rates are expected to rise in each testing period.
“Unlike the current TAAS, the new test, especially at the high school level, really depends on qualified teachers,” Fuller said.
“Universities can play a crucial role in providing more qualified teachers,” Fuller said.
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