STAAR Test Lessons: My Sophomore Year Of High School

My grades were going down beacuse I always got home late from practice. I was so occupied with baseball that I never focused at school. “How can you play if you can’t focus during scool.” This time, my dad said it in a depressed way while walking out of my room. He got tired of raising hs voice. I looked at myself in the mirror and promised to fix myself, day by day, to become an example of being a student athlete. The following day, I took a lot of notes, asked questions, worked with my teachers after school when I needed help, and I never fell asleep before completing all of my homework. Things immediately picked up with my grades and baseball. I still carry out these habits until now. With all the hardships that I have been going throughout my highschool career, my work ethic is still strong. I continue my endeavors to become a star student and an outstanding baseball player, even if my schedule is full. As people had brought me down in the past, I am now grateful of their opinions. I was able to stop slacking on what’s important. I learned that life has given me obstacles so that I would be the prime example of what I promised myself to

Despite having above-average grades, I lacked any of the pride and confidence other students carried. Despite having a group of trustworthy friends, the feelings of disappointment kept me feeling isolated and miserable. A teenager who deep inside, kept dreaming of myself with great academic potential while failing to prove anything to anyone. As the ten minute mark has passed in the AP testing room, I remember the sensation of deep frustration, a feeling of desperate anger to change something. At that brief moment I felt a successful score on the AP World History test would be my salvation, the ultimate test of resolve. Thus my mind started to naturally channel the frustration into deep concentration: my mind quickly adapted into competitive overdrive. For the first time in my academic experience, I found the will to break the influence of testing

That these grades students were so worried about didn’t prove how intelligent or talented I was. They only tested how a student had the discipline to retain information. I knew I was making excuses to avoid working in school. Instead, I took a less conservative point of view on school, and searched for motivation to help push myself to be someone who has more to offer to the world.

I failed AP English. I had missed the second quarter of the school year, almost completely, due to… technical difficulties. I got discharged from the hospital mid-February, and for the remainder of junior year, the majority of my waking thoughts revolved around passing 11th grade. With motivational speeches coming at me from my parents, friends, and teachers, I began to believe I had a chance of passing the year. I did my best, which apparently was not enough. My teacher had picked up on my tremendous amount of effort, and on the last day of school, bumped my grade up to a low D — just enough to pass. I was not exactly about to put my grade on display or anything, but I passed! Technically. This is not one of the underdog-who-succeeded stories. The real success for me was (look away, it’s cliché) realizing my best was enough. I sound disgusting.

My first failure discouraged me to the point where, I felt like I would never reach an advanced math level again. The lack of self-confidence that resulted from my sub-par math scores soon began to negatively affect some of my other classes. I quickly realized that the trend had to stop. I worked diligently to achieve what, at the time, seemed unattainable. My change in the outlook of my repeated failures helped me to finally succeed. Throughout the course of the last two years, I have grown more self-aware in my study habits. I push myself even harder when I think I have done the best I can.

It was the day when there was this big test and I didn’t study at all, it was for science and I had a feeling that I was going to get a bad grade. As I was looking at each of the questions I got more and more anxious because I wasn’t a fully sure if any of the questions I was answering were correct. That’s when I lost my hope or motivation. I tried my best answering each of the questions with the most detail I could. Then I crossed my fingers and tried to keep my hopes up. The test was on the computer so I checked it twice and turned it into google classroom. After two long days of waiting, the grades for the test were in. I checked it and as a result of not losing my hope, I got an A-. I knew that if I had hoped I will get through any challenge better than having no

Throughout High School I thought I was proficient in reading and writing in my English classes, from freshman year to senior year English classes were easy and felt I could transition my confidence to community college after graduation until I took the English assessment exam and failed in the spring of 2012. Failing my entrance exam was devastating and I refused to accept my results, I waited two academic year before I can appeal to retest my English entrance exam and after weeks of waiting I was approved to retest. After I retest the results were the same, I was placed in remedial English not only was I devastated again but I personally felt worthless. I did not know what was wrong with my reading and writing but I had no choice to enroll

There was time were I couldn’t succeed with my grades my grades were horrible. My concern was if I fail my all my classes what am I going to do. One day i was thinking if i fail all my classes I am not going to succeed with the future career I want. The next day I was overthinking about it I was thinking about my grades and my future career. I started noticing that i must work hard to succeed what I want to be in my future. I wasn’t getting my school work done I realized I had to make a change. I started doing my school work so my grades could be average. I started doing that for like a month my grades were improving. I had to work really hard to success for these grades. I also noticed that not doing my school work wasn’t helping me succeed. I tried my very best to overcome this obstacle to obtain success. I also made my parents very happy and I'm happy about

However, when I got mine back it was a flat out zero, and after class he pulled me aside. In short, Mr. Grove told me that I basically need to get almost all the points remaining in the school year just to pass the class. If I would fail, I would not be able to graduate considering four English credits are mandatory. At that moment I experienced a moment of shock I have never quite experienced before. I had an immediate sense of stupidity. I questioned it. For lack of a better term, I felt like a complete moron. I was so down on myself and all night I thought about what I got myself into. How I was going to get out of this was beyond me and I was lost and hopeless about what to do. I continued to be sad and depressed for a while. My life went from fun to complete misery.

The clock ticked by quietly, as my 6th grade teacher Mr. Parson rapidly went around the classroom to pass out the math tests. Sweat was dripping off my face and I could not stop fidgeting with my fingers. Mr. Parson smiled as he came to give me my math test. I smiled at him nervously. I slowly looked at my test score and grinned. Thankfully, I received an A on the test. (#15) Sometimes I was a little lazy and wasn’t really successful as a 6th grader. Other times, I was always working hard and earned good grades. Because of my friends, teacher, and older sisters, I was able to find success in 6th grade.

In my 7th-grade history class, I was having trouble with my assignments. At the start of the year, it was all easy for me, but over time, it became difficult. The reason was that I couldn’t understand what’s happening when reading the passage in the textbook. Therefore, I felt that I couldn’t overcome understanding what the tests are saying. I would have just stared at the passages like a hawk during my tests. Eventually, I stopped doing my homework and studying for tests as a result of thinking it was useless to try. At the end of that semester, my grade was a D since I was slacking off. I was truly shocked when I saw my grade because I believed I was going to fail everything.

I parked the car removed the keys from the ignition. The instructor began to combine all the points together, in my head I kept repeating “O God, I hope I passed.” It was not until then she said “Congratulations, you passed you’re driving test.” Right then, I just wanted to cry tears of joy because I was recalling the time when I failed on my first attempt and made sure to recover from that mistake by practicing every time I was not busy or on the weekend with my parents. I had put so much pressure on myself. I was just speechless at the end. I walked down the ramp and looked at my dad in excitement and relief. I was so proud of myself for going back and facing my fear of that dreadful place. I know now that whatever I put my mind to I can do. Even though it was a hard thing I had to face for two months and being so nervous the day of the test, I made sure not to give up even when times are tough. Resilience, determination and motivation was key to succeeding on my second

Great post Lori and you did a good job explaining the STAAR test. Fortunately, I never had to take the TAKS or STAAR test, and I have heard it is quite the process for our youth.

School is something that has always been very easy for me. I’ve never struggled with finishing homework or taking test. However, coming into my first classes at UNMC I was fairly nervous. Several people had mentioned to me, on different occasions, that I would be at a disadvantage because I came from a small school where, they assumed, the curriculum wasn’t as challenging. I always have a desire to do well on tests, but this one held a higher significance. It would be the first time my teachers here at UNMC got to see what kind of student I was, and I wanted to set a good impression. So as the first test came around, I studied for it more than I’ve studied for anything else in my entire highschool career. I even helped create a study group that got together the day before the test. We went through all the powerpoints, notecards, and review sheets we could think of. So it was really satisfying, when I got my test back, to see a 100% written across the top.

Every spring for the past 4 years since 2012, every student attending 3rd grade through 8th grade and including high school students across The State of Texas, sit down and take the Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or The STAAR Test. The STAAR test is what student’s in Texas are taught about from the very beginning of the school year and what teachers are required to teach. The STARR test includes 3rd grade through 8th- graders, taking reading and math, 4th and 7th graders taking writing, 5th through 8th graders taking the science portions, and with 8th-graders taking the social studies section. In high school, students are required to take the following portions of the STAAR test which includes English 1, English 2 which contains two tests of Writing and Reading, Algebra 1, Biology, and U.S. History. The STAAR tests for students in Texas determines each individual student’s assessment of where they are educated, towards the following subjects and what grade level they should be proceeded at. With state testing like the STAAR tests, there are more and more negatives and problems in the news, with the way our students are being taught in Texas, this state test not only follows them through their next grade levels but their academic careers, even following them into college and eventually their careers, with that and the amount of pressure being put on them from one test, the bar is being raised too high for our children in Texas, this not only affects our children