The Texas Assessment Of Knowledge And Skills

After completing the learning assessments for each of the classes I chose to meet National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s (NASPAA) five core competencies, I feel as though I have a much more complete vision of what the MPA program is set out to accomplish for me in my academic and professional lives. The various assignments included in this portfolio were included because I feel they best represent my best work in the MPA program. NAASPA’s core competencies, I believe, are the living heartbeat of the MPA program. They include the ability to lead and manage in public governance, the ability to participate in and contribute to the policy process, to analyze, synthesize, think critically, solve problems, and make decisions, the ability to articulate and apply a public service perspective, and the ability to communicate and interact productively with a diverse and changing workforce and citizenry. All five of these competencies are crucial to thinking and planning strategically, manage services, understanding the complexities in, managing, and applying effective administration in all aspects of government.

To many students standardized testing has become another part of schooling that is dreaded. Standardized testing has been a part of school since the nineteen-thirties; in those days it was used as a way to measure students that had special needs. Since the time that standardized test have been in American schools there has been many programs that have placed an importance on the idea of standardized testing such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Evans 1). Over the years the importance of standardized testing has increased tremendously and so has the stakes, not only for teachers but also students. All states in the United States of America have state test in order to measure how much students learn, and help tell how well the

Students dread the time of the year when they stop with their course material and begin to prepare for test. Everyone is in agreement that some type of revolution is needed when it comes to education; eliminating standardized test will aid the reform. The need for standardized testing has proven to be ineffective and outdated; some leading educationalist also believe this because the tests do not measure a student’s true potential. This will save money, stop labeling, and alleviate stress in students and teachers.

Standardized tests are exams that are supposed to measure a child’s academic knowledge but have long been a controversial subject of discussion. Although it is one method to see how a child is performing, is it the best method? Standardized testing can be biased or unfair, inhibit both the teacher’s and the children’s creativity and flexibility, affect funding for schools, cause untested subjects to be eliminated from the curriculum, and cause anxiety for children and teachers.

Similarly, many teachers, statewide, feel that these exams that no significant value towards a student’s overall intelligence. According to a survey by both the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic, of more than ten-thousand public school teachers, this report has found that teachers

In the 1990’s, I grew up taking the TAAS test or Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. I did not know why we had to take them but everyone had to and teachers tried to prepare us as much as they can. Then in the 2003, the state decided to change it to TAKS test or Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. I knew that I had passed, but as a student we do not question why we have to take these tests. We are only told that they are important to our education and graduating to the next grade or from high school. A few years afterwards they had switched to a new standardized test form called STAAR which stands for State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. It seems that a last few tests were

Since 1997, the primary tool for teacher evaluation was the Professional Development and Appraisal System better known as PDAS. Due to significant efforts to enhance both teacher effectiveness and “student learning and growth,” the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) was elaborated (TEA, 2016, p. 3). The T-TESS was designed by educators to support continuous improvement by focusing on “feedback and support,” “moving the mindset away from compliance” (TEA, 2016, p. 3).

Another challenge is how often Texas changes its statewide testing regiments. So far it has changed four times over the past century, TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) was one of the regiments lasting from 1999 to 2011. The system currently in use and that will end by next year is the STARR exam (State of Texas Academic Readiness). The testing regiments change constantly because they do not accurately gauge a students performance. Also the fact that the main goal of the curriculum is religious and ideological control further hinders the academic performance of students. For example,

Texas contains a lot of issues when it comes to its education policies. The issue that has the most people thinking about and I feel more passionate about when it comes to education is the high-stakes testing in the Texas high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools. This issue has brought plenty of attention from students and their parents. The testing situation in Texas has been addressed from time to time, but there hasn’t been a proper solution that keeps the student performance numbers from decreasing in numerous reports. The problem is that Texas education emphasizes the importance of standardized testing - such as the current State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or STAAR - implemented to

As public school system start to develop even farther, Texas started to require state test to help student meet or exceed state standards as they proceed though grades levels. In 1970, the state establishes the Texas Assessment of Basic Skills Exams (TABS) for students in grade school to prepare them for

What once began as a simple test administered to students yearly to measure understanding of a particular subject has, as Kohn (2000) has stated, “Mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole” (p.1). Today’s students are tested to an extent that is unparalleled in not only the history of our schools, but to the rest of the world as well. Step into any public school classroom across the United States and it will seem as if standardized testing has taken over the curriculum. Day after day teachers stress the importance of being prepared for the upcoming test. Schools spend millions of dollars purchasing the best test preparation materials, sometimes comes at the cost of other important material. Although test

Also the state assessment is built around the TEKS. The State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) is the state’s annual assessment and test reading, science, writing and social studies. The STAAR test is a criterion-referenced test. The STAAR test does not cover all of the subjects or grade levels of the TEKS standards that are set in Texas. Grades 3-8 are tested in reading, math, writing, social studies and science. The state has also adopted end of course assessments for high school students in English I, English II, Algebra I, Biology, and U.S. History. Once testing is completed data is collected by the TEA, and posted on its website. Assessment results are disaggregated by student backgrounds, district and

Decades of research have documented the biases in standardized tests when it comes to students of color and culture. Cultural bias is an expression that means certain cultures are not given an equal chance to succeed in society because of an unfairness, prejudice, or partiality. Cultural biases involve practices and rules that put some minority groups at a disadvantage. In the public school systems, minority children are more likely to do poorly on state tests than the non-minority students are. A study by Jay Rosner in 2002 showed that sample questions, which were answered correctly by more African-American students, were not chosen for use in the tests. Although in the recent year’s test makers have attempted to discuss the concerns about test bias by establishing review committees to search the test for bias. Significant problems stay in the content of the

To achieve this goal, this paper is organized into five different sections, each explaining the viewpoint of different authors. In the first section, there’s an account of five important facts about the negative effects of standardized testing,the amount of information standardized testing really covers, student placement, important abilities that aren’t being found, the potential of tests, and the outcomes of these tests. The second section, discusses five distinct facts about how unnecessary standardized testing is and how radical it truly is, how standardized testing affects teachers, the competition involved, what test scores really reflect, what measures students take, and how scores affect improvement within teachers. The third section, discuss an account of five other different viewpoints about the psychological effects standardized testing causes, the time teachers waste teaching about these tests, the obsession

Today, it can be observed that society has shifted education drastically from the time schools were constituted, to now. Throughout history, schools have gone from private, where only the elite can attend, to public schools where virtually anyone can attend. One of the factors that goes along with education is standardized testing. Frederick J. Kelly, father of the standardized test, once said, “These tests are too crude to be used, and should be abandoned.” Not only has this shift occurred within education itself, but it has occurred within the testing concepts found within standardized testing so much so that the founder of these tests has chosen to give up on it.