Education is the foundation by which we lay our society. Right now, Texas schools contain future CEOs, college professors and possibly a future President of the United States of America, all needing the skills achieve those lofty goals. However, are they learning the skills of reading, writing, math, history, and science? No, instead, they're learning how to pass a one word acronym, TAKS. TAKS stands for Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, but those first two words could easily be changed to Total Annihilation, for the TAKS is the single most destructive force to education, ever devised.
Before we can dissect what's wrong with the TAKS, you need to understand its purpose. The TAKS is an examination mandated by the 76th Texas Legislature, the test measures progress in reading, writing, English/language arts, mathematics, science and social studies in students grades 3-11. Not all of these tests are administered at each grade level each year; however, satisfactory performance is required on the last four disciplines at the end of 11th grade in order to receive a high school diploma. Moreover, these test scores are used on all levels in order to judge student progress, and more importantly to judge the school's progress. That's where the rub comes in. In order to ensure a strong showing by the school, do you think the schools rely on their teachers to use their instructed curriculum carte blanche on their students? Of course not, administrators are held to standards by the school district in which they reside. This of course directly leads to the so called "teach the test" attitude.
But, you're saying, "This shouldn't matter. If the test goes over curriculum, then shouldn't they be able to take the test, no problem?" This would be true, if the test did what it was supposed to. The TAKS Test is supposed to be a standard by which a student's knowledge of the curriculum is tested. But teachers I have spoken with said the test does not match the curriculum currently directed by the Texas Education Agency. So instead of teaching what they're supposed to teach, they end up teaching the TAKS test instead. One teacher I spoke with back in my hometown of San Antonio even told me that at their school, they have instigated what are called "TAKS initiatives". These "TAKS initiatives" are a set of guidelines and materials that go over an aspect of the TAKS test per week. These initiatives must be added into what other curriculum is already in their teaching load. So instead of discussing literature and history, or conducting experiments in science class, students are learning how to take and pass a standardized test.
So what? Why should college students bother? As members of a higher educational body, and with these children and high school students as our future, it is our responsibility to make sure they are educated to the best of our resources as a community and a state. Instead of creating a test that actually judges a student's progress and encourages innovative teaching in the classroom, our legislature has created a false sense of security that masks the real problem of under-funding in the schools and underpaid teachers. In order to cover for the short fallings of Governors Perry and Bush's inability to cure the educational system, they have created another roadblock in education.
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