Are students in Texas so stupid that they have to dumb down TAKS?!! (Houston: high school, income)

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by Lost_In_Translation

Food is important to everyone, why aren't they growing crops?

They subsidize the hell out of corn.

Wait - no - we subsidize the hell out of corn.

Anyway, back to TAKS.....and TAAS before it. I actually took the third-grade TAAS way back in 1990. Before TAAS was "TEAMS" which was a different acronym for a different name of test - still virtually the same thing. But back then it was more of a placement thing - they identify who needs a little more help with what. We did some review, but it wasn't the one thing that the whole school's future depended upon.

[Trae713]

Originally Posted by Kanathia Tsuko

While it is true we don't have the best educational system here in Texas it doesn't mean we have the worst. I have traveled across many states and trust me Texas is one of the better ones. Two specific states I can name right off the top of my head with much poorer educational systems would be Kentucky and California. I have attended school in California and audited a classroom in Kentucky. Half the people in Kentucky's school system are illiterate. I don't mean this in a derogatory way they simply are. Not to mention that within the last thirty years the standards of education have risen significantly. Many of the children in public high schools today can work math equations that their parents can't even begin to comprehend. So it's all in a matter of how you look at things. It could have been Dr. Seuss. There are far worse options than Roald Dahl.

Yet the students in California have higher test and SAT scores. California also has much better universities than Texas. California has Texas beat on education easily.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by Lost_In_Translation

Come here to troll much or do you have comparative statistics?

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Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is against the tos
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is against the tos

The site above has all kinds of education statistics. In all cases, the union states tend to do better than the non-union states. Northern states do better than southern states as well in general.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by TexasCatherine

Well said. As I recall, last year someone (a news organization?) asked a group of seemingly well-educated adults to answer a series of questions that appeared on the TAKS. I don't think there was one adult who wasn't surprised by the difficulty of some of the questions. No one had a perfect score, although I believe several did hit the "commended" mark. Does anyone else remember this mock test last year?? I've tried googling, but can't find it.

I don't know about that, but I do know that the practice questions my third grade granddaughter is bringing home are not easy.

For example this was one practice problem from today (remember she is in third grade so she has not been taught algebra - it's an easy problem with algebra, but..)

They had a graph with 4 different kinds of lunches - 4 hot lunch, 8 snack paks, 3 sandwich lunches and 5 of something else. The question was 3 times what number minus 16 equals the total number of lunches. So you had to get the answer by saying 20 + 16 = 36, then dividing 36 by 3. So the answer was 12.

Note that if you use the equation 3x - 16 = 20, it is easy, but she is in third grade not even in 6th grade which was when my ds took Algebra I (and that was because he was advanced in math).

The next question was easier, but they all required math that most third graders were not taught when I was in school.

[lemon&lime]

I scored TAKS writing last year, 10th grade I think....students aren't dumbed down, just very median/mediocre. A lot of dumb kids, very few super bright with about 60-70% who "know" how to write a TAKS essay.

[jfre81]

Originally Posted by lemon&lime

I scored TAKS writing last year, 10th grade I think....students aren't dumbed down, just very median/mediocre. A lot of dumb kids, very few super bright with about 60-70% who "know" how to write a TAKS essay.

I got told by my 10th grade English teacher that I was one of six students in a class of c. 400 who aced the TAAS exit writing test, that is, a 4 on the essay and all the multiple choice stuff correct....this was 1998, don't know what if anything's changed. It was easy then. In fact, if it was supposed to be an essay taking a position on something and backing it up, I always wrote it taking the opposite view of what I actually believe (or believed then). Was more of a challenge to me.

No telling where I might have ended up if I actually gave a **** in school.

[TVC15]

Originally Posted by jasltx

Charter schools like YES and KIPP do turn out amaizing students. But they require a level of commitment above and beyond even schools like Bellaire HS or Memorial HS. They do offer a glimmer of hope for students zoned to the worst of the worst schools, but don't think for a minute that their results can be generalized. Like Clements and Bellaire, they serve the children of motivated parents. The only difference is that zoning is not part of the equation. Force all students in a given zone into one of these schools, and their stats would look a lot like Yates.

KIPP in Houston was mentioned in this documentary. The documentary is very eye opening. It was not only motivated parents but also children that were very lost on hope and looking for a better educational opportunity. I hope people take the time to see it. They will learn something and hopefully all of the Supermen and Superwomen will help this broken system.

[TimBomb]

Well, if you all aren't too worried about your property values they'd probably won't have to dumb down TAKS.

[Lost_In_Translation]

Originally Posted by nana053

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Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is against the tos
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is against the tos

The site above has all kinds of education statistics. In all cases, the union states tend to do better than the non-union states. Northern states do better than southern states as well in general.

Biggest union state of all (California) still falls below Texas.

[crone]

Who cares, union or non union? The state picks the curriculum, books, district lines, where the low income housing is and a whole bunch of stuff. The teacher is the lowest on the food chain as far as what is taught and how it is taught.