TAKS Tuesday

My little girl skipped off to school today to take her first TAKS test. Her teacher has been tutoring, practicing, prodding and inspiring the kids to do their best for months. The school had "Rock the TAKS" yesterday letting all the kids dress up in fifties attire and had a sock hop and motivational speaker. The vice principal even dressed up like Elvis! We did our part by reading with her every night for months and making sure she had a good nights rest last night, wore comfortable clothing, had a good breakfast and got to school on time. Now it is up to her.

I think she will do fine. She has done great on all the practice test. I do not like that there is so much riding on this one test. This test determines the school's rating, some funding, and is even tied to the teacher's professional rankings. That's a lot to put on the shoulders of a nine year old. I tried to play it down to Kolby last week when she started saying she was worried about it.
"Honey it is just a test and you will do fine. You have done great on all the practice test so don't worry about it. It's not that big of a deal"
"If it isn't a big deal why have we been talking about it all year and practicing for it every day since Christmas?"
Hard to argue with that.

I don't like the TAKS test. But, in my attempt to have a good attitude towards it and not let Kolby think negatively about it, I have made myself think of good things that come from the test. There actually are good reasons to have such tests. The test were designed to make sure that children through out the state were being taught and learning the basics required by their grade. Lawmakers, frustrated by stories of people graduating from high school unable to read and economic disparity between schools and school systems, set out to develop a tool by which all students and school systems could be measured. Thus the test.

In theory it seems like a good idea. There has to be some way to measure and insure that all children are getting the education the state pays to give them. In practice it has led to teaching to the test, making the test harder to counter the teaching to the test, having a ratings scale and funding tied to the results of the test, a huge increase in teacher turn over rates in all tested grade levels, and unclear (and at times unfair) requirements for student's with learning disabilities or language barriers. Sometimes things that look great on paper or sound good in theory, look and sound very different when they are put into practice in real life. I think that is what happened with these standardized test.

But still, as much as I hate the stress it adds to the teachers lives and the kids, maybe it does better prepare students for stressful deadlines and exams that will be in their future. Maybe it is good to teach children at a young age the right way to handle such things. I'm really trying to find the good this morning. Please join me in saying a prayer for that the school children of Texas do their best today and that their best is good enough to pass the silly old TAKS test!