“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
― Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Andrea likes purple and Abby likes pink!
So we're new to this whole blog thing so bear with us. We debated long and hard on what our first post should be about. We read different websites about what your first post should be about and then read different blogs' first posts. We finally decided to just dive right in and get straight to the nitty gritty - education politics. The subject? The State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness or better known as the STAAR test - Texas's state mandated standardized test. In 2007 Texas Senate Bill 1031 announced a new wave of state tests. This bill called for secondary students to take end of course tests to be taken when a student finished a course, instead of TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) which was a test over the general core subject given during their sophomore and junior years. STAAR was implemented in Spring 2012. Since 2012 the number of exams that students are required to take and pass to graduate has quickly decreased. When it first came out a student had to pass fifteen EOCs. Then the required numbered of tests to be taken was lowered in 2013 to take and pass five. And now here in 2015, our all-knowing Texas legislature has decided that students only have to pass three of the five tests. This now gives students "permission" to choose which tests they want to pass - Math, English 1 and 2, U.S. History, or Science, and guess which one they are going to choose to fail! Math!! Thanks a lot guys...you just made my job even harder! Schools are judged on their pass rates for these tests and now you just gave our students the okay to fail them. Motivation was already difficult enough! I am sure that English 2 and US History teachers are also thrilled with this new law because now if a student passes the three freshman tests - English 1, Algebra 1 and Biology 1- they have no motivation to pass the next two tests which happen to be English 2 and US History! Don't get me wrong. I believe that schools, teachers and students need to be held accountable for learning. However, I do not believe that state testing is the answer. By the time we get students in high school, many of them have been passed along several times and they are totally unprepared for the courses they are required to take. We as a nation need to look at other countries and look to teachers (the real experts) for input and figure out how to educate our students. I think there are enough smart people in this country that real change can be made. After all, getting a good education is the best thing anyone can do for themselves! As a recent high school graduate and as someone who observes my mom in her classroom, I see and hear many students complain about why they have to learn all this math. At least if the EOCs were required for each subject and students knew they had to pass them, that would give teachers an answer to the age old question, "Why do we have to learn this?" Now however, students don't even have to pass the EOC much less even take one in most math classes. Of course her answer now becomes because you have to pass this class to graduate. Can we please have some better choices for students in math? Does everyone really need all this higher level math that teachers are forced to teach? If you're bored check out my final exam about what my expectations are for school and changes I would like to see happen one day. Feel free to leave us comments and share your thoughts on testing and education in general. I am sure this will be a topic that we end up visiting numerous times! That's it for now y'all. XOXO - The Gearles
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Abby & AndreaA college student trying to figure out the world with her mom by herside. Life through my lens (Abby). We all have different stories and these are only some of mine. Some funny, some adventurous, some hard. Sit back and relax. Enjoy. Archives
March 2018
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