Texas Education and Standardized Tests

A colleague of mine, Malak Raad, recently blogged about standardized testing in Texas in his post "Standardized Tests in Texas". The core of the blog is about parent's recent complaints about the time their children spend in the classroom preparing for standardized testing. 

I strongly believe that Texas parents need to "slow their roll" a little bit here. Standardized tests play a huge role in the financing that schools can receive due to the No Child Left Behind Act. If schools are meeting the requirements set by the governments at both state and federal levels, they could be in some serious trouble. Raad, however, agrees with the parents that time is often wasted preparing for tests. He resorts back to his school experience by writing, "In middle school we spent days at a time taking practice exams even though the middle school I went to had a 97% commended rate on all subjects. As students, we enjoyed review days because that meant we didn't have to learn new material." Now even though Raad's school may have had a 97% commended rate for all subjects, that is definitely not the case for the majority of Texas schools. Texas ranks dead last in education! In addition, school districts often struggle to find ways to finance schools, relying mainly on property taxes. I would find it hard to believe that anyone would disagree that studying and preparing for tests can help improve your grade on that test. If students enjoy review days, then that's great! It's important that students get a break from learning new material day after day after day. The review days will help students recall material they learned months prior and will help refresh their memory going into the test. Why do colleges give students "dead days" and a week full of final exams without having to attend class?? It's so they can study and recall the information they have learned over the past semester in order to perform at a higher level on the exam! This is exactly what the education system is doing with students in elementary, middle, and high school in order to prepare them for their standardized tests. 

Raad brings up a good point though, when he discusses the relation between what is taught in the classroom and what is found on the standardized tests. He writes, "in all my AP classes the teacher would focus on the material we needed to do well on for the AP exam versus covering all the material for the course." In my opinion, this points out a huge flaw in the Texas education system. Teachers and schools need to start centering their classes and courses around the material found on the standardized tests. This will prevent a gap occurring in the students knowledge, between what they're taught in the classroom and what is found on the standardized tests. If the Texas education system and teachers focused their course content on the material covered on the standardized tests, it will help eliminate extra "preparation days" for the exam, and also improve student's test scores. These changes could help Texas remove itself from the bottom of the barrel in education, as well as help ease the financial burden on school districts.