WOAI in Texas reports that more than half of San Antonio's 11th-graders flunked the new TAKS, which replaces the TAAS. They won't be disadvantaged this year, but next year high school students will have to pass this exam to graduate.
WOAI responded by hiring four adults - "a city councilman, a former judge, a DJ and a school board president" - to take the TAKS, so we could all see how well they did. The judge and the school board president had actually taken the TAAS before and declared the TAKS to be noticeably more difficult:
Jamie of Mix 96.1 says she was on the honor roll, in AP classes throughout school and in the National Honors Society. She was a lot of talk before the test, but when she turned down the volume she sounded more like this: "I forgot what these little numbers meant."
That's also what happened with city councilman Roger Flores. He was quoted during the test as saying, "When you start to think about vertices and vortexes, then I start to lose it.
This is the second sitting for NISD board president Bobby Blount and former judge Cyndi Krier. They took the TAAS test for news 4 WOAI four years ago, and passed with flying colors.
The results? The DJ flunked the math portion; the councilman flunked both math and English. The school board member passed both sections, while the judge ended up flunking math while making a near-perfect score on English.
How did the DJ interpret her flunking math score?
Jamie says it is. "Kids did you hear me? You don't need to learn math like me. You can still be successful and do bad on math."
WOAI disagrees:
But what you can't do is get a diploma without passing the test. Educators say they saw the same kind of failure rates and complaints when they introduced the TAAS test. By the time it was retired, those teachers say, the TAAS test was considered too easy. The idea is that bigger challenges create brighter students.
Here are the statewide 11th-grade results, in case you're interested.
If I read the table heading correctly, what's listed are students grouped into (1) those who met a standard that was set at two standard errors of measurement (SEMs) below the panel's recommendation, (2) those who met the standard that was 1 SEM lower, (3) those who met the panel recommendation, and (4) those with a "Commended Performance" that is presumably somewhere above the panel recommendation.
Take a look at the first line, for all 11th-grade students on the math portion (ignoring the spring field test results). The numbers are 68%, 55%, 44%, and 6%. Working backwards, this means that:
Only 6% scored in the "Commended" category, whatever that is.
A total of 44% scored at the panel recommendation or above, which means that, had the cutpoint been set there, 53% would have failed.
A total of 68% passed at a cutpoint set two SEMs below the panel marker, which means that a whopping 32% of all examinees are more than two standard errors of measurement below the cutpoint. Those students aren't just failing - they're failing miserably, because they're not within the 95% error range (based on the reliability of the test). Thus, that 32% is far enough away from the panel recommendation that it's highly unlikely they would pass upon retesting (assuming no change in true ability).
The English scores look even more bimodal; when you go from at panel cutpoint to 2 SEMs below, you only get an increase from 61% to 69% of the students. This means, essentially, that around 60% are passing easily, around 30% are failing miserably, and there's relatively few students - only 10% of examinees - in between.
Update: Here's an article from Education Week that criticizes the TAAS in comparison with Texas' NAEP scores. The writer does not seem optimistic about the usefulness of the TAKS, either.
Posted by kswygert at November 25, 2003 09:36 AM