Texas Considers Reversing Tough Testing and Graduation Requirements - NYTimes.com - 3 views
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Proponents say teachers will be able to be more creative in the classroom while students will have more flexibility to pursue vocational or technically oriented courses of study.
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Legislators raised the number of high school exit exams to 15 from 4 in 2007, a year after they passed a law to automatically enroll all high school students in a curriculum that mandates four years of English, science, social studies and math, including an advanced algebra class.
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Texas now requires more than double the number of end-of-course exams used in any of the eight states that currently mandate that students pass such exams, according to the Education Commission of the States.
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Texas lawmakers consider legislation that would reduce both graduation requirements and standardized testing. Supporters on both sides weigh in on why this may or may not be a good thing for Texas students.
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This notion of accountability through standardized testing has back-fired on its creators. We're suppose to be producing college and career-ready products, not test ready products. And even at that we're failing.
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Oh my such a hard topic. On the one hand the need to know where we stand. On the other, the excessive, myopic, pedagogical approach inherent in testing-based curricula. Yes, we have heard all the utopian assertiveness that the test doesn't determine the curriculum and yet we all have been victims of the mixed messaging that occurs and the unofficial mandates to "teach to the test" in the end.