In 2009, only 38 percent of our fourth-graders rated as proficient in math and 28 percent in reading on the NAEP. But 86 percent passed the TAKS in math and 84 percent in reading.
The eighth-graders were similar. On the national test, 36 percent passed in math and 27 percent in reading. But on TAKS, 79 percent passed the math portion and a stunning 93 percent passed the reading test — more than three times the percentage that passed the national test.
Could it be that the sample of Texas children who took the national test this year was poor? No. We ranked second from the bottom in 2003, 12th in 2005, eighth in 2007 and sixth last year. TAKS grade inflation is nothing new By RICK CASEY
You may have heard a bit of this as it trickles through the national news cycle. Perhaps when Governor Rick Perry turned away a billion dollars in federal educational money, or that only Texas and Alaska have refused to accept nationwide standards regarding educational outcome. Texas hovers at the bottom in education in this country, as the state of guns and oil (much like Alaska come to think of it) who needs education?
In 2003 (after W Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act) we began testing our kids under the TAKS which was little different than our earlier testing process. Not only do our schools stop teaching for a few months a year (for grade levels to be tested) where we spend many hours a day feeding our kids the answers, but the test itself is about twice as easy as The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). So even given the answers Texas is about twice as stupid as the rest of the industrialized world. Which is okay, for as Republican VP Dan Quayle said so well,
"What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."