Texas Assessment of Academic Skills

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The TAAS, or Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, was a standardized test used in Texas between 1991 and 2003, when it was replaced by the TAKS test. Prior to 1990, the test was known as the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills. It was used from grades 3 through 10. If the student passed, he or she no longer needed to take the exam. Passing the Grade 10 level was required for graduation, but many opportunities for retesting were available.

The TAAS tested 3 areas of proficiency: reading, writing, and math. The math and reading sections consisted of multiple choice, while the writing section consisted of a series of prompts for which essays had to be written.

The TAAS test was severely criticized for three reasons. First of all, the TAAS was not in alignment with grade level curriculum. The test was often irrelevant to what was supposed to be taught in the classroom at the 10th grade level. This caused most schools with low scores to ignore the curriculum and concentrate on teaching to the test. Teachers were faced with having low scores if they taught the educational objectives that were supposed to be taught according to the State of Texas. They needed to concentrate on TAAS objectives or they would be judged as poor teachers. The test was seen as being detrimental to the students’ education by many teachers because it required the teacher to ignore the 10th grade curriculum and “teach to the test.”^[1] The second problem with the test was the lack of accountability at every grade except the exit level. Students were required to take TAAS test in every grade beginning with the third. If a subject wasn’t tested at a particular grade level a released or practice test would be given. The testing at the elementary, middle school, and in the ninth grade was primarily used for evaluating the school as a whole when compared to other schools. This is still one of the main functions of standardized tests used in Texas today. The problem with the TAAS testing at these levels was that a student had no incentive to do well on the test. If a student did not pass a TAAS test at any level they were promoted to the next grade anyway. Mastery of TAAS objectives was not required for promotion in the lower grades. Many students in low performing schools were conditioned to believe that the test did not matter. After seven years of tests that did not matter, the student was given a test that was required for graduation. The third problem with the test was that a school was judged on test scores for students that showed up on the day of the test.

This problem was severely detrimental to some students. There was an incentive to keep lower performing students from testing. The highest level that a school in Texas can be judged according to test results is exemplary. In the last year of the test there were schools judged as exemplary when less than ½ of the students that enrolled in the 9th grade were tested in the 10th. To make matters worse in order to count as a dropout a student had to quit school in their senior year and not withdraw. The dropout rate at most school was less than 2%. Some of these schools always had twice as many entering freshmen as they had graduating seniors.

In order to answer this criticism, Texas supposedly tried to implement an End or Course Test for Algebra I, English II, U.S. History, and Biology. This EOC testing concept never worked out because the scores were always very high except on the Algebra I test. Algebra I test scores were never high enough statewide to use the test as a benchmark. The End of Course concept did address the problem of teaching to the test instead of teaching the curriculum. However, it was never implemented at the lower levels.