I agree with you that spending $89 million
dollars or more per year on these standardized tests is a little ridiculous.
Especially with the new budget cuts in the education department, they could
really use some extra money to improve both school facilities and curriculums.
I'm not quite sure however if they can completely get rid of the idea of
standardized testing. Even though I agree that these type of testing does not
properly measure a student's ability or knowledge, it still provides some kind
of measure to analyze the students' and schools' progress. It might not be the
ideal way, but I'm afraid that as of now it might be the only practical way
without getting even more expensive and complicating the process even more.
Perhaps one way they could reduce the cost is to administer it online or at
least digitally on the computer. This would at the very least relieve the cost
of the scantron papers, which are expensive.
I strongly believe that laying off the much
needed faculty and staff is not the way to go, especially when Texas is one of
the lowest state with high school graduation rate. I agree that we should
encourage the Texas Legislatures to allow teachers to focus on helping students
interact and actually apply the information taught, instead of stressing so
much over passing the STAAR exam.
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