Reply #11: OH PLEASE! "Passing" is getting a 45%!!! [View All]

This "harder test" doesn't even require them to get 50% of the questions correct....and when the boards don't like their passing stats, they lower the bar even more

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/tsw/stories/110902dntextesting.75816.html


Results showed that 23 percent of those students, or nearly one-quarter, failed the TAKS reading test, using the passing score recommended by the review panel for that exam. The panel suggested that students be required to correctly answer 24 of 36 questions – 67.5 percent of the items – to pass.

Rates by ethnic group
By ethnic group, the failure rates for third-graders on the TAKS were: whites, 13 percent; blacks, 37 percent; and Hispanics, 30 percent.
Those percentages would drop if the board decided to phase in the passing standards, requiring students to correctly answer fewer questions in the first few years of the exam. For example, calling on students to answer 22 of 36 questions drops the overall failure rate to 18 percent, and lowering it to 20 of 30 questions drops the failure rate to 15 percent.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/casey/2596187

Remember when 70 percent was a passing grade? For juniors this year, the bar was set at about 45 percent

So when they tell us 61 percent of juniors who took the TAKS test passed, they're not telling us very much. We don't know how meaningful it is to get 45 percent right, and we don't know what happened to 12,000 students who were in the class two years ago but didn't take the test.

Just as disturbing is the fact that "gains" in the TAKS test don't show up in college readiness. Texas ranks near the bottom in SAT scores, and scores on the state's own Texas Academic Skills Performance test have actually declined