Kids' Takes on TAKS
by John Pearson
Today, April 29, my kids take the math section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS. Despite being told that I'm not supposed to "teach to the test," I've also been told that my very worth as a teacher, and possibly as a human being, depends on how my students perform on this test. Needless to say, I'm a bit anxious.
The kids have a few feelings about all of this standardized test business as well. A few weeks ago, I asked them to write down their thoughts about the TAKS. I asked them what they liked, what they disliked, what's good, and what's bad. Here are the results.
First off, it was amusing to note that most of the kids titled their page with "TASK test" or "TAX test." While probably just an innocent misspelling, they could've been subtly implying that this test is very draining and really just a big obstacle.
Many of the kids said that they didn't like the fact that the test takes the entire day. There were lots of complaints that it was too boring, and that it makes them very sleepy. For instance, one boy wrote, "We got to check a lot over and over again until school is over and you feel like going to sleep and then you wake up and get bored and have nothing to do and you feel like doing something fun but you can't until school is done and when you finish you go to the bus and when the adult is driving you feel like going to sleep there but you can't miss your apartment so you got to be awake."
One little girl called the reading TAKS "fun and boring," while another child said, "It kept me entertained."
A third student summed it up thusly: "The TAKES test takes a long time my back hurt my hands hurt… I don't like the takes test too bad I am taking it. I am not glad about this."
One of my boys felt a sense of injustice. He wrote, "One thing I want to know why they did not give second grade a TAKS test. It's not fair to me."
Another child would run the test differently, if he was in charge. "The tax to me is not so long to me but I don't like it very much. Once I wished it only had 30 questions and our regular teachers stayed with us. But it never happened."
Some of the kids talked about potential rewards for doing well on the test. I now understand why this one child has suddenly begun to do all of his homework – "If I pass the taks test I will go to the fourth grade and I am going to get a new plasma screen tv 52 in. I will get a new guitar hero III, a new laptop, a new bike, and a PlayStation 3. My dad said I promise son.”
Two of my favorite samples, though, involved more intangible rewards. In one excerpt from this girl's page-long run-on sentence, she says, "It makes you so happy and you can go home and tell your parents how you feel to know the meaning of a word or problem you never knew and you can go around using all these big words that some people don't even understand and they'll be like what is this girl talking about and you'll be like oh my god you don't know what that means – sweet!!”
In the second sample, my student wrote, "I like the taks it makes your brain think harder." Later, "What if it had 4th or 5th grade work that would really make it hard for me but when it has harder stuff and we get that stuff right they will think we're smart and I'm not just talking smart, I'm talking about teacher smart."
Teacher smart – certainly something for all kids to aspire to. I hope that the TAKS does indeed help to make my kids teacher smart. That is, if it doesn't put them to sleep first.
John Pearson is a third-grade math and science teacher in Dallas, Texas. He has degrees in mechanical engineering from Duke University and Texas A&M, so most consider his math abilities adequate enough to teach nine-year olds. He is also the author of Learn Me Good (Lulu, 2006), a funny, fictionalized account of his first year in education. Read more at learnmegood2.blogspot.com
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