Dateline: June 26, 2003

Local TAKS scores good, can be better

By Ashlee Kidd, Clarendon Enterprise

Results from the new Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam are back, and feelings at Donley County schools are mutual: Students exceeded the expectations of the Clarendon and Hedley administrators, but there is still room for improvement.

Students in grades three through eleven were tested this year, and the scores will not count against the district in statewide ratings.

“I think we had good scores for this being the first year of implementation,” Clarendon Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Monty Hysinger said. “We did not know how to fully prepare the students, but they surpassed our predictions.”

Hedley School Principal Terry Stevens feels Hedley students also performed favorably on the exam.

“Because this is the first year for this test and we did not know what to expect, I feel we did really well,” Stevens said.

State law requires that third-graders must pass the reading portion of the exam to be promoted to fourth grade, and 100 percent of the third-graders in both Clarendon and Hedley passed.

Since this year’s eleventh-graders were only required to pass TAAS to graduate, motivation to do well on the TAKS was not extremely high.

Results of HISD juniors were not readily available, but Clarendon juniors scored above state averages on writing and social studies with passing rates of 86 and 95 percent. They scored below state averages in math and science with scores of 68 and 53 percent.

The state average scores were math 69 percent, writing 86, social studies 90, and science 67, according to information from CISD.

Hysinger says he feels that because this year was just a grace year for the exam, next year students will be motivated to perform better on the exams.

“The students’ anxiety and performance levels will be greater next year when the test really counts,” Hysinger said.

Throughout the district, Clarendon students stayed above the state averages in several of the areas in which they were tested, including reading, math, writing, social studies, and science.

CISD’s eighth graders exceeded the state averages in all three of the areas they were tested in while the tenth graders exceeded the averages in all four of the areas they were tested in.

 Results in Hedley were mixed.

“It’s the same way every year,” Stevens said.  “Some students do really well, and others need improvement.”

Both administrators are in agreement that the students did well, but they now see the areas that need improvement.

“Now that we have the results back we can sit down and figure out which areas we need to work on,” Hysinger said. 

“We want to do even better next year in order make the students as well as the community proud of their achievements.”

In 1999, Texas Legislature mandated that the TAAS exam would be replaced with the TAKS during the 2002-2003 school year in order to further challenge and raise the standards for future students.