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TISD focuses on low math scores By Jason Schaefer Preliminary results from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills testing this spring show Taylor ISD in the red on ninth and 10th grade math scores, but the district expects to remain academically acceptable when final TAKS results are released in October. At the TISD Board of Trustees meeting Monday, board members discussed ways to address their concern with the academically unacceptable math scores. The district showed strengths in other areas, including exemplary performances by eighth-graders and strong scores in reading and language arts across the board. Results on the statewide and region level match the trend of low math and science scores in ninth and 10th grade and strong scores overall for eighth-graders. Superintendent Bruce Scott said the lack of available experienced math teachers in Texas accounts for the weakness. “When I was working on my doctorate in 1993, one of the things we did was look at the number of math graduates who were going into teaching,” he said. “There were 15 graduates going into teaching math in the State of Texas. There are 1,100 (school) districts in Texas.” Because resources are so thin, in previous years Taylor High School was forced to turn to inexperienced math teachers certified through alternative resources. The high school had to release four or five math teachers out of the 11 teaching math at THS early last school year because they were not performing to an acceptable standard, according to THS Principal Kim Mason. However, the district expects the math teachers still with the district to have a positive impact on its ability to provide good math education and improve TAKS scores in the coming school years, she said. Another consideration is the overall weakness of the ninth and 10th-grade classes due to the switch from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), the standardized test that was applied prior to 2001, to the TAKS test, which is more difficult. The switch left students a grade or so behind, and especially weak in math, according to Scott. “The transition from TAAS to TAKS was a jump up in expectations,” he said. Scott said Mason reported to him that THS math teachers were devastated by the low scores and open to advice on how to improve. Failing to improve those scores has consequences. The Texas Education Agency will send monitors to work with staff in districts that do not show improvement in deficient areas. If a district shows poor performance for a number of years, the TEA can force it to replace administrators and teachers. The school board plans to meet several times over the summer to discuss solutions and establish a math and science committee that will monitor progress in those areas. Next year, the high school will see the inclusion of new freshman from the 2007-2008 eighth-grade class, the best eight-grade class in Taylor history, according to Scott. For the first time in TISD history, eighth-graders performed above 90 percent on the English Language Arts portion of the TAKS. In addition, eighth-graders performed at or above state requirements in seven different areas of the preliminary results, including a score of 97 percent for all students in social studies, as well as strong scores among African-American, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students in social studies, reading and writing. The inclusion of the new class at THS will render 70 percent of the high school passing in all subjects next year, Scott said. Later in the year, the Texas Education Agency will re-assess the TAKS results, pulling the grades of special education students out of the average to calculate the preliminary results. The re-assessment will show improvements in the areas of concern as well as across the board, Scott said.
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