At Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, the majority of students have graduated from Texas public high schools and consequently have experienced the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS). This mandatory state examination has been in place since 1993. The opinion of students about TAAS testing, however, has rarely been sought, by either opponents or proponents of the examination system. We decided it was time to let students have their say. You will find their opinion through two links
We have elicited student opinion on TAAS twice. We gathered response once during the fall semester of 2001 and once during the fall semester of 2002. Both times responses were elicited around the 4th or 5th week of the semester, and both times our population was students at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi who were enrolled in first-year composition (English 1301). Both times students were given the same opportunity to write about their experiences with the English portion of TAAS. Both years some teachers elected not to participate, and those teachers who did participate always gave students the freedom to decline to respond.
All students were given the same prompt:
What was the TAAS experience like for you as a student in English classes? Describe your activities and feelings as you prepared for these exams, took them, and learned of the results. Overall, was it a good educational experience for you? If you didn't do TAAS, you can write about any standardized test preparation and testing that you have experienced in school--SAT, AP, etc.We are publishing ALL of their responses on this site, except for the very few students (less than one percent) who decided not to give us permission to publish, and for a number that were indecipherable. This left us with 402 responses from fall 2001 and 452 from fall 2002--out of an enrollment of about 800 each year. We have copied the responses exactly as they were written, letter for letter, only removing references that would identify the student or school. It should be noted that most of these comments were written very fast, impromptu on computers in class. Some were sent to the teacher as email posts. A few were more formal essays, written out of class and turned in the next day to the teacher. Throughout, scanning errors may be present--our fault, not the students'.
We offer no comment about this response from students. Their opinion speaks for itself. It takes little reading to see, though, that student opinion is very negative overall. From the fall 2001 sample, a rough classification of 280 of them by attitude (positive/negative) found the following distribution
| Completely negative | 63% |
| Largely negative, with a few positive comments | 15% |
| Largely positive, with a few negative comments | 14% |
| Completely positive | 08% |
It should be noted, however, that both years the comments are from students all of whom succeeded in passing the TAAS tests or its equivalent. Students who failed would not be enrolled in English 1301 at this university.
Thanks to Vickie Machen and Candice Ray for their help with this project.
Glenn Blalock
<comppile@gmail.com>
Coordinator of
First-Year Writing Program
Texas A&M
University-Corpus Christi
Rich Haswell
<comppile@gmail.com>
Haas Professor
of English
Texas A&M
University-Corpus Christi
February, 2003
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