My son, a Dallas ISD third-grader, has taken a few practice swings at
the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness practice-test questions the district recently made available; it was either that or clean his room. The Real Thing starts soon:
10 days from today. This, even though the Texas Education Agency hasn't yet decided how the test, which is markedly more difficult than the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills it's replacing, will be graded. Got questions? Who doesn't:
The TEA's STAAR Q&A runs 20 pages all by its lonesome and is updated constantly. And then, as Vincent Reyes, DISD's executive director for curriculum, noted at last week's board briefing, there's been some misinformation spread about how much the end-of-course tests' scores will count toward students' final grade. You can watch an excerpt from his presentation below, but that's his handwriting you see above, as he white-boarded for trustees the grading formula. Next week, concluding
a 