The end is near, and TAKS Sucks.

It has been a very interesting year at school. We were out of school for 2 1/2 weeks for Hurricane Ike, I had 3 students become mothers and 1 become a father, I had a fairly serious situation with an irrational parent and a most unpleasant April full of TAKS review and testing. It's been long, exhausting and challenging, and I am very excited for the year to be over.

April was filled with TAKS review and ended with the TAKS tests the last week of the month. For a few seniors, this was extremely stressful because if they did not pass they could not graduate. It was somewhat less stressful for the 11th graders, but if they pass they don't have to worry about it next year. The 10th graders still have to take the 11th grade test, so it was more of a pain in the butt because they know they have to do it all over again next year. And so, the focus has been nothing but TAKS for April, and it looms over the school like a dark cloud for the rest of the year.

The test results came back this week and we were able to share scores with students and I found myself hugging and congratulating many students on the passing of the science TAKS. I was giving high fives, and in the midst of all the celebrations I realized that we are celebrating and focusing on nothing but taking a standardized test. Lawmakers and other officials like to say that teachers don't need to teach to the test and they should do just fine with regular knowledge they learn in class. This is complete crap, in my opinion.

I have seen old released science tests, and they are full of random facts that they require students to memorize. As a scientist you would not have to memorize such things as what the mitochondria does or how a virus reproduces. You might come to know those things because they are important to what you do, but science is not about memorizing facts. Science is about the process of questioning and discovering, and the joy of that has been completely removed from high school science classes because of these tests. We have to teach students how to memorize as much as possible, and how to answer tricky multiple choice questions. Again, I have seen old tests, and many of the questions are tricky and poorly written. They do not assess how well a student can do in science, but how well they can memorize and answer questions.

I felt very sad today when I realized the hold that the TAKS tests have on schools and teachers. We should be celebrating students asking interesting questions, designing experiments and wanting to learn more about something they find intriguing. Students hate science because it is very difficult to make it fun and interesting while covering everything we need to for TAKS, especially at my school. In the end the students at my school did fairly well, but we did extensive after school tutoring and review in class. And, we celebrated what a wonderful state 'report card' we will have, but it's all at the expense of learning to love learning so that politicians can have their numbers.