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After hearing numerous complaints from teachers and TCTA about the burdens placed upon teachers who administered the TAKS-Alt for the first year to severely cognitively disabled students, TEA responded by revising TAKS-Alt to relieve educators of some of the test development/administration responsibility for the 2008-2009 school year. Teachers will now choose among state-developed and standardized assessment tasks approved by the state, instead of developing three assessment tasks for each student for each tested subject area themselves. Additionally, the revised TAKS-Alt includes the following:
- The number of essence statements required has been reduced from six per subject area to four per subject area.
- State-required essence statements are provided. Teachers will no longer choose the essence statements to use.
- Teachers will select from three state-developed assessment tasks of varying complexity provided for each essence statement. The pre-determined criteria for the tasks are also now standardized.
- Online scoring is automated based on teacher observations. Teachers will answer a series of questions online about a student’s performance rather than assigning a score.
- Documentation of the assessment-task observation will no longer be entered into the TAKS–Alt online system. Pre-populated documentation forms will be provided to districts via the TEA website, and teachers will use these forms to document the observations of the standardized assessment tasks. Documentation will be retained by the school district.
- TAKS–Alt online training is now mandatory. Each training module contains activities that must be completed successfully in order for the teacher to independently assess students through the TAKS–Alt system.
Web posted: 09/04/08
