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DALLAS (AP) — Students in the second-largest public school district in Texas will be taking fewer tests to avoid possible duplication of some exams and concentrate more on state-required learning.
The number of assessment tests that Dallas Independent School District students will take will drop by a third in the upcoming school year, according to The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/2amvsqJ).
"We were just testing people to death," said Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the district with about 160,000 students and nearly 20,000 staff. Hinojosa outlined changes to the district's testing schedule, as well as to its teacher evaluation system, during a meeting Wednesday with the newspaper's editorial board.
One of the criticisms of the district's Teacher Excellence Initiative, or TEI, was that students were tested too much throughout the school year. The initiative grades teachers and determines their pay on a combination of in-class evaluations, test scores and student surveys.
In order to measure student growth via test scores, the district administered its own exams — Assessments of Course Performance or ACP — twice a year. Those district tests involved classes already tested by the state's STAAR exam. Students must pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness to graduate from high school.
The DISD staff has pared down the number of assessments, mostly for elementary and middle school students, eliminating any assessment that doesn't have a corresponding STAAR test, Hinojosa said. The Dallas district will eliminate 41 of 109 ACPs — mainly in elementary grades.
"When we looked at the number of days we actually did assessments, and not instruction, it was overwhelming," Hinojosa said. "And a lot of those were self-imposed."
Teachers will have two fewer required spot observations by principals and assistant principals, regardless of effectiveness level, according to the superintendent.
The Houston Independent School District is the state's largest, with about 215,000 students.
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Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com
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