Cynthia Hall Clements

Most third-grade students in Texas took the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), the state standardized test, two years ago, including my son.

In the weeks and days preceding, my son’s teacher – worried about student scores and the class average – used all available class time, and sent home a glut of worksheets, to prepare and review for the test.

Anxious, my son asked me repeatedly, “What happens if I don’t pass?” He is a diligent and conscientious student, but he was worried he wouldn’t be able to go to fourth grade with his friends and classmates if he didn’t do well on TAKS.

A recent investigation of 2005 test results shows some Texas public school students cheated on TAKS, up to 90 percent in some districts, as low as 30 percent in others.

The moral outrage: Are we raising a generation of future juvenile delinquents?

The professional scandal: Where are the ethics of those teachers and administrators who would encourage and even facilitate students to cheat?

As a mother whose son had to suffer through the test once, and who will again this year and each year until the 11th grade, I’m not really surprised or appalled that some students cheat and that some teachers and administrators help them.

The problem with TAKS is not the cheating. It’s to be expected, perhaps condoned, because of the intense pressure on students to get and teachers to foster exemplary scores on the test, to be one of the “commended,” or even one of the “recognized” campuses.

Of my numerous friends who are teachers, never once has one said to me, “I just love teaching to the test. My students learn better that way.” In an unrepresentative statistical sample, 100 percent of my teacher friends strongly dislike the TAKS test.

The problem is in Texas, as in many states, we are measuring students’ educational achievement and determining teachers’ effectiveness by how well students do on one standardized test at the end of the year.

We’re raising and teaching a generation of bubble brains, students whose only proof of “education,” of “intelligence,” is filling in the correct bubble on a Scantron sheet, that they can pick between “B” and “C.” The problem is that we use a standardized test as a barometer of student intelligence.

We ask our students to list, define, or describe, but rarely do we ask them to explain, analyze, or discuss.

Our students are in the know about Nintendo DS, designer water and wireless networks. They know the ins and outs of Paris Hilton’s jail sentence, but likely few have read or thought much about Plato. Most can’t define “federalism,” and few have heard of Fidel Castro. The same few think Bill Clinton is the current president of the United States.

We’re teaching our students snips and quips. They outline buzzwords with bullet points, in lieu of thoughtful commentary written in complete sentences. As long as the kiddos get the right words on the answer rubric, it doesn’t really matter if they know the definitions and explanations.

Aghast at the rampant cheating, the Texas Education Agency is looking to preserve the integrity of TAKS. It’s instituting a crackdown on cheating that will require independent monitors, seating charts, and scrambled test questions. TEA will also be counting the number of erasure marks on the bubble sheets for any given class or teacher.

But the real problem is not the cheating. Rather, it’s the test itself and what it represents: Uniformity at the lowest common dominator in education. The lowest possible expectations have become the lesson plan for schools in Texas and nationwide.

The scariest and least asked question in America today is, “What do you think?”

Most students can’t answer because it’s not choice “A,” “B,” “C,” or “D” - or “All of the above.”

All the standardized testing and ensuing cheating in the world won’t fix that.

Cynthia Hall Clements has worked for the legislatures of both Tennessee and Louisiana and was most recently a columnist for the Lufkin Daily News in Texas. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Content and photo courtesy of www.MinutemanMedia.org.