If your student easily passed his or her TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) tests last spring, shouldn’t s/he be eligible to skip the same TAKS tests this year?
Today’s Off the Kuff blog posting describes an exciting proposal in the midst of dismal news about Texas’ budget shortfall for education: a bill to exempt students from taking the TAKS test if they passed last year’s test by a wide margin. Changing Texas’ testing rules to exempt the highest performers in grades 3 and 5 from similar tests in grades 4, 6 and 7 may not save a significant amount of dollars, but it is a positive no-cost move to improve our educational system while we deal with the probable loss of teachers, courses, sports and transportation options.
The Texas Observer’s Abby Rapoport calls the bill “the first bipartisan efforts this session aimed at reforming the testing structure” and it provides a positive incentive to students to perform better on tests in order to be exempt in the future as well as some financial savings due to the decrease in the number of students taking the tests.
If the bill is passed in both the House and Senate, it still faces two types of hurdles: federal (No Child Left Behind requires annual testing regardless of previous performance) and state (change to the way schools are rated if the scores of exempt students no longer elevate or balance the lower scores of their non-exempt peers).
Write your Texas House and Senate representatives and urge them to support HB233!
Buffalo Bayou Mom 
This is such an obvious and great idea that it’s amazing no one has thought of it sooner.