Monday, June 04, 2007

Texas Educators Repeatedly Flunk Required Exams

DALLAS -- Testing is a part of life. Most professions require some sort of test and you only get so many tries. But a News Station Investigation shows - when it comes to teaching or running a school, for thousands of North Texas educators its try, try and try again…and again.

The anticipation and pressure mounts on most any public school student in Texas every year as they are required to tackle the TAKS test before they can move on or graduate. But what about those running the classrooms? Fox 4 found lots of teachers repeatedly flunked the tests required to teach in Texas.

Lorraine Snowden is a teacher at Urban Park Elementary in East Dallas. State records show Snowden started taking her certification exams back in 1989 but failed year after year until she finally passed in 2003. She flunked exams a total of 54 times in 14 years.

...The Texas Education Agency told Fox 4 most teachers in Texas pass certification exams on the first try. So, Fox 4 analyzed TEA’s teacher testing data to see how teachers at major school districts in North Texas fared on the first try. The records show: at Plano ISD 20% failed exams at least once; at Arlington ISD 25%; at Fort Worth ISD 34%; and at Dallas ISD 41% failed a test at least once, 3790 teachers. The data show 478 DISD teachers failed a test at least 5 times. 71 of them took 10 times or more to pass a certification exam.

This from Fox News 4 Dallas.

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