MY COMMENTS ON TESTING:

Testing of students in Texas public schools has come to dominate coursework to the point that "teaching to the test" is a way of life.

However, the word testing means several different things depending on the audience. 

Testing to parents suggests finding out about accumulated knowledge by a child.  It can be a test on Algebra, a spelling test, or the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.  All of these kinds of tests will give a score that is meaningful and will tell the student, the teacher, and the parent if a child has learned something that is composed of knowledge.

Testing to students suggests a point in time when masses of information must be committed to memory or actually learned by use so that the mastery of that knowledge can be relayed to the teacher for a grade on the test.

Testing to teachers suggests that the time has come to see if one's teaching abilities have been successful to the point that most of the students in one's class were able to comprehend, understand, use, and regurgitate what has recently been taught.

Testing to administrators and those who wish to know more about students than just their acquisition of knowledge rises to a higher (or lower depending on one's viewpoint) level.  Testing then becomes assessment.  Assessment, which implies testing to most normal people, has a differentiated meaning with regard to public school students.  Assessment means that the values, attitudes, beliefs, and politics of students can be ascertained by asking questions in a test-like format.  Therein lies the objection for most of us, because the intent of the test giver and that of the test taker are not the same.  The test maker and giver has an ulterior motive in using an "assessment."  The purpose is to find out about the inner working of a student's mind, which is not any business of the test maker.  That is the objection to the ruse.

TABS, TAAS, TAKS and now STAAR tests are assessments.

It behooves parents to become aware of the activities of the school in learning too much about their children and their families.  The public school exists to educate, not pry into personal matters, and these assessments need to be stopped.