ABSTRACT
In many urban schools, particularly those whose students are predominantly poor and minority, the TAAS system of testing reduces both the quality of what is taught and the quantity of what is taught. The TAAS tests include reading skills, writing, and math. Common sense would suggest that if a teacher followed a traditional curriculum, even using the state's textbook, the teaching of regular lessons would be preparation for success on the test. Advocates of TAAS might argue that passing the reading skills section of TAAS is better than not being able to read at all. The teaching of "writing", also a subject tested by TAAS, has been reduced in many schools to daily practice of the essay form being tested that year. Under the TAAS-prep system, the teaching of mathematics is also highly truncated. TAAS tests math by having students choose among four or five possible answers.
