Well, why don’t you take this sample STAAR test and find out? It’s very much non-trivial. I got 11 out of 15 correct – I punted on the two physics questions and on the first World History question, though in retrospect I might have gotten it right if I’d thought about it, and I guessed wrong on the chemistry question. I was able to do all of the algebra questions in my head, however, and that’s all that really matters to me.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think these questions would have been too tough for my high school self. I did attend one of the best high schools in the country, Stuyvesant High School in New York, so that’s not too surprising. For those of you who attended high school in Texas, how do these questions stack up against your experience? Would you say the curriculum, or at least the standardized tests, are harder, easier, or about the same as they were when you were in school? Leave a comment and let me know.
13/15, i would say the questions are a little better written than my recollection of standardized tests.
13 of 15, but the 2 misses were the physics, which is embarrassing since I was strong in physics and even considered it as my back-up major in college in case math didn’t work out.
13/15 also. I missed the first one on world geography and I also missed the one on slave trading (world history).
Good thing I’m a scientist, and I guess I should travel more!
I got 14/15. But the physics questions were answered by using a multple choice trick. I just picked the same letter answer for the two of them and managed to get one “correct”. Behold, the fallacy of testing.
13/15. Missed the slave trading, and I don’t have the periodic table memorized, so….
If the rest of the STAAR is similar, it completely destroys the TAAS I took back in 99. I might actually have done better on the STAAR for having to take it seriously. I recall missing something in the addition section on the TAAS because I barely had to think about the test.