What Is TargetTAKS?

TargetTAKS is a Grade Analysis Program That will get your school ready for the TAKs test. It is being used to evaluate student performance in preparation for the TAKS test. Students are given three pretests over the school year to access their performance, therefore allowing the teachers to evaluate target areas that need more work prior to the actual TAKS test. Teachers have been doing the analysis manually for their classes and campus administrators have combined the data to get an accurate picture of how the campus fairs. TAP will replace the manual job for teachers giving them more time to look at the data rather than compile it.

TAP consists of four stages, they are described below:

1. Student Testing:

Teachers administer the pretests in a similar environment to that of the actual TAKS test. This not only accomplishes the needed task of evaluating the students' abilities, but gives them practice time to become accustomed to testing procedures.

Students are required to fill in their answers on a SCANTRON form which resembles that of a fourth grade TAKS answer document. In lower grade levels, this is important to prepare the students of what is expected of them on the TAKS test.

Teachers then turn the scantrons over to the scan administrator.

2. Test Scanning:

The scan administrator will process the test forms. This is done with the use of a Scantron Scanmark 2000 OMR reader. Each test is scanned and the data for that student is uploaded to the district database. It is stored there for future use and backed up daily. The information will remain from year to year to allow teachers to compare how they do from year to year and to also see a student's progress throughout his or her career.

The data is stored in a secure SQL Server 2000 database. The scanner data is read and uploaded with a custom Visual Basic program developed for this purpose. The tests are scored and ready for teacher evaluation when they are uploaded.

3. Teacher Evaluation:

Once a test is scanned, the teachers get immediate feedback on their students. This information comes in a variety of forms.

RESULTS

This page will show the teacher how each of his/her students did on the TAKS objectives as a group. It will point out the students that did not master certain areas and allows the teacher to see the exact answers that a student gave as well as evaluate each question at the class level.

The page also shows the TLI for each student based on his/her score. The information can be sorted in a number of ways and shows student gender, ethnic origin, and the economic status is given. A description of each objective is given and the target areas can be accessed.

Teachers can print of view this screen to evaluate student effectiveness.

ANSWERS

This page shows the various answers given for each question on the test. The correct answer is denoted with a different color. This allows the teacher to see if there is a pattern in wrong choices.

This screen also allows the teacher to get a list of the students that missed the question.

CHART

This page charts the progress of students passing for the class showing breakdowns based on gender, ethnicity, GT, ESL, and economic status.

GRADE LEVEL

The Answers and Chart pages are available at a GRADE LEVEL for the campus administrator to view how the campus did as a whole.

These pages were created using the Active Server Pages interface of Microsoft Windows NT with Internet Information Server. The code was written using a combination of HTML, VBScript and SQL.
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