Dallas students to take fewer assessment tests

DALLAS-Students in the second-largest public school district in Texas will be taking fewer tests to avoid possible duplication of some exams and concentrate more on state-required learning.

The number of assessment tests that Dallas Independent School District students will take will drop by a third in the upcoming school year, according to The Dallas Morning News.

"We were just testing people to death," said Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the district with about 160,000 students and nearly 20,000 staff. Hinojosa outlined changes to the district's testing schedule, as well as to its teacher evaluation system, during a meeting Wednesday with the newspaper's editorial board.

One of the criticisms of the district's Teacher Excellence Initiative, or TEI, was that students were tested too much throughout the school year. The initiative grades teachers and determines their pay on a combination of in-class evaluations, test scores and student surveys.

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