Each state has its own standards to which it has students adhere to ensure that they have a mastery of certain educational skills. Depending on the state and the educational policies in play, the skills generally center on core education initiatives such as math, reading and writing. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) initiative is the educational policy in Texas that governs standards for schools in the Lone Star State.
The state standards are in place for students from kindergarten to 12th grade (Texas Education Agency, 2016). They govern what students should know from one grade to the next, culminating in a standardized test at the close of each school year (Texas Project First, 2016). The curriculum was adopted in the late 1990s and includes 13 core chapters as a means of focus for curriculum development, with subjects including: English, language arts, reading, mathematics,
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In recent months, however, there has been a controversy swirling around the use of Common Core materials in conjunction with teaching to TEKS standards. Teachers in Texas have been provided materials aligned with Common Core standards to combined with TEKS teaching materials to students in districts around the state
(Hope, 2015). This not only illustrates the evolution of Texas educational policy with regard to how stringent it has been about maintaining its own standards, but also it shows the reach of Common Core to date. Even in a state that is not necessarily subscribing to all of the Common Core principles – which has had its own controversy since its broad initiation into school systems around the country – there has still been something of an infiltration of Common Core. This somewhat usurps the TEKS system, despite its widespread popularity in