Situating Texas’ World Geography EndOf-Course Exam in the Ecosystem of American Geography Education

Abstract

Educational policy in the United States is highly decentralized. While the federal government subsidizes education across the country, and despite federal initiatives such as the Common Core and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers to establish national standards and assessments, most states maintain control over the daily affairs of education. Nowhere in the United States is this fact more pronounced than in Texas. The purpose of this paper is to situate Texas’ assessment of geographic literacy in the ecosystem of American geography education. The research is driven by three fundamental questions: 1) Is Texas’ World Geography End-of-Course (EOC) exam an accurate assessment of national geography standards?; 2) Does Texas’ World Geography EOC assessment framework reflect the most prominent American assessment framework?; and 3) Is Texas’ World Geography EOC exam a good model of large-scale summative assessment of geographic literacy? A content analysis of the second edition of Geography for Life: National Geography Standards, Texas’ state geography standards, the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Geography, and Texas’ World Geography assessment framework, combined with a review of 2012 student performance data and public reaction are used to answer the research questions. Findings indicate that Texas’ World Geography EOC is an accurate and useful summative assessment of geographic literacy at the local scale, but that the assessment’s ability to inform educational decisionmaking at the state level has not been realized.