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Math Students Maintain Perfect TExES Pass Rate

January 25, 2018

For the 21st straight year, Angelo State University students have maintained a 100 percent passing rate on the Texas Examination of Educator Standards (TExES) teacher certification test for secondary mathematics.

Texas Education Agency Logo Three ASU students took the Mathematics 7-12 TExES in December and January and passed with an average score of 277 out of 300, which is considerably higher than last year’s state average score of 242.23. Only 61 percent of the 2,211 students who took the exam last year passed on their first attempt. 

ASU’s perfect passing rate streak began in 1998, and since then, all 184 of the ASU students who have taken the secondary mathematics exam after completing the ASU mathematics program have passed. ASU students passing the exam this year to keep the streak alive were Matthew Mims and Alyssa Ramirez of San Angelo and Rhiannon Holmes of Clovis, N.M. 

Dr. Dionne Bailey Dr. Dionne Bailey Dr. Dionne Bailey, professor of mathematics, teaches the capstone course that the students must complete as a final preparation for the TExES. 

“This long streak demonstrates that the mathematics teacher preparation program here at ASU continues to successfully prepare pre-service mathematics teachers for the state exam,” Bailey said. “As in previous years, these students worked extremely hard in the capstone course.” 

This was the fourth year for Bailey to teach the capstone course after taking over from Ellen Moreland, who developed the curriculum and taught the capstone course for the first 17 years of the perfect passing rate streak. 

“Ellen developed a curriculum that has proven to prepare our mathematics students for the wide array of questions that span all four years of undergraduate mathematics course work,” Bailey said. “Also, the capstone instructor cannot successfully prepare the students for the state exam without a strong mathematics program and faculty that serve our students well.”