Apparently, Texas has a five-year contract with Pearson Educational Measurement -- the publisher of TAKS -- for $100 million each year.  At the same time, Texas is cutting the education budget and dismissing teachers. TAKS is a terrible use of resources for education.

I wonder if pressure from Pearson keeps TAKS going, despite it's unpopularity.

Standardized testing like the TAKS test encourages teachers to "teach to the test" -- because schools get in trouble when scores are below minimum expectations, most have created a test based local curriculum. Students are made just to memorize answers that they expect to see on the test and don't actually learn.