Texas Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-Plano) is renewing his campaign to scrap the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, better known as the STAAR exam, the statewide tool used to evaluate Texas students for more than a decade.
Last month, Shaheen filed House Bill 680, which, if enacted, would replace the STAAR exam with more locally determined assessments that would focus on measuring students’ improvement over the course of a year rather than providing an annual snapshot of different grade levels.
“The STAAR test is well-meaning, but it really isn’t an effective way to measure the progress of our students and assess how our students are doing,” said Shaheen, speaking with WFAA.
According to the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) website on the exam:
“STAAR is the state’s testing program and is based on state curriculum standards in core subjects including reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. … STAAR tests are designed to measure what students are learning in each grade and whether or not they are ready for the next grade. The goal is to ensure that all students receive what they need to be academically successful.”
In an op-ed published by The Dallas Morning News back in 2020, Shaheen claimed, “The STAAR is testing students as much as two years above their grade levels, explaining in part why many students fail the test.”
He cited a study by The Meadows Center For Preventing Educational Risk that raised questions about the “readability” of the STAAR exam.
“Reading passages are not readable for many students’ stage of learning development. The result of such a flawed and unfair accountability system is that children, teachers and parents are suffering very real and lasting negative consequences,” Shaheen wrote in The Dallas Morning News.
Texas students can be prevented from advancing to the next grade if they do not pass their STAAR exams.
STAAR scores also factor into TEA’s district and campus accountability ratings, which can ultimately determine whether or not the state can take over failing school districts.
Dallas Independent School District (DISD), for instance, does have very low STAAR scores, with only 41% of students scoring at grade level.
The Dallas Express spoke with Bob Popinski, senior policy director for Raise Your Hand Texas, an education advocacy group.
Like Shaheen, he said there needed to be fundamental changes to how standardized testing operates in the Lone Star State.
“The federal government requires states to test in certain subjects, so you can’t get rid of testing, but you can de-emphasize the assessment,” he said.
Popinski explained that the annual STAAR exam has become a yearly high-stakes snapshot of particular grades’ performance in certain subjects.
“Assessments are supposed to help inform instruction throughout the year, but sometimes the results don’t even come back until the summer,” he told The Dallas Express.
Through Raise Your Hand Texas’ “Measure What Matters” campaign, Popinski, and other policy specialists spoke with thousands of parents around the state to hear their concerns and spotlight how the STAAR exams figure into TEA’s accountability ratings.
Popinski said parents were “shocked” to learn that the student achievement scores of elementary and middle school campuses were exclusively determined by STAAR performance, excluding other possible accountability measures like attendance, pre-kindergarten participation, or extracurricular offerings.
Still, it is unclear whether state lawmakers will move to jettison the STAAR exam during this legislative session. For one, the test still has its defenders.
The Dallas Morning News editorial board published an editorial defending the exam last May, arguing, “The focus … should not be on the test itself, at least not entirely. The focus, instead, should be on the way too many teachers and administrators give the test outsized control of what happens in the classroom.”
The exam also has a defender in TEA Commissioner Mike Morath.
Shaheen spoke with Morath recently about the STAAR.
“The dialogue with Commissioner Morath, and I think he’s a great commissioner and does a great job — he’s very big on testing and I am too, rating where our students are at, where our schools are at. I just don’t agree with him on the right vehicle,” Shaheen told WFAA.
