STAAR test overhaul nears Abbott’s desk with Texas Senate approval

The Texas Senate on Wednesday night advanced a proposal to scrap STAAR, the end-of-the-year state standardized test, pushing the bill one step closer to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.

House Bill 8 would swap STAAR for three shorter tests to be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. The bill passed the Senate on a 21-5 vote with minimal changes, signaling newfound agreement between the House and the Senate after negotiations broke down during the regular session.

Before it can go to the governor, the House must formally agree with a change from the upper chamber over the social studies portion of the test. Senators reinserted a provision to keep the exam after an amendment on the House floor tried to get rid of it.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt in the Senate and Rep. Brad Buckley in the House have been leading an effort to reconcile the chambers' earlier differences. The two introduced bills with nearly identical language during both of the special lawmaking sessions this year.

In the lower chambers, the changes cost Buckley some of the support he had. HB 8 got a 82-56 vote in the lower chamber on Tuesday, a marked shift from the near unanimous vote the Salado House Republican got during the regular session. House Democrats criticized the latest legislation for failing to meaningfully change the test, pointing to concessions Buckley made to the Senate that solidify the Texas Education Agency’s power to create the year-end test and set benchmarks for students to be graded against.

“I hate that we are caving as the House to the Senate on public education,” Rep. Gina Hinojosa, said at a public hearing last week.

Here’s what testing would look like under the legislation both chambers have proposed this special session:

• The tests would be shorter. Most students would be able to complete the revamped year-end test in about an hour and a half — a significant change from the current test that often stretches for three hours.
• The year-end test would be the only state exam schools have to give students. Schools would get an option to substitute the beginning and middle-of-year tests for alternative exams.
• If the legislation is approved, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said all test results would now be reported as percentile ranks, which indicate how a student’s performance compares to their peers. The end-of-year test would also report whether students have approached, met or mastered grade-level skills, comparing student performance to benchmarks like the current STAAR test, he said.
• Test results would come back faster than under the current STAAR test. The state would have two business days to turn around results.
• The legislation would establish some checks on the test. A committee of about 40 classroom teachers would review whether test questions match grade-level difficulty.
• The bill outlaws practice exams given ahead of STAAR, which often take up weeks of instruction time. The ban could buy back 15 to 30 hours of lost instructional time per student, according to estimates from David Osman, an auditor of standardized testing in school districts.

Standardized test results in Texas have an outsized influence on the A-F accountability system, which the state uses to grade schools’ performance. The scores from the new tests would continue to be a heavyweight in calculations under the proposed legislation. The bill would also:

• Require the TEA to release any rule changes to the accountability system by July 15 of any year, about a month before the school year starts.
• Solidify that the TEA commissioner has the sole authority to refresh those standards every five years.
• Require the state to find a way to measure student academic growth year over year with test results and to factor that into the A-F ratings.
• Require the TEA to track optional non-testing metrics to measure performance, such as student participation in pre-K, extracurriculars and workforce training in middle schools. Those metrics would not be a part of the state’s core A-F calculations.

The new testing system would go into effect in the 2027-28 school year. Morath has indicated the agency would use beta testing to develop the exams over the next two years.

The special sessions gave legislators another chance to revamp the test. STAAR was among the slew of proposed legislation that stalled during the first special session when Texas House Democrats fled the state over redistricting, blocking the lower chamber from having the number of members needed to continue any business.

“I have three boys who are about to begin school. They all remind me … they want … for us to eliminate the STAAR test,” House Speaker Dustin Burrows said last month as part of an order for his Democrat colleagues to return to Austin. “The governor has put that on the call. That is important. It is popular.”

Scrapping the current STAAR test is a popular idea among legislators, who have heard on the campaign trail about the stresses it puts on families and teachers. Students know their performance will be used to evaluate not just their skills, but also how effective their teachers and schools are. Parents, including some legislators, have described their kids not wanting to go to school on the days the test is administered because of that pressure.

For Elia Moran, a seventh grader at the World Languages Institute at Fort Worth ISD, the pressure to get every question right stresses her so much that she has struggled to fall asleep or find the appetite to eat breakfast the morning before the test.

The 12-year-old is a fast test taker. After she sped through the questions last spring, she sat at her desk and watched her classmates struggle to focus because they were so anxious.

“They’re telling us, you need to pass this to succeed in life. But what’s the point of giving us a test that I might not pass because I didn’t have a good breakfast or I can’t think under pressure?” Moran said.

Moran had her friend repeat fifth grade in part because of her performance on the STAAR test. The state does not make schools hold students back when they fail STAAR, but schools do use the test results to make such decisions.

Teachers describe losing valuable instructional time to “teach to the test.” According to a Charles Butt Foundation survey of teachers across the state, about eight in 10 teachers said preparing for STAAR is a barrier to good teaching.

Testing’s outsized influence on school ratings means the proposed legislation won’t ease the pressures on students, said Bob Popinski, with Raise Your Hand Texas, an education advocacy group that has pushed for a more comprehensive ratings system.

“This doesn't deplete the high-stakes testing, whatsoever,” Popinski said. “Where you have one test driving the A-F accountability ratings, that still is a high-stakes test, especially when it's still required right now for high school kids to pass in order to graduate.”

The charge to create an effective standardized test has implications for the future of schools around the state. Five Fs at a single campus is all it takes for the state to oust democratically elected school trustees and take over an entire district, like it happened at Houston ISD in 2023.

At one Austin middle school, which largely serves immigrant and refugee families, English is many students’ second or third language. Parents say their children are not performing well in STAAR because of the language barrier. The school’s low academic performance — and the threat of a state takeover that comes with it — has been enough for the district to consider shutting down the campus or bringing a charter school network in to take over operations.​

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on education pathways coverage.

Disclosure: Raise Your Hand Texas and Texas 2036 have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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