House Democrats’ frustration with STAAR bill highlights divide over how new test should look

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Standing across from House Democrats on the chamber floor Tuesday, Rep. Brad Buckley defended his bill to replace STAAR, the state’s widely unpopular standardized test. Just months ago, they had been standing behind him.

The House voted to approve the measure in the end, despite Democrats’ opposition. The 82-56 vote was a far cry from the broad support an earlier House proposal received earlier this year. It also put a spotlight on what the new test could look like, which will determine whether the replacement for STAAR will ease the pressures of testing on students or exacerbate them.

Lawmakers say changes to the test are urgently needed as they use this year’s second special session to try for the third time to find an alternative. STAAR test results have an outsized impact on the accountability rating system the state uses to evaluate how well schools are educating Texas students.

House Bill 8 and its counterpart in the upper chamber, Senate Bill 9, would swap STAAR for three shorter tests to be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. The similar language in both bills is a result of negotiations between Buckley and Sen. Paul Bettencourt, SB 9’s author, after the chambers failed to agree on how to revamp STAAR during the regular session.

Democrats were not pleased with the concessions Buckley made, which they said would give too much power to the TEA in creating and grading the new end-of-the-year test.

During the regular session, the House pushed for changing how test results were reported. They wanted results to be presented as percentile ranks, which show how a student’s performance compares to their peers. They also wanted schools to be able to meet state testing requirements with national assessments that many students already take, with the hopes of limiting the amount of time testing takes up in the classroom.

HB 8 would only apply those changes to two out of the three new tests. And to many Democrats’ dismay, the end-of-the-year test would keep features of the current STAAR test.

Under the legislation, the TEA would not only still create the end-of-the-year test, but also continue to report whether students approached, met or mastered grade-level skills, comparing student performance to benchmarks the state sets. That’s in contrast to the percentile ranks that Democrats preferred to measure academic performance.

“We're going to have TEA both create the test that determines whether or not the school and district are taken over by them. That's a conflict. They should not be in charge of creating the test,” Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, said.

Buckley pushed back against the idea that TEA would have too much power in creating the test, pointing to a committee of classroom teachers that the bill would create to evaluate the fairness of the test questions.

Some Democrats worked with Buckley to add an amendment that allowed students with severe disabilities to be exempt from the first two tests. Rep. Rafael Anchía, D-Dallas, on Thursday also managed to tack on his own amendment to provide districts with financial relief when they ask for tests to be rescored, a rising concern as the state has leaned more on AI to grade tests.

The Texas Education Agency introduced AI-like technology for grading in 2023 to save dollars. But the inaccuracy with AI grading was central to a recent lawsuit between school districts and the TEA. After the Dallas school district had Texas regrade a chunk of their STAAR tests, five campuses saw their accountability ratings improve.

“Accuracy is really, really important. That's what I'm trying to drive at,” said Anchía, who was a former Dallas ISD school board member. “I’m not against this robotic scoring, but I am for accuracy.”

The amendments were not enough for House Public Education Committee Vice Chair Rep. Diego Bernal, who unsuccessfully tried to put a stop to the bill. He had been one of the most ardent supporters of Buckley’s efforts to eliminate the STAAR test during the regular session.

Bernal said House members were voting on a bill they did not fully understand and that, with the school year starting, not enough school leaders had been able to come to the Capitol and weigh in on the proposed changes.

“It's clear that most people on the floor don't understand it,” Bernal said. “And not only do they not understand it, but they either don't understand or don't care what it would do to the lived experience of kids like mine and yours when they go back to school.”

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

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