When the pandemic hit, 1 million kids in grades 3 through 8 opted out of taking the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR. Last year, kids took the test but it was not used to keep schools accountable. This year, about 4 million public school students will resume taking STAAR tests, most of them this month.
While state law requires that students take STAAR tests, their original purpose when implemented during the 2011-12 school year, was to “measure the extent to which students have learned and are able to apply the knowledge and skills defined in the state-mandated curriculum standards.”
As policymakers and educators grapple with making up for what was lost in the pandemic, it’s time to ask if the tests serve their purpose — especially given the added stress they cause for parents, students and teachers.
Student performance, among several other factors, contributes to a school’s accountability rating. But that can have a cost.
Students are well aware that the test affects their educational path. For example, in high school, if a student fails a STAAR test, he or she must take it again. This can happen even if the student had a passing average in the class for the year.
But a student’s success regarding a course is weighed on one test — which seems unfair and far from the STAAR’s original purpose. According to the Texas Education Agency, one helpful caveat is that a high school student can substitute a STAAR test with an SAT or ACT.
Before a student can graduate high school, he or she must pass all five STAAR tests or the substitutes. If the student is a poor test-taker, like many sharp students are, this sets him or her up for failure.
And how does it help determine how well a school is doing?
To complicate matters, in middle school, if a student fails a course but passes the STAAR test, the teacher and principal will discuss whether the student should be promoted. According to the TEA, if a student below grade 8 fails the STAAR, he or she cannot be held back a year.
We need ways to hold schools accountable to a student’s progress, and rating a school does help the state to know where to allocate funds. However, there are some obvious problems with tying these to the STAAR test.
Consider the 2020-21 school year: Some kids took the STAAR tests; about a million did not. It couldn’t really measure student progress or determine where funding should go, but now, it will.
Even though the test is supposed to reflect the previous year’s learning, with so much weighing on this one test, it motivates teachers to teach to the test and it hardly seems equitable to evaluate a child’s progress.
Consider what one student wrote about testing in the Austin Chronicle last year: “In my experience of taking the STAAR, test questions do not test on comprehension but rather closest correct answers. … The STAAR test limits students’ analysis of a piece and focuses on a unidimensional take of a piece. Additionally, this makes it harder for teachers to cover the curriculum because they are forced to spend time teaching test-taking techniques rather than the content.”
Administering STAAR tests is expensive, too — one contract with Pearson Education, which writes the tests, costs the state $90 million per year. That’s a lot of money just for evaluations. We can see where history, for example, might need a Texas-specific test but did we really need to fashion our own test for subjects such as math, reading and science?
Next year could be difficult, too. Under state law, 2022-23 testing will move entirely online, something with which even this tech-savvy generation may struggle.
The STAAR test has strayed from its intended purpose and between the cost and the stress, we’re not sure it’s the best way to keep schools accountable. The state should consider overhauling the accountability regime, especially to ensure it’s measuring the effect of the pandemic.
Fort Worth Star Telegram
