Updated 4:15 p.m. April 26, 2022, to include a statement from Texas education commissioner Mike Morath.
Elementary and middle-school students across Texas are preparing to take state exams in early May, which will mark their progress after a tough two years of COVID-19 disruptions.
Last year’s STAAR results detailed significant learning loss, with roughly 37% of students failing math tests and 33% failing reading exams. Educators across the state expect to see another year of low scores.
“We have a situation as a result of this pandemic where arguably students have the greatest possible need that we have ever seen,” said Tyson Kane, the Texas Education Agency’s associate commissioner of strategy and analytics, at a recent Raise Your Hand Texas conference.
In the past year, schools have focused on accelerating student learning to make up for lost time by adding minutes to the school day, hiring thousands of tutors and offering additional instruction time over the summer and on breaks.
Educators will have a better idea of what challenges are ahead and how pandemic recovery will need to pivot once they receive this year’s results of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.
Here’s what to expect.
Educators aren’t sure what to expect from this year’s results.
“Our overall numbers are not going to be good,” Dallas Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said, noting that he received a “sobering” report in early April on performance that was lagging on a different assessment that DISD uses to track students’ progress.
Still, he estimates that DISD students will see strong growth over the last year.
Student performance across Texas showed an overall decrease in STAAR performance in 2021, with a bigger hit to math than reading. Students from low-income families experienced greater learning loss in both subjects, and state officials have suggested that remote learning appeared to contribute to the sharp declines.
But the absences of so many test-takers last year may have clouded final results.
The number of STAAR exams taken then dropped by about a million from the previous testing, going from about 8.8 million in 2019 to 7.7 million in 2021. Many families opted to keep their kids at home because of health and safety concerns, which hampered the state’s testing strategy because exams were only offered in person.
When does STAAR testing take place?
Students have already taken some state exams designed for students learning the English language and those with significant cognitive disabilities. High-schoolers also sat for their English I and II end-of-course exams in early April.
But the bulk of state testing is approaching.
End-of-course exams for Algebra I, Biology and U.S. History will take place in early to mid-May. Students in elementary and middle-school grades will take tests for science, social studies, math and reading starting May 5 and ending May 20.
Most testing will be online this year. Next year, all STAAR tests will be taken virtually.
Lawmakers set in motion a major redesign of state exams in 2019. They hoped the transformation would make the test look more familiar to kids and have questions relate more closely to what was being taught in the classroom every day, Kane noted at the January event for Raise Your Hand Texas, which advocates on public education issues.
Transitioning the exams to computers will enable more students to have access to testing accommodations, faster results and new styles of questions, Kane said.
The majority of other states already have fully online tests. Texas is offering a series of practice tests and online activities to smooth the transition for students.
Only 12% of students took their exams online in 2019 but two years later — after a one-year pause in state testing during the pandemic — that percentage grew to 64%. In the December 2021 round of end-of-course exams for high-schoolers, about 85% of testers took their exams virtually, Kane said.
When asked Tuesday about concerns among superintendents and school systems that the redesign of the STAAR test is somehow misconstruing student performance, Texas education commissioner Mike Morath did not mince words.
“To be perfectly frank, it would be amazing — if it were true — that the test is somehow flawed,” he said. “Because if the tests were somehow flawed, that’s an easy fix. You change the test. The truth is, it’s not a flawed test; it’s the level of support that we’re providing to our students. This is giving us accurate information on where students are and so the structure of the supports that we provide has got to change.”
What happens if a student fails STAAR?
Schools must offer accelerated instruction to students who don’t pass the STAAR or end-of-course exams. The additional help could include assigning a student to an experienced teacher’s classroom or delivering extra tutoring during the next school year or in the summer.
Districts also are required to establish committees for students who don’t pass their math and reading tests in third, fifth and eighth grades to help catch them up.
Fifth and eighth graders who fail STAAR tests are no longer required to be held back a grade because of a new law passed in 2021.
The state will grade schools for the first time since before the pandemic.
TEA will issue letter grades — A through C — for districts and campuses based largely off this year’s STAAR exams.
However, those that score what would typically be a D or F will instead receive “Not Rated” labels.
But Hinojosa notes that pausing the lower grades isn’t an entire reprieve for districts, as the numeric value will still be publicly available.
Staff writer Corbett Smith contributed to this report.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Todd A. Williams Family Foundation and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
