STAAR results: Texas students’ reading performance steady, math sees growth

Texas students’ passing rates on the reading STAAR test mostly held steady, and, while they saw growth in math, performance still lags behind pre-pandemic levels.

Statewide STAAR results for elementary and middle school students offer an encouraging picture, Texas education officials said Wednesday, but more work must be done — especially in mathematics, a subject hit particularly hard during COVID-19.

“Teachers across Texas continue to work with passion and skill to help students learn,” Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said in a statement. “This year’s results show the efforts of our educators continue to deliver improved results for students.”

Across the state, 77% of students in third through eighth grades passed reading assessments. Just over half of students scored on grade level.

Students pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, if they score well enough to be deemed “approaching” grade level, meaning they are ”likely to succeed in the next grade or course with targeted academic intervention.”

While the overall percentage of students passing held firm, the number of children performing at the highest levels dipped from 32% in 2022 to roughly a quarter last school year.

After COVID-19 shutdowns, many state leaders focused on the decline in students performing on grade level. But the same level of attention has not been shown to slippage among high-achieving children, said Mary Lynn Pruneda, senior policy advisor at the Texas 2036 think tank.

“We have yet to come up with a really coherent and smart explanation of why we’ve seen this mastery decline,” said Pruneda, who previously served as Gov. Greg Abbott’s education policy advisor.

Sixth graders saw the largest improvements in reading. The percentage of students who met grade-level expectations spiked 8 percentage points, from 42% to 50%.

The percentage of students passing in math ticked up from 69% in 2022 to 72% last school year. The year before the pandemic hit, 78% of elementary and middle school students passed their math STAAR tests. Roughly 42% met grade-level standards.

At least one-fifth of students failed the math exam across all elementary and middle school grades.

This year’s batch of data reflects a redesigned STAAR test. The Legislature approved new assessment rules, including a requirement that testing be done online. Lawmakers also capped the number of points based on multiple choice questions and expanded the reading assessment to test students’ writing abilities.

High schoolers’ scores — released earlier this summer — generally provided encouraging signs as well.

In Biology, English I, English II and U.S. History, pass rates exceeded those in 2019 — the last year before COVID-19 upended students’ high school experiences. Algebra I scores remain below 2019 levels but still improved last school year.

Parents can go to TexasAssessment.gov to view STAAR results for their child.

“Ultimately, if a parent doesn’t know how their child is performing, then they’re not going to take advantage of any free tutoring we can offer them,” Pruneda said.

Dallas scores

Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde was bracing for performance drops because of the new test design.

Instead, she said, the data released Wednesday was uplifting and reflected success in closing the gaps between DISD’s and the state’s average performances.

Dallas serves far more students from low-income families — as well as those learning English — than Texas as whole.

Elizalde pointed to several of the reading results as bright spots. Roughly 44% of Dallas sixth-graders met grade level, compared to half of students statewide. DISD narrowed that gap by 3 percentage points, when compared with 2022 STAAR results.

Those sixth graders dealt with pandemic upheaval during formative years for literacy, Elizalde noted.

“To remain consistent and have gains, those peaks are really important,” she said.

But work remains to be done to improve DISD’s performance overall. Across all but one grade level — fifth — less than half of students met grade-level in reading.

In math, 46% of DISD fourth graders met grade-level standards — roughly the same as statewide.

Seventh grade math was a negative outlier for Dallas, where 60% of students failed the STAAR. Just 14% of students tested on grade level.

Elizalde said the district will dive deeper into results, as well as examine campus-by-campus results.

Overall, strategies for improvement center on ensuring students with the highest needs are matched with the most effective teachers, she added. The district will continue investing in early education, where students’ learning foundations are built long before they begin STAAR testing in third grade.

Elizalde recently touted that DISD teachers will no longer “teach to the test.” Cutting down on frequent practice exams and supplemental assessments will free up more time for teachers to actually teach, she said.

Despite this de-emphasis on testing in Dallas, STAAR is expected to remain an important and required test that determines how the state judges campuses.

Accountability for Texas school districts

The STAAR data will be a major factor in how schools across Texas are evaluated this fall.

The Texas Education Agency assigns campuses and districts with A through F grades as part of the state’s accountability system, giving families a sense of how their local schools are performing. The ratings are key in how communities perceive their campuses and often are considered by parents when it comes time to enroll their children.

The formula for assigning grades has largely stayed the same since lawmakers created the system in 2017. However, widespread changes will be factored into the new scores when they’re released this fall.

District leaders predict the new rules will lead to lower scores. For example, Dallas ISD earned a B last year. If the new rules had applied to last year’s data, DISD officials say that score would have dropped to a C.

Elizalde said it’s sad that the district’s gains are likely not to be reflected in its upcoming grade.

Academic gaps remain

Texas Education Agency officials said they were encouraged by signs of growth among students learning English as a second language.

In math, 32% of those students met grade level and 35% met grade level in reading. These numbers are “at or above all-time high levels of performance,” according to TEA officials.

Roughly one-fifth of Texas’ nearly 5.5 million public school students are classified as learning English as a second language.

Still, those students — as well as those from low-income families and children receiving special education services — remain below the state average in all tested subjects.

Gaps between racial groups also persisted, an entrenched issue that state leaders have struggled to improve. The percentage of Black and Hispanic students meeting grade level fell below the state average in math and reading.

Continued COVID recovery

After the pandemic hit, Texas educators used hundreds of millions of dollars to make up for lost learning time.

Lawmakers zeroed-in on tutoring as a key strategy for helping students. They passed a law mandating extra help for students who failed their STAAR exams.

In the latest regular legislative session, however, the Legislature watered down some of those tutoring requirements.

The initial rule required all students who fail the STAAR to receive 30 hours of supplemental instruction or be matched with teacher who has proven to be highly effective. School leaders said it was often impossible to follow the letter of the law because they lacked enough tutors and had limited hours within the day.

The Legislature has lowered the number of required tutoring hours to 15 in some cases. It also raised the student-to-tutor ratio from 3:1 to 4:1.

Pruneda cautioned that just because a student didn’t fail the STAAR doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t need extra help — such as tutoring — to succeed at the next level.

“Let’s have a conversation about getting every child on grade level in the state of Texas,” she said.

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 Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.