Legislative Alert: Proposed bill would replace STAAR testing

School accountability serves as an important aspect of the public education system in Texas, and Northwest ISD believes families must be fully informed of how their children are performing. Unfortunately, we also believe the current system of state-mandated accountability provides limited meaningful data, as students should not be solely judged on a single series of high-stakes STAAR testing at one point in time.

The Texas House has proposed a meaningful overhaul of standardized testing and accountability for Texas public schools in the Committee Substitute of House Bill 4 (read the full text of the revised bill on this legislative webpage). If approved, this bill would implement dramatic changes that would better allow schools and districts to provide individualized student resources and support. Put simply, these changes ensure students are learning and continue to progress throughout the school year. Major components include:

• Replacing the STAAR test with a nationally norm-referenced test in math, reading and science
• Testing students at the beginning, middle and end of the year to monitor growth and provide fast feedback on performance for students, parents and teachers alike to adjust instruction throughout the school year
• Significantly limiting the amount of standardized testing to minimum federal requirements
• Keeping A-F school and district rating domains in accountability reporting
• Requiring the Texas Education Agency to set accountability standards by July 15 preceding each school year (in a recent lawsuit, schools sued the state for changing accountability standards after STAAR tests were administered)
• Requiring explicit approval of the Texas Legislature for the commissioner of education to modify domains or performance indicators, providing more oversight and input while limiting sudden, drastic changes to accountability standards
• Adding optional local accountability metrics for school districts to implement at the elementary and middle school levels

For decades, Texans have complained about the burdensome nature of standardized testing, which this revised bill proposes reforming. In previous testing changes, lawmakers have made minor revisions and renamed the testing standard – from TEAMS to TAAS to TAKS to STAAR. As with previous testing systems, current STAAR testing forces educators to “teach to the test” and creates unnecessary stress for students by attempting to gauge knowledge during a single test at one point in the school year. Additionally, STAAR testing is not supportive of the unique circumstances facing students with special needs. Because of these inherent limitations, STAAR testing impedes teachers’ ability to educate students with personalized instruction.

Many of these changes are in line with testing expectations set for private schools that will receive taxpayer funding for vouchers following approval of Senate Bill 2, which was recently signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott. As the legislative session advances, however, some entities that lack a background in education are attempting to undermine the committee substitute of HB4 and return to Texas’ standard of implementing minor revisions to high-stakes testing systems and renaming them. If these entities are successful, Texas students will be left with a rebranded STAAR test that is not a meaningful measure of student progress or achievement.