Texas Lawmakers Fail to Scrap STAAR Test Despite Widespread Agreement

Texas lawmakers widely agree on the need to scrap the state’s standardized STAAR test, which is loathed by kids, parents and teachers alike.

But an effort to do so this legislative session failed at the eleventh hour, even after a bill passed both chambers by wide margins.

House and Senate negotiators said they ultimately reached an impasse over what role the Texas Education Agency would play in designing and overseeing the new tests, as well as school districts’ ability to challenge the ratings they receive based on the scores.

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Some of the bill’s authors are hopeful the test repeal could resurface in the upcoming special session, set to begin July 21.

“I think it’s absolutely possible,” said state Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio. “If that’s something the governor is committed to, then I’m ready to go. We all agree it’s important, and that leaving things the way they are doesn’t do anybody any good.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott, who sets the special session agenda, said that the Republican “has been clear about his desire to eliminate the STAAR test,” but had “no announcement to make at this time.”

Groups representing teachers and school districts have generally aligned with the House’s approach to the STAAR overhaul, with some blaming the Senate for the bill’s failure to pass.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, disputed the accusation. He said state lawmakers crafted a compromise proposal in the waning days of the session that had support from a majority of both chambers’ negotiators. But leadership did not have adequate time to consider the draft, he said.

“At the end of the session, literally everything is being smashed together like pumpkins, trying to get the pies baked,” Bettencourt said. “We didn't have time to really go and explain all this.”

READ MORE: San Antonio high schools fell behind in reading, math on STAAR end-of-course exams

The conference committee’s report was never made public but Bettencourt provided a copy to Hearst Newspapers. He called it a “good starting point” in future negotiations.

The agreement would have split the STAAR test, currently given each spring beginning in third grade, into three much shorter tests given at the beginning, middle and end of each year, a system sometimes known as “through-year testing.” The set up is designed to reduce the high-stakes nature of testing and allow for students to be measured by growth over time. Both the House and Senate passed bills that included this approach.

The compromise report pulled language from the Senate's proposal that would have left the design of the final of the three tests to the Texas Education Agency, which currently writes STAAR or State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. The other two exams would have been crafted by a third party and all would be eventually counted towards school districts’ A-F accountability ratings.

Bernal said House members were not interested in allowing TEA to design the new test because it could result in “essentially the same thing under a different name.” The House version would have given TEA the power to select a third party-developed test, and would not have included the first two tests in school ratings.

“TEA in the last few years has turned the knobs and moved the faders of the test up and down and left and right,” Bernal said. “For TEA to create the new test, I really couldn't understand how that’s different from what we have now.”

Under the compromise language shared by Bettencourt, the final, end-of-year test would have been more similar to the current STAAR test, grading students directly against a set of state criteria known as TEKS.

The House bill proposed to shift the test to being “norm-referenced,” with students graded against the overall pool of testers, in line with other exams like the MAP or SAT. But the Senate preferred to maintain a criterion-based test with a “norm-referenced output,” according to Bettencourt.

They agreement would have allowed parents and teachers to view test results no more than 48 hours following an exam, a provision House members say would allow for better real-time understanding and any necessary changes in instruction.

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The draft also sought to clarify the A-F accountability system, solidifying the yearly release of school ratings and preventing the TEA commissioner from issuing a blanket “not rated” status to all school districts statewide, which the agency did in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

It would have also restricted districts’ ability to sue over those ratings by removing grounds for a challenge and restricting the use of taxpayer funds in such lawsuits. Bettencourt said he hoped to clamp down on a “constant state of lawfare” between districts and TEA.

Dozens of school districts sued the agency in recent years, claiming TEA Commissioner Mike Morath’s changes to the A-F system were unfair. Repeated low ratings can lead to a state takeover of a district.