Texas bill to overhaul STAAR test clears the House but faces a skeptical Senate

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The Texas House has approved a bill that would eliminate STAAR, the high-stakes standardized test that the state and school districts use to monitor student learning and teacher performance.

“What this does is remove testing from being the center of gravity for the year the way that it is now,” state Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, said on the House floor this week. “The days of teaching to the test, if this passes, are over. What we’ve done here is create something that is much more of a tool than a test.”

House Bill 4, which overhauls standardized testing in Texas public schools, got a near unanimous vote in the House on Tuesday, but faces a tough road in the Senate. The upper chamber has its own idea for what an overhaul of the standardized test, and the school rating system largely based on that test’s results, should look like.

Both the House and Senate versions of the legislation would swap the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, with a shorter test to free up time for more instruction. Students would be tested at the beginning, middle and end of the school year so teachers could use test results to identify areas for improvement and shape their lesson plans. Both bills also weigh in on how schools can challenge its state performance ratings. But the gulf between the proposals is wide — one lawmakers will need to close in the final weeks of this year’s legislative session.

When asked what it will take for the bill to pass the Senate, state Rep. Brad Buckley, the Salado Republican that authored the bill, acknowledged the differences between the two chambers' proposals and said he was already in talks with his Senate counterparts.

“There are different opinions,” Buckley said on the House floor. “But I believe this. I believe that it is consistent throughout this chamber and the chamber to the East, that one test one day is not the future for Texas.”

The two chambers had nearly identical versions of legislation at the start of session. The Senate passed its proposal last month. The House, meanwhile, completely rewrote its proposal after public testimony and closed-door meetings where school leaders hammered on their lack of trust in the state’s accountability and testing systems.

“It is time to rebuild trust in our system, and HB 4 does just that. It is time for assessments to inform instruction in a real time manner,” Buckley said. “We need to make testing just another day at school.”

The House proposal, but not the Senate’s, would change how students are graded. Instead of using a rigid scale to track students’ academic performance, their outcomes would be compared to their peers around the country. Supporters of the House proposal say that approach would be a better measuring stick. Critics say the change would obscure whether Texas students have met expectations for grade-level skills.

The two chambers have proposed different timelines for rolling out the test. The House wants the new test in schools as early as this fall, while the Senate wants to wait till 2028 to give the Texas Education Agency more time to build out the assessment.

The STAAR test has long been criticized for being too rigorous to accurately reflect grade-level standards. Many educators also say preparing students for the test takes up too much classroom time without improving instruction.

“How Texas handles school accountability currently does not work. Our kids are over-tested and our teachers are overworked,” Nikki Cowart, the president of the Cy-Fair school district’s chapter of American Federation of Teachers, testified in front of lawmakers last month. “Our school districts have been punished for failing to meet unreliable and arbitrary standards with misused and unreliable testing data.”

Students’ STAAR performance is a key metric in the state's ratings of school districts and school campuses, which are graded on an A-F scale each year. Poor ratings can lead to state sanctions such as a state takeover.

The legislation grapples with how school performance ratings are calculated. It comes after school performance ratings were held up in court for two consecutive years. Districts had sued the state because they said the TEA was too hasty in introducing changes that affected their rating, giving an inaccurate picture of their performance.

Under HB 4, the TEA commissioner would have to get approval from the Legislature for all major changes to the ratings system. The House has also proposed new metrics that would impact A-F scores, including how many teachers complete math and literacy instruction training and how many students complete workforce training classes.

Districts could still sue to challenge changes to the accountability system — but the House bill sets up a fast-track court process for those lawsuits to be settled so disputes do not affect the release of the ratings.

Meanwhile, the Senate’s version of the bill would solidify the TEA commissioner’s authority to determine how school performance ratings are calculated. Senate Bill 1962 would make it difficult for districts to use the courts to challenge changes to the performance ratings system. School districts that sue would face restrictions on how they can pay their attorneys’ fees and could face increased TEA oversight.

The Senate also largely leaves it up to the TEA to set the standards schools and districts have to meet to get a good score in the state’s A-F rating system, simply requiring the agency to study college and career readiness indicators.

Also on Tuesday, the Senate advanced a separate bill that would expand sanctions for districts that get low performance ratings. Under Senate Bill 2619, getting two F ratings in a row would mean all school board trustees in the district had to stand for an election.

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