Texas lawmakers propose replacing STAAR exam with three shorter tests

Lawmakers in the Texas House and Senate introduced Monday similar bills to scrap the state’s standardized test, signaling newfound agreement between chamber leaders to finish a task they left incomplete earlier this year.

This year’s special legislative session is legislators’ second chance to revamp the test after negotiations between chambers on STAAR broke down in the final hours of the regular session.

But whether they’ll succeed remains uncertain. The proposal — like every other bill under consideration during the special session — is in limbo after Texas House Democrats fled the state over redistricting, depriving the chamber of the number of members required to advance any legislation.

Getting rid of STAAR is a popular idea among legislators. Many of their constituents have criticized the pressures students face taking the hours-long, end-of-the-year test, which is used to grade their school’s performance. The Texas Education Agency has insisted the test is a reliable tool to measure academic achievement.

Both House Bill 8 and Senate Bill 8 would replace STAAR with three shorter tests to be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. The year-end test would be the only mandatory exam.

Under the proposed legislation, standardized testing would continue to be a big metric in calculating school performance under Texas’ A-F school ratings system. The legislation would also solidify the Texas Education Agency commissioner as the sole authority to refresh those standards.

“The bottom line is that What Gets Measured Gets Fixed, and this bill measures student success in a fairer way,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who has been a chief negotiator on STAAR, said in a written statement.

The legislation introduced some new checks to ensure that the test and the school ratings system are fair. It calls for the creation of a committee — which would include staff from the governor, lieutenant governor and the house speaker — to evaluate any changes to the school ratings system. The state would also initiate an independent study of the new exam to evaluate whether questions on the test match grade-level difficulty.

Students will continue to take the STAAR test for the next two years. The agency has until the 2027-28 school year to make the new test.

The bill largely resembles the final proposal the Senate brought before House lawmakers during the regular session before negotiations fell apart. Parent and teacher advocates have criticized the Senate’s prior proposal for failing to meaningfully change the STAAR test.

During the regular session, both chambers had agreed to swap STAAR for a shorter test that would be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. But they failed to find a middle ground on several fronts, including whether the Legislature or the TEA commissioner gets the final say on setting the ratings systems standards; how to deal with school districts that sue to block their accountability ratings; and whether to keep a mandatory social studies test.

Bettencourt’s spokesperson said the senator had been working with the leaders of both chambers, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, as well as Rep. Brad Buckley, the Salado Republican who chairs the House’s public education committee, in drafting the new proposal to reconcile those differences.

The STAAR test was designed to be completed in three hours, but testing sessions can go up to seven hours. That can be difficult for young students or children with special needs, who may struggle to sit still and focus on an exam for that long.

And students know their performance will be used to evaluate not just their skills, but also how effective their teachers and schools are. Parents, including Rep. Gina Hinojosa, have described their kids not wanting to go to school on the days the test is administered because of that pressure.

Teachers also describe losing valuable instructional time to “teach to the test.” According to a Charles Butt Foundation survey of teachers across the state, about eight in 10 teachers said preparing for STAAR is a barrier to good teaching.

Regardless of what lawmakers come up with this special session, it’s unlikely that standardized testing will go away. Texas relies on the results to keep track of students’ math and reading performance and ensure they have the skills to succeed later in life.

Without it, the state wouldn’t have an unbiased way to determine whether a child is ready for the next grade in Texas, said Mary Lynn Pruneda, of policy group Texas 2036. Texas is one of the few states in the country where struggling students get extra support based on their performance on the standardized test, Pruneda explained.

“The way that we test our kids has always been, for decades, one of the most difficult conversations that we can have at a state legislature,” Pruneda said. “But I’m encouraged by the fact that Texas has always been… at the forefront of strong accountability and assessment systems. I feel as though the Legislature has the exact same commitment and that exact same ethos, and I think we’ll carry that through the special session.”

The test has an outsized influence on how schools are graded. Five Fs at a single campus is all it takes for the state to oust democratically elected school trustees and take over an entire district.

At one Austin middle school, which largely serves immigrant and refugee families, English is many students’ second or third language. Parents say their children are not performing well in STAAR because of the language barrier.

The school’s low academic performance — and the threat of a state takeover that comes with it — has been enough for the district to consider shutting down the campus or bringing a charter school network in to take over operations.