New testing requirements for Texas public school students moves one step closer to approval
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — The Texas House committee on public education advanced a plan that would eliminate the state’s current standardized test and replace it with a new type of testing that is designed to hopefully reduce anxiety and stress for students in the classroom. But it doesn’t appear to have bipartisan support.
House Bill 8 — authored by State Rep. Brad Buckley, R – Salado, would repeal the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, test at the start of the 2027-2028 academic year. Buckley said it would be replaced with a series of shorter assessments throughout the school year.
“To eliminate the high-stakes, one test, one day environment,” Buckley said to his colleagues on the committee as he laid out the bill. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree the STAAR test needs to go. During the regular session this year, the original STAAR-repeal proposal almost received unanimous support in the Texas House, but disagreements with the Senate ultimately killed the bill.
The added pressure placed on students with the STAAR test became apparent in the committee meeting after a seventh grade student from Fort Worth ISD testified.
“The STAAR test creates that major weight on my brain where I can’t think while the teacher is giving me information,” the student said. “I don’t sleep well and I don’t eat well. Now you tell me if that seems healthy for a child’s brain and body.”
The proposal
The current proposal would create three different tests spaced throughout the school year. A beginning of the year test, a middle of the year test, and an end of year test. The first two tests will be adaptive, meaning the questions will change for each student depending on if they got the previous question correct. This will provide data to show what grade level of a subject each student is testing at.
Those test results will be available to both teachers and parents 48 hours after the assessment. Mary Lynn Pruneda, the director of education policy at Texas 2036, a nonpartisan public policy group, said the proposed testing system will help educators track how their students are progressing throughout the school year.
“An adaptive test goes up and it goes down, and it can get you a really full picture of where exactly your child is performing,” she explained.
The end of year assessment will be the same for all students and will be pushed back to later in the year to give teachers more time to teach. HB 8 also bans over testing and sets a limit on the number of preparation tests a district can give a student.
Who should be making the test?
The bill passed out of committee with eight ayes and one no, with six members not present. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D – Austin, was the lone dissenting vote and the only Democrat of the present members. Her main concern with the testing proposal centers on who is making the test. The proposal would require the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to do the job.
“I just have no faith that our state will do a good job of it as it has not done a good job with the creation of the STAAR test,” Hinojosa said. She instead is advocating for a nationally norm-referenced test that would show how Texas students are doing in comparison to other states.
Hinojosa points out students in Texas who are not in the public education system are tested with a national test instead of a test created by the state.
House Bill 4 — the original plan to repeal the STAAR test in the regular session — did replace the STAAR with three nationally norm-referenced tests. However, Buckley, who wrote HB 4 earlier in the year, decided to go with a criterion-referenced test for the end of year exam. So what’s the difference?
Pruneda explains the difference with the analogy of two different types of scales. She equates the norm-referenced test with a balance scale, which shows you the comparison of weight between two different objects. In terms of education, it shows you who is better or worse in test scores.
The criterion-referenced test is like a scale you step on to see how much you weigh, Pruneda explained. It shows you exactly how much you weigh down to the ounce.
“A norm-referenced test, which was talked about during the regular legislative session, actually requires that 50% of kids don’t pass. But a criterion-referenced test is a lot more useful to moms and dads, because it tells them exactly if their kid is on grade level and anything that they’re specifically struggling with,” Pruneda said.
State Rep. John Bryant, D – Dallas, asked Buckley during the meeting why there was a drastic change from HB 4 in the regular session and HB 8 in the special session. Buckley said he had been able to speak with stakeholders over the past couple of months to find the best pathway forward, and he felt a norm-referenced test would not accurately assess Texas students on the state’s education standards.
“I think this is a fair sort of marriage of the two ideas that gives flexibility to districts that can move for growth throughout the year, but also gives us the opportunity to know whether or not kids are achieving at the at a level they should be on the state standards.”
An almost identical bill already passed out of the Texas Senate. The House bill now moves to the floor for a vote.
