Students’ scores on standardized State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests took a big hit this year throughout the state, especially in those school districts that chose primarily remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s scores are not going to be used to determine accountability rating for campuses or districts. Instead, the Texas Education Agency wants schools and teachers to look at STAAR as a diagnostic tool. Given the challenges faced this past year – including some malfunctions on the test vendor’s part during test administration – many districts are dismissing this year’s scores as “only one data point” or “lacking full participation.” “It is difficult to compare this year’s campus and districtwide results to previous years because participation rates were much lower than usual,” said Austin ISD spokesman Eduardo Villa.
That’s true for AISD, especially in the middle schools. According to state numbers, a total of 5,043 AISD eighth-grade students took the STAAR reading test in 2019. This spring, only 1,628 took the test, according to the state’s assessment website. Overall, the entire Austin region saw about 7,000 fewer students taking their first math and English tests in third grade.
The declining scores alarm people like Education Commissioner Mike Morath, especially among the younger students; the earlier the state can assess a student’s command of a subject, the more time teachers and schools have for interventions to boost student progress. But it’s an uphill battle, Morath told the State Board of Education last week. As an example, 110,000 Texas third-graders failed to pass the reading test in 2017. How many of those students were reading at grade level by the fifth grade? Fewer than 5%.
The pandemic has magnified Morath’s concerns. “The number of students who are significantly below grade level is far higher this year, higher than we’ve ever seen before, because of the impact of COVID. Because schools had to shut down for a week, or weeks at a stretch, for quarantining,” Morath said. “Then, of course, a huge number of parents chose to keep their kids remote for the entirety of the school year, and the efficacy of that remote instruction was varied.”
In Central Texas, passing rates have been fairly stable in recent years – including this year – with the Austin region slightly outperforming the state. In general, roughly one in four, or sometimes one in three, students in Central Texas will fail to pass any particular test; this year saw rates fall slightly (by single digits). Eanes, Leander, Lake Travis, and Round Rock have the highest passing rates; Hays, Hutto, Pflugerville, and Austin are in the middle; and Del Valle, Manor, and Elgin are at the bottom. Those trend lines have been consistent for about a decade.
A more interesting and fluctuating benchmark is the “mastery” level, the highest rank a student can achieve on a STAAR test. This is a metric where AISD and other districts are in constant competition with charter schools that have made major enrollment gains at their expense. Looking at all tests in grades three through eight, the Basis Charter School chain beats all others hands down, with 57% of fifth-grade students at mastery. By comparison, AISD, with many more fifth-grade students, is at 12%. But several charters do worse than that. Achieve Austin, with a single campus, has only a 3% mastery rate among its fifth-graders. Harmony campuses range from 4% to 44%; IDEA charters range from 13% to 44%; and KIPP’s campuses – some of the oldest charter schools in Austin – range from 6% to 21% mastery among fifth-graders.
This article appears in July 2 • 2021.