Will STAAR Make the Grade?
A sample question from Texas' 2011 school-accountability exam, the STAAR test. Photo courtesy the Texas Education AgencyState lawmakers will get an update today on how the rollout of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness went this spring.
The STAAR exam is the state’s latest school-accountability test. The House Public Education Committee will hear from stakeholders and the general public about the STAAR’s first run.
Clay Robinson is a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association. His group will spend its time before lawmakers focusing not on the performance of the new test, but on how the state’s testing system should be revamped.
“Texas needs to get away from it’s overreliance on one high-stakes standardized test,” Robinson says. “And develop a curriculum that allows teachers — the real education experts — to do what they do best.”
One of its main differences between STAAR and previous tests is the inclusion of an end-of-course exam that counts for 15 percent of each high school student’s final grade. The state has yet to set standards for what is considered a passing grade on this test, which has some people concerned about how dramatically STAAR could affect a student’s grade point average.
