By Sneha Dey, The Texas Tribune.

A Texas Senate panel on Wednesday unanimously advanced a proposal to scrap STAAR, the end-of-the-year state standardized test that parents and teachers widely criticize for putting enormous pressure on students.

Lawmakers in the House and Senate are considering similar bills to replace the state’s standardized test, signaling newfound agreement between chamber leaders on how to revamp STAAR, a task they left incomplete earlier this year. Both Senate Bill 8 and House Bill 8 would swap STAAR for three shorter tests to be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the school year.

SB 8 now goes to the Senate floor for a full chamber vote. Meanwhile, the proposal — like every other bill under consideration during this year’s special legislative session — is in limbo in the lower chamber after Texas House Democrats fled the state over redistricting, depriving the chamber of the number of members required to advance any legislation.

The special session provides legislators a second chance to revamp the test after negotiations between the House and Senate on STAAR broke down in the final hours of the regular session . With the clock on the special session running out, it’s unclear if lawmakers have the time or will to succeed.

“I have three boys who are about to begin school. They all remind me … they want … for us to eliminate the STAAR test,” House Speaker Dustin Burrows said on Monday as he called on his Democrat colleagues to return to Austin. “The governor has put that on the call. That is important. It is popular.”

Here’s how the test would change under the proposed legislation:

  • The tests would be shorter. For example, the bill requires the Texas Education Agency to create a year-end test that most students can complete in about an hour and a half — a significant change from the current test that often stretches for three hours.
  • The year-end test is the only state exam schools have to give students. Schools would get an option to substitute the beginning and middle-of-year tests for alternative exams.
  • If the legislation is approved, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said all test results would now be reported as percentile ranks, which indicate how a student’s performance compares to their peers. The end-of-year test would also report whether students have approached, met or mastered grade-level skills, comparing student performance to benchmarks like the current STAAR test, he said.
  • Test results would come back faster than under the current STAAR test. The state would have two business days to turn around results.
  • The legislation would establish some checks on the test. A committee of about 40 classroom teachers would review whether test questions match grade-level difficulty.
  • The bill outlaws practice exams given ahead of STAAR, which often take up weeks of instruction time. The ban could buy back 15 to 30 hours of lost instructional time per student, according to estimates from David Osman, an auditor of standardized testing in school districts.

Standardized test results in Texas have an outsized influence on the A-F accountability system, which the state uses to grade schools’ performance. The scores from the new tests would continue to be a heavyweight in calculations under the proposed legislation. The bill would also:

  • Require the TEA to release any rule changes to the accountability system by July 15 of any year, about a month before the school year starts.
  • Solidify that the TEA commissioner has the sole authority to refresh those standards every five years.
  • Require the state to find a way to measure student academic growth year over year with test results and factor that into the A-F ratings.
  • Require the TEA to track optional non-testing metrics to measure performance, such as student participation in pre-K, extracurriculars and workforce training in middle schools. Those metrics would not be a part of the state’s core A-F calculations.

The new testing system would go into effect in the 2027-28 school year. Morath indicated on Wednesday that the agency would use beta testing to develop the exams over the next two years.

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 at the time criticized the Senate’s prior proposal for failing to meaningfully change the STAAR test.

During the regular session, both chambers 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.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt’s spokesperson said the senator has worked 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, to reconcile those differences.

“To be very candid, at the end of the regular session, we had a good bill on this topic. This, I think, is far beyond that, much better,” said Sen. Tan Parker, a Flower Mound Republican who sits on the Senate education committee. “I can't imagine there'd be opposition to this in any way.”

The current STAAR test is 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 some legislators, 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.

Testing’s outsized influence on school ratings means SB 8 and HB 8 won’t ease the pressures on students, said Bob Popinski, with Raise Your Hand Texas, an education advocacy group that has pushed for a more comprehensive ratings system.

“This doesn't deplete the high-stakes testing, whatsoever,” Popinski said. “Where you have one test driving the A-F accountability ratings, that still is a high-stakes test, especially when it's still required right now for high school kids to pass in order to graduate.”

The charge to create an effective standardized test has implications for the future of schools around the state. 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.

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