2.27.24
“Who Is Responsible for STAAR Test Redesign? -- Texas Legislature Is”
From Donna Garner
As usual, the news media is trying to blame Texas Commissioner of Education Morath and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for the redesign of the STAAR tests.
Who is responsible for the many changes?
It is none other than the members of the Texas Legislature; the school administrators and Rep. Hinojosa should know that.
The whole state knew about these changes way back in June 2019 when HB 3906 was passed and signed into law!
Comm. Morath and the TEA are REQUIRED BY LAW to IMPLEMENT the provisions of HB 3906.
Where in the following Dallas Morning News article is that information clearly explained to the public? Nowhere…
Here are the FACTS behind the redesign, and the public needs to read through the following statements and links BEFORE reading The Dallas Morning News version.
By the way, other major newspapers in Texas have carried the same type of biased, half-truths without ever mentioning that the responsibility for the redesign is completely that of the Texas Legislators who voted for HB 3906.
Like it or not, Texas voters themselves elected the members of the Texas Legislature; and it is they who made the following changes requiring Morath/TEA to redesign the STAAR tests.
I am not saying that all the changes in the redesign are necessarily bad, but the important thing is to put the responsibility where it belongs – in the hands of the Texas Legislature.
FACTS NOT MENTIONED BY MAJOR NEWS MEDIA
STAAR REDESIGN REQUIRED BY HB 3906 PASSED BY TEXAS LEGISLATURE -- SIGNED INTO LAW BY GOV. ABBOTT ON 6.14.19 -- https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/BillStages.aspx?LegSess=86R&Bill=HB3906
HB 3906 ENROLLED VERSION: https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=86R&Bill=HB3906
HB 3906 – BILL SUMMARY -- https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/BillSummary.aspx?LegSess=86R&Bill=HB3906
NO MORE THAN 75% OF MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS ARE ALLOWED ON STAAR TEST – BECAUSE STAAR TEST SCORES HAVE TO BE RELEASED BY THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR, THIS BY NECESSITY REQUIRES MORATH/TEA TO HAVE MANY OF THE WRITTEN RESPONSE QUESTIONS SCORED VIRTUALLY [“AUTOMATED SCORING ENGINES”].
IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE AND TERRIBLY EXPENSIVE TO HAVE THE WRITTEN RESPONSE QUESTIONS SCORED BY HUMANS AND GET THE FINAL STAAR TEST RESULTS RELEASED BY THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.
HB 3906 REQUIRES ONLINE TESTING OF STAAR – BEGINNING IN 2022 – 2023 SCHOOL YEAR
TEA WEBSITE PUBLISHED IN 2022 THAT TELLS EVERYONE WHAT THE REDESIGN WILL LOOK LIKE AND WHAT ACCOMMODATIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE TO STUDENTS WHILE TAKING THE TEST: https://tea.texas.gov/student-assessment/assessment-initiatives/staar-redesign
========================================
2.15.24 – Dallas Morning News
“How are computers scoring STAAR essays? Texas superintendents, lawmaker want answers”
By Talia Richman
Excerpts from this article:
Texas superintendents – and at least one lawmaker – want answers from the state education commissioner about how computers are scoring STAAR essays.
The Texas Education Agency quietly debuted a new system for examining student answers on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, in December.
Roughly three-quarters of written responses are scored by a computer rather than a person.
“This is surprising news to me as a member of the House Public Education Committee, as I do not recall ever receiving notice of this novel and experimental method for grading high-stakes, STAAR tests,” Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, wrote in a recent letter to Commissioner Mike Morath, which was also shared with The Dallas Morning News.
Superintendents across the state were also caught off guard until recently. Many school districts already are suing the state over changes to the academic accountability system that’s largely based on STAAR performance.
The use of computers to score essays “was never communicated to school districts; yet this seems to be an unprecedented change that a ‘heads up’ would be reasonably warranted,” HD Chambers, director of the Texas School Alliance, wrote to Morath in a letter shared with The News.
The new scoring method rolled out amid a broader STAAR redesign. The revamped test – which launched last year – has a cap [75%] on multiple choice questions and essays at every grade level. State officials say it would cost millions more to only have humans score the test.
The “automated scoring engines” are programmed to emulate how humans would assess an essay, and they don’t learn beyond a single question. The computer determines how to score written answers after analyzing thousands of students’ responses that were previously scored by people.
Among the district leaders’ biggest concerns is a huge spike in low scores among high schoolers under the new system.
Roughly eight in 10 written responses on the most recent English II End of Course exam received zero points this fall.
In the spring – the first iteration of the redesigned test, but scored only by humans – roughly a quarter of responses scored zero points in the same subject.
Members of the Texas School Alliance, which represents 46 districts, “examined their individual district results and found shockingly consistent scoring differences.”
Chris Rozunick, the director of the state’s assessment development division, previously told The News that she understands why people connect the spike in zeroes to the rollout of automated scoring based on the timing. But she insists that the two are unrelated.
Many students who take STAAR in the fall are “re-testers” who did not meet grade level on a previous test attempt. Spring testers tend to perform better, according to agency officials who were asked to explain the spike in low scores in the fall.
“It really is the population of testers much more than anything else,” Rozunick said.
Some district leaders requested the state education agency provide them images of students’ responses so that they could “better understand what led to the significant increase in the number of zeroes, and most importantly how to help students write their responses” to receive better scores.
“Each request has been denied,” Chambers wrote in his letter to Morath.
TEA officials say a technical report, with a detailed overview of the system, will be available later this year.
STAAR scores are of tremendous importance to district leaders, families and communities.
Schools are graded on the state’s academic accountability system largely based on how students perform on these standardized tests.