To: The Texas State House, The Texas State Senate, and Governor Greg Abbott
Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment
The STAAR system creates unnecessary barriers to graduation, takes valuable classroom instruction time and diverts significant public funding from Texas classrooms to a for-profit testing company. In addition to its economic costs, STAAR imposes other significant costs: teaching to the test, numerous benchmarks and practice tests, and remediation classes replacing electives. We want to seize this opportunity to work together to implement a more reasoned approach to student assessments.
TAMSA advocates for the use of national norm-referenced tests in grades 3 through 12 and limiting the use of expensive state-designed STAAR and End-of-Course (EOC) exams. Specifically we advocate for:
- Decreasing the number of End-of-Course (EOC) exams to no more than 3 in the foundation subjects of math and language arts.
- Utilizing SAT & ACT tests to determine college readiness, since these are the only tests that colleges - including Texas universities - consider in admissions.
- Changing elementary/middle school STAAR testing to grades 3, 5 & 8 only for reading and math; grades 4 & 7 only for writing.
- Allowing nationally recognized tests in lieu of STAAR for grades 3-8; such as Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), STANFORD, ReadiStep (pre-SAT), or EXPLORE (pre-ACT).
- Eliminating the requirement that EOC exam scores count for 15% of a student's final grades
- Eliminating performance level requirements for English III and Algebra II EOC exams.
- Making the Cumulative Score requirement optional.
The current STAAR testing regime needs to be changed THIS legislative session as 3 million Texas students have started taking 10 million tests in April 2013.
TAMSA advocates for the use of national norm-referenced tests in grades 3 through 12 and limiting the use of expensive state-designed STAAR and End-of-Course (EOC) exams. Specifically we advocate for:
- Decreasing the number of End-of-Course (EOC) exams to no more than 3 in the foundation subjects of math and language arts.
- Utilizing SAT & ACT tests to determine college readiness, since these are the only tests that colleges - including Texas universities - consider in admissions.
- Changing elementary/middle school STAAR testing to grades 3, 5 & 8 only for reading and math; grades 4 & 7 only for writing.
- Allowing nationally recognized tests in lieu of STAAR for grades 3-8; such as Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), STANFORD, ReadiStep (pre-SAT), or EXPLORE (pre-ACT).
- Eliminating the requirement that EOC exam scores count for 15% of a student's final grades
- Eliminating performance level requirements for English III and Algebra II EOC exams.
- Making the Cumulative Score requirement optional.
The current STAAR testing regime needs to be changed THIS legislative session as 3 million Texas students have started taking 10 million tests in April 2013.
Why is this important?
TAMSA is a statewide, grassroots organization comprised of parents and other community members concerned with the overemphasis on high stakes STAAR tests and the misallocation of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the tests that should be going to the classroom. Our mission is to improve public education in Texas through the use of meaningful and effective student assessments that allow for more productive classroom instruction and more efficient use of public funds.