Each year in the Spring students across Texas take a standardized test known as the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR test. The tests you take (and have to pass) vary by grade level, and start as early as 3rd Grade, with Math and Reading. The following grades take the following state standardized tests:
4th: Math, Reading, Writing
5th: Math, Reading, Science
6th: Math, Reading
7th: Math, Reading, Writing
8th: Math, Reading, Science, Social Studies
9th-12th: Algebra I, English I,
English II, Biology, US History
Essentially these cover the core classes: Math, English,
Science, Social Studies. It’s possible to get a waiver in high school depending
on the student’s status but in order to go from 5th to 6th
Grade and 8th to 9th Grade, students have to pass the
Math and Reading exams. You get three tries every year.
According to TexasAssessment.gov,
these tests are “designed to measure what students are learning in each grade
and whether or not they are ready for the next grade.” The State also notes
that the tests will be given in both paper and online format. And that’s where
things went
crazy this morning across Texas.
The Texas Education Agency runs the show. In the past TEA (which
is headed by, wait for it, former
software developer Mike Morath) had outsourced state standardized testing
to Pearson Education for 35 years. Why dump Pearson after such a long
relationship with the State of Texas? A
2013 state audit of Pearson “found holes in state oversight, as well as lax
terms that allowed the company to hire former state employees without restrictions
or disclosure.”
So beginning with the 2015-16 school year TEA awarded a
four-year/$280 million contract to the New Jersey-based Educational Testing
Services (ETS) to handle the STAAR test. Before
the first tests were even administered, ETS “delivered tests to wrong
addresses and prefilled answer sheets with incorrect student information.
Confidential student data, including Social Security numbers, were sent to the
wrong school districts.” By the time the first round of testing took place in
Spring 2016, things were decidedly not better.
A March 2016 computer glitch caused
students to lose their answers on over 14,000 tests statewide, affecting
mostly Special Education and English Language Learner students who were taking
their tests online. TEA had to waive the results from the annual school
accountability ratings for that year. Later in the Spring, ETS temporarily
misplaced a number of tests from Eanes ISD, a high-performing district on
Austin’s west side. In June 2016, ETS
missed the deadline to give “some school districts” the scores from the
summer re-test, which schools use to determine which students need summer
school. Morath, and TEA, left the decision to promote (or not) students from 5th
and 8th grades up to the school districts, since the data wasn’t
there to make the call.
All of these issues led TEA to fine ETS – in their first year overseeing the STAAR tests – $21
million ($6 million in damages + $15 million of their own money to fix the
problems encountered that Spring) and said that if ETS didn’t get their crap
together by December 2017, they could come back around for some for right-nice
fining.
I’m sure you will be shocked to learn that it did, in fact,
happen again. Students taking online versions of the STAAR in April and May
2018 found
themselves logged out of the testing server, or kicked out of the testing
platform altogether. 71,000
test results were thrown out, over 100,000 more students were affected by
the glitch. ETS blamed two things: human error and issues with the server
stemming from hundreds of thousands of students trying to log in at the same
time (which is required at the behest of TEA).
In June 2018 TEA issued another $100,000 fine on ETS and
announced they would put the contract up for re-bidding once ETS’ contract
ended in August 2019 which TEA apparently awarded to...ETS. When the COVID-19 pandemic
closed schools across the country for in-person learning in March 2020,
Texas Governor Greg Abbott waived STAAR testing requirements for the
2019-2020 school year, seeing as how it was clear many schools would be closed
during the testing window. But what about the 2020-2021 school year?
As with most anything before the Texas Legislature, the
decision turned quickly partisan: Democrats called on Abbott and Morath/TEA to
cancel STAAR testing, saying that any standardized test that comes after a year
of a global pandemic isn’t going to provide valid data relating to student, and
school, performance. Republicans said that the test was needed to see how far
behind (or not) students/schools are after the COVID year. I’m not here to weigh
in on the validity of these arguments.
In February 2021 TEA
issued new guidance on the 2021 STAAR tests as many school districts have
allowed students to learn remotely as well as in-person. Namely:
-Yes, students have to take them, but! the requirement to
pass the STAAR in 5th and 8th grade in order to move to 6th
and 9th grade have been waived.
-High school seniors still needing to pass any of their 9th-11th
grade tests (the latest test, high school timeline-wise, is 11th
grade, and it’s US History. You don’t have to take any “new” STAAR tests during
your senior year) to graduate have to do so.
-Also students take the STAAR test on a school-issued laptop
with the testing software pre-loaded, but they take the test in a classroom on
campus.
-But STAAR test results will not factor into the dreaded district
accountability ratings.
Which brings us to this morning, April 6, 2021.
I was all set to administer the English I STAAR test. Out of
15 students on my list, ten showed up. Two of those ten didn’t have their
school-issued laptop to access the test and had to be relocated to the Library.
No worries. As I’m reading the ever-so-formal instructions and get to the part
where they log in with their respective usernames and passwords, every single
one of the students taking their test said their login was rejected. Stepping
out into the hallway, pretty much every other test administrator was doing the
same thing, wondering what had happened.
ETS’ online testing system had crashed due to the number of
students trying to log in at the exact same time…just like it did in 2018.
It
did not take terribly long for TEA to issue a statement: “What happened
today is completely unacceptable,” the press release said. “ETS, the testing
vendor, experienced problems with their database system, which are in the
process of being corrected. The 2021 online administration of STAAR will be ETS’s
last for the State of Texas. Beginning next year, Cambium Assessment will be
taking over these critical testing functions to ensure that users have a
seamless online testing experience moving forward. All involved in public
education in Texas should expect better than what they have experienced today;
we are working to ensure that our students do not experience future testing
issues.”
That gives ETS about 43 hours to get their servers (which
have had issues for going on three years now) straightened out: the English II
STAAR test is scheduled for Thursday morning, April 8. I'm sure it'll be fine.
Whatever happens from today until August 31, when
ETS’ contract will be allowed to expire, we know that online testing is
here to stay: Beginning September 1 Cambium Assessment (who was awarded a
three-year $262 million contract to “manage the administration, scoring and
reporting on an online testing platform”) and old testing friend Pearson (three
years, $126 million to develop the assessment tests) will run the show.
ETS screwed up early, and they screwed up often. But at least they got a ton of money to do it.
