The winter break blues have descended upon students across Texas as they return to school after a two week respite. Texas teachers too have reason to be singing the blues as a STAAR has now appeared on their horizon.  

The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR™) which replaced TAKS in 2011 is being billed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) as a much more difficult and strenuous accountability test than its forerunner. According to the TEA the STARR testing promises to be more rigorous, present more questions, require a four hour time limit, and include 12 course specific high school end-of-course assessments.

STAAR testing begins in March, 2012 with the bulk of the testing to be administered in May. The Pleasanton Express will be working with Atascosa County school districts and the TEA to provide resources and information for parents and students which will include testing calendars, grade level specific information, links and resources for test preparation, sample test questions for all grades and information regarding testing for special population students.

The fact that accountability tests are being used as the single measuring stick for school districts and students performance puts everyone – administrators, teachers, students and parents in an explosive pressure cooker. The system now uses the accountability test as a single high-stakes test that determines whether students advance, teachers receive bonuses and principals and superintendents keep their jobs.  Additionally, developers, builders and real estate agencies depend on rankings to determine property values and the Chamber of Commerce relies on these scores to help attract new business.  It is not surprising that this testing creates a negative learning environment as evident by Texas’’ bottom five US ranking in accountability scores

The debate is closed on this testing which began in 2002 with The No Child Left Behind act even though there is a lot of room to argue about the dubious value of accountability testing. We are left with just one way to brighten the STAAR and that is to equip ourselves with as much information and resources as possible.

The Pleasanton Express will be working with the Atascosa County school districts and the TEA to provide as much valuable information as possible for the remainder of the school year. For now, if you want to find out if you are smarter than a 5^th grader or a middle school or high school student, please go to http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/special-ed/staarm/released-questions/  to see if you can answer some of the sample test questions that will appear on your child’s STAAR test. Best of luck!  I think you will find that you need it.