STAAR Test Has TX Educators, Admin and Students Seeing Stars

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It's been quite the school year for the 2nd year in a row as teachers, administrators and students continue to navigate the second year of COVID protocol classroom policy and procedures along with balancing classroom education, learning, and testing both in the classroom and through distance learning, which includes studying for and administering the STAAR Test.

The STAAR test, which stands for State of Texas Academic Assessment Readiness was first introduced in Texas in 2011 and last year Gov. Abbott waived the test for Texas students as COVID made its way through the state, leaving many to wonder if this would be the last year for the often controversial test.

It was decided however that 2021 would mean STAAR testing again in April.

Yesterday, however, on the first day of testing for TX students, widespread issues began to be reported across the state, which included students being kicked out of the test and slow load times. With so many issues, the first day of STAARS testing was forced to be canceled.

According to NBCDFW News, the Texas Education Agency released a statement Tuesday offering, “We understand the frustration this has caused students, parents, teachers, and administrators. What happened today is completely unacceptable. ETS, the testing vendor, experienced problems with their database system, which are in the process of being corrected."

They go on to offer that this is the last year they will use ETS for the STAAR tests.

Would this be the end of STAAR? Nope.

"Beginning next school year, Cambium Assessment will be taking over these critical testing functions to ensure that users have a seamless online testing experience moving forward," TEA offered afterward.

Today testing resumed with some students being offered paper tests, some students needing to go back online to pick up where they left off and others left with even more questions and frustrations about the validity of the STAAR test altogether.

In short, yesterday everyone in TX education was seeing stars.