STAAR struck: Educators wary of ratings after testing problems

Widespread problems with this year’s STAAR tests have some North Texas school officials wondering whether the state accountability ratings will accurately reflect a school district’s academic standing.

“It’s been a train wreck,” said Keller school district Superintendent Randy Reid, describing the administering of — and the chaos that followed — the 2016 State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests.

Issues encountered by North Texas school districts reads like a laundry list of testing troubles: students received more than one grade, tests were scored incorrectly, confidential results were sent to the wrong districts, sometimes hundreds of miles away, and internet connections failed, leaving students in the lurch.

STAAR results that were supposed to arrive in June didn’t come until July and some of that data was in unusable formats, which forced some districts to have to manually enter figures.

“This was a statewide issue,” said Sara Arispe, Fort Worth’s assistant superintendent of accountability. “We definitely experienced all of these things that you have been hearing about statewide. I appreciate the fact that the commissioner listened to districts statewide, investigated and found that these were real problems.”

The results are used to measure each student’s academic progress and help determine accountability ratings for campuses and school districts statewide. The ratings, which are set to be released Aug. 15, will likely be met with more skepticism than usual.

“It’s really caused a lot of people to lose faith in the reliability of the test,” Reid said.

Authorities say the problems are rooted in a new testing contractor, Educational Testing Service, which is in its first of a four-year contract with the Texas Education Agency. Problems with ETS came early and often and reached a tipping point in June, when scoring errors and other concerns led state Education Commissioner Mike Morath to waive all consequences tied to the STAAR exams for fifth- and eighth-grade students, including retesting for students who failed.

TEA officials previously told the Star-Telegram that they’re working with Educational Testing Service to “ensure that school districts have an opportunity to fully verify the accuracy of data used for 2016 state accountability.”

Misplaced scores and counting errors

In Keller, school district officials had to send back 342 end-of-course English tests for re-scoring from the December administration and 110 came back with changed scores. Nine students went from failing to passing.

Administrators also sent back some of the March English I and II tests and some writing tests for fourth- and seventh-grade students and are still awaiting updated scores, said Jennifer Price, Keller’s director of assessment and accountability.

Statewide, about 14,000 students were affected by inaccurate scores from the March administration of STAAR tests, said DeEtta Culbertson, TEA spokeswoman. She said March writing tests for fourth- and seventh-graders and high school students were in the process of being re-scored. She said there appeared to be fewer problems with May tests.

Price said a few students in the Keller district received three scores for the same test — passing, failing and advanced. Officials also received scores for students who left the district two years ago and hundreds of confidential student reports for students have never been in the Keller district.

“With all of the issues, we have to fill out a sheet and submit a request,” Price said.

She said because the results came in late from the state, they have been sent out late to parents as well. Price said her office has fielded 30 to 40 calls a day from parents wanting scores for their kids.

In Grapevine-Colleyville, district officials have experienced many of the same problems.

Mixed in with results for one of their elementary schools, administrators found a few hundred confidential student reports for a school district on the outskirts of Houston.

Shannon Tovar, Grapevine-Colleyville’s director of accountability and continuous improvement, said she received the misdirected reports after both the March and May test administrations.

Each time it happened, staff members had to contact the TEA and the test contractor to alert them and get instructions on how to dispose of the confidential information.

Grapevine-Colleyville administrators also found numerous “counting errors” in the compilation of results. In some cases, the number of boys and girls in a class exceeds the total number of students.

Other districts, such as Northwest and Carroll, did not experience as many problems.

Online challenges in Fort Worth

Students in Fort Worth district schools experienced a different set of challenges with the STAAR tests.

Arispe said some students lost their internet connection during online testing because of problems on the vendor’s end.

"That’s not a situation you ever want to put a child in,” Arispe said

After the connection was lost, answers were missing from the tests, Arispe said.

She said, students were asking themselves: “Do I go back and try to solve those again? Or should I continue to move forward?”

Arispe said because some of the tests are timed, losing answers was especially problematic. Many of the STAAR “accommodated” tests are given to students with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia.

“It is obviously not good if something is not working right,” Arispe said.

The district also experienced issues with test materials coming in appropriately. The paper tests arrive in huge shipments via 18-wheelers, but were not appropriately labeled and didn't have tracking numbers.

Used to ‘label kids’

This year’s STAAR problems have increased hostility toward the high-stakes testing system.

Parents from the Dallas, Austin and Houston areas are suing the state to have this year’s test results thrown out for elementary and middle school students, claiming some of the tests were not administered in the manner prescribed by law.

A group of almost 50 superintendents in south Texas sent a letter in April to the education commissioner outlining more than 50 problems their districts experienced with the March administration.

The superintendents wrote that they had a “lack of confidence in the entire testing system based on the problems.”

A recent survey involving more than 27,000 Texans showed that 80 percent think students who fail the test should be allowed to graduate or advance to the next grade level. And 63 percent support replacing the state test with a national test, such as the SAT or ACT. The survey, Texans Speak: Public Feedback on Assessments and Accountability Systems, was conducted by the State Board of Education.

Last week, the state’s Commission on Next Generation Assessment and Accountability recommended that the state implement individualized, computer-based tests to measure academic performance.

The special panel stopped short of saying STAAR should be replaced, but acknowledged changes needed to be made. Panel members also noted that some school districts don’t have the infrastructure to conduct digital testing.

The panel’s report, due Sept. 1, will be used by lawmakers in next next year’s legislative session, when STAAR will remain a contentious topic.

Reid, Keller’s superintendent, said the problems that cropped up this year reinforce what educators have been saying for years.

“We believe in testing. The problem is when we use it to drive instruction and we use it to label kids, schools and districts,” Reid said. “How can you give a school or a district a rating or keep a kid from graduating based on a test where you can’t rely on its quality?”

Staff writer Diane Smith contributed to this report, which contains information from the Star-Telegram archives.

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This story was originally published August 7, 2016 at 3:21 PM with the headline "STAAR struck: Educators wary of ratings after testing problems."