Texas lawmakers vote to scrap STAAR exam in special session. What comes next?
After months of debates and stalled efforts, a plan to eliminate and replace the STAAR is poised to become law.
A proposal to scrap the state test passed the Texas Senate Wednesday, in the last hours of the special session. The bill now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it.
The bill replaces the state’s once-a-year test with three shorter exams, to be given at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. Students will begin taking the new tests during the 2027-28 school year.
Advocates say the new testing model eliminates the high-stakes nature of the end-of-year test and gives teachers and parents better insight into how students are doing while there’s still time to intervene. But a national testing expert said the new testing model may not be able to perform the same function as the STAAR.
“It ain’t broke. Let’s not rush to fix it with something that’s not proven,” said Scott Marion, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Assessment.
STAAR elimination bill died in regular session
Lawmakers came close to eliminating the STAAR during the regular session. House Bill 4 would have replaced the single end-of-year test with smaller exams given multiple times through the year, a system known as through-year assessment. But the proposal fell apart when the House and Senate failed to come to an agreement over what would replace the test.
In his proclamation calling for a special session, Abbott called on lawmakers to replace the test with “effective tools to assess student progress and ensure district accountability.”
Although this year marks the first time Texas lawmakers have come close to adopting a through-year assessment model, the state has been exploring the possibility for some time. In 2019, lawmakers directed the Texas Education Agency to set up a pilot program in which districts volunteered to give students assessments in November, January and March. The program is popular with school officials, who say the shorter tests don’t disrupt an entire school day the way a single test at the end of the year does.
Advocates for through-year testing also say it gives teachers and parents better information about how students are doing during the year, when there’s still time to do something about it.
“The analogy I like to use is you don’t drink water at the end of a marathon,” said Bridget Worley, chief state impact officer for the Commit Partnership, a Dallas-based education advocacy group.
Under the current system, STAAR scores are released over the summer. Worley said a through-year assessment model would allow teachers and campus leaders to see where students are doing well compared to state standards and where they aren’t while kids are still in school. That gives them a better chance to intervene when students are struggling, she said. That intervention could be extra support for a few students who need help catching up, or a larger shift in teaching strategy if the problem is broader, she said.
More frequent tests can also give parents better insight into how their kids are doing in school, Worley said. State assessments can give parents a clearer picture of how their kids are doing compared to state standards because, unlike class grades, those scores only account for how much a student knows and not other factors like attendance or class participation.
Through-year testing creates logistical hurdles
Texas isn’t the first state to experiment with the idea of replacing a state test with through-year assessment. About a dozen other states have either adopted the model or looked at the possibility of doing so. Beginning with the 2022-23 school year, Florida adopted a “progress monitoring” system that includes assessments given three times a year, rather than a single test at the end of the year.
But Marion, the Center for Assessment director, told the Star-Telegram in July that states that have experimented with through-year testing have run up against logistical challenges. Anytime schools administer a state-mandated assessment, principals and guidance counselors are faced with the challenge of making sure students who were absent on testing day take a makeup exam.
School districts are required to give students a single overall score for each subject area at the end of the year. In states that have adopted through-year testing in place of an end-of-year assessment, that score is generally some combination of the results of the fall, winter and spring tests, Marion said. If a student misses one of those tests, school officials may decide that the other two are good enough, he said. But if a student misses two of the exams, that probably isn’t the case. That means principals, teachers and guidance counselors are faced with the challenge of making sure students who were absent take a make-up test — and doing it three times a year instead of once.
“If you’re doing this throughout the year, it’s just that much more of a logistical headache for school people to make sure all the kids are participating in all the tests,” he said.
Marion, who advises states and school districts on testing and accountability policy, said it also isn’t clear that assessments like the NWEA MAP can fill the same role as a state test. State tests have to go through a rigorous review process and meet certain standards laid out by the U.S. Department of Education. The benchmark tests that Texas lawmakers are considering as a replacement for the STAAR don’t have to go through that level of scrutiny, Marion said.
Tests that districts buy from a commercial vendor also generally aren’t designed to do the same thing that state tests do, Marion said. States adopt a set of standards that students are supposed to learn, then design a test that measures how many of those concepts students mastered by the end of the year. Benchmark tests are designed to gauge how much progress students are making, but they aren’t aligned with state standards, Marion said. Teachers and school districts are supposed to be held accountable for what students learn based on those standards, he said, so it doesn’t make sense to test students on something else.
Marion urged caution as state lawmakers consider scrapping the state test. The STAAR is a reliable assessment tool, he said, and swapping it out for another test won’t do anything to improve the instruction students get in school. But there’s a chance it could lower expectations.
“We have good research on how to improve student learning, and it requires time and effort and resources,” Marion said. “And just futzing around with tests is not going to change it.”
This story was originally published July 28, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
