In 2023, less than half of Texas students met grade level standards on the standardized math assessment.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted previously existing issues with math education, experts say, including insufficient training for teachers and a lack of intervention for struggling students.
Low math achievement rates were widely reported even before COVID-19, said Gabe Grantham, an education policy adviser for nonpartisan think tank Texas 2036. For Austin ISD and Round Rock ISD, multiple factors have led to lower achievement in recent years, officials said.
“I really do think the pandemic brought everybody’s attention to, ‘Houston, we might have a math problem,’” said Susan Diaz, AISD’s assistant superintendent of secondary academics.
The big picture
Each spring, third grade through high school students take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, tracking performance across subjects.
Particularly in math, student scores in Austin and across Texas have been on the decline.
STAAR ratings include “did not meet,” “approaches,” “meets” or “masters” grade level. Students scoring “approaches” and above essentially pass; those reaching “meets” and above are considered proficient.
Under state law, students who don’t meet grade-level standards receive accelerated instruction the next school year. That can include small-group tutoring on specific subjects and work with top-performing teachers under the state Teacher Incentive Allotment.
Put into perspective
In 2019, 52% of Texas students performed at their grade level on the math STAAR—the highest percentage since the inception of the test in 2012. The test was not administered in 2020 due to COVID-19, but in 2021, student performance fell by 15 percentage points statewide.
This summer, Grantham told the Texas House Public Education committee that current scoring indicates less than half of Texas high schoolers are ready to tackle college-level math.
Dillon Finan, AISD’s director of campus and district accountability, said local students—especially those experiencing poverty—also got lower STAAR math results prepandemic, leaving an even larger gap to fill.
He also said math can be among the most challenging subject areas to catch up on, as missed benchmarks can compound over time.
“Sometimes you don’t realize what gap exists until you get further down the line, and then you have a lot of back work to do to fill all those gaps,” Finan said.
Learning loss introduced by curriculum disruption during the pandemic is one cause for lower scores, but RRISD officials pointed to newer test formats as a potential contributing factor as well. Alongside STAAR tests being made fully virtual in 2022, a number of new question types were introduced that stray from typical multiple choice questions.
The newness of these questions meant that there weren’t many examples to go off of, resulting in some students seeing questions structured in new ways for the first time while taking the test, said Laura Carlin-Gonzalez, RRISD’s executive director of teaching and learning.
“Now that there’s this new version of the test, I don’t think we’ve caught up instructionally to give them enough tasks to mimic how they’re going to be assessed,” said Rodrigo Portillo, RRISD’s assistant superintendent of academic services.
Additionally, the test revision introduced more open-ended questions, which Portillo said students statewide have historically performed the worst on since the year it was introduced.
Zooming in
Finan highlighted a recent state law requiring that fifth graders in the top 40% of math STAAR scores are fast-tracked to advanced coursework in sixth grade to help more students graduate high school with advanced math.
Teachers have the option to enroll in three-day math academies, which train them to improve student outcomes, said Shannon Trejo, the Texas Education Agency's deputy commissioner of school programs. Reading academies, on the other hand, are mandatory. Over 141,000 administrators and teachers have completed reading academies, according to the TEA, while about 28,000 early childhood teachers have participated in math academies.
According to Texas 2036, just 36% of Texas principals said their teachers “demonstrate a deep understanding” of math teaching methods. Grantham said math can be “exceptionally difficult” to teach.
“You have to understand the actual mathematical concepts you’re teaching and also know how to teach math well,” he said.
Training AISD’s hundreds of educators can prove challenging, district leaders said, especially while also contending with a large budget shortfall. AISD offers supports such as intervention resources for all educators.
AISD leaders said they’ve responded to falling STAAR scores with “significant” investments aimed at keeping students on track—or catching them up to their peers. Those include new materials, curriculum updates and added supports, such as instructional coaches for teachers and administrators.
Carlin-Gonzalez with RRISD said the district is rethinking the use of time during school and adopting state-endorsed High Quality Instructional Materials, which closely align with what is covered on STAAR exams, in select courses to address falling scores.
The approach
Texas students take early reading “screeners” at the start of kindergarten, but there is no similar requirement for math. Grantham said deficiencies may not be seen until third grade STAAR testing begins.
AISD educators said they also aim to take a “holistic” view of student achievement beyond STAAR, which Finan said can serve more to categorize students than assess their best performance.
The district monitors year-to-year exam scores, separate math screeners, in-class performance, and attendance and behavior patterns. Diaz also said the district is reviewing its grading policies, in part to identify any “discrepancies” between coursework and standardized testing.
Similarly, RRISD officials said the STAAR test is only one data point collected among many to measure how well students are doing in school.
"The STAAR score isn’t the only way in which we’re determining students’ needs,” Carlin-Gonzalez said. “We have multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their mastery throughout ... the year.”
