Families can access their children’s STAAR results at www.texasassessment.gov. For more details about how local school districts performed, visit www.communityimpact.com or subscribe to local newsletters.
What you need to know
The STAAR is administered to third through 12th grade students each spring to measure student progress and teacher performance.
Students receive STAAR scores of “did not meet grade level,” “approaches grade level,” “meets grade level” or “masters grade level” for each subject. Students who approach their grade level and above have passed the test, while students who meet their grade level and above are considered proficient.
Statewide, 54% of students met grade level or above in reading and language arts, according to Texas Education Agency data. Elementary school students saw the largest gains in reading, while middle school performance remained relatively stable, and high schoolers saw modest declines.
“With [reading and language arts] scores now surpassing pre-pandemic levels, we are seeing meaningful signs of academic recovery and progress,” TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said in a June 17 news release. “While this year also saw some improvements in math, clearly more work is needed.”
About 43% of Texas students met grade-level standards in math, compared to 50% in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to previous Community Impact reporting, experts found that the pandemic highlighted existing issues with math education, including insufficient training for teachers and a lack of early intervention for struggling students.
“The narrative around education right now is, how do we get back to pre-COVID levels? But the reality of the situation is, even at our peak, [math] achievement was at [50%],” Gabe Grantham, a policy adviser for the nonpartisan think tank Texas 2036, told Community Impact in 2024. “We have to dream a lot bigger than just prepandemic levels.”
Zooming in
This year, 49% of Texas third graders met grade-level standards in reading, and 44% of third graders met grade level in math. Students begin taking the STAAR in third grade, and experts have said that the first few years of school are critical to students’ long-term success.
“Between pre-K and third grade, you learn to read, and after that, you read to learn. And so if you never learn to read, learning is going to become next to impossible,” Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, said on the House floor May 6.
Texas lawmakers made investments in early learning programs during the regular legislative session, which ended June 2. New guidelines will require schools to track how kindergarten through third grade students are doing in reading and math, in order to catch students who are falling behind.
House Bill 2, an $8.5 billion school finance bill that will become law Sept. 1, includes $433 million to help schools measure young students’ literary and numeracy skills and provide intervention for those who are struggling.
More context
Critics say that the high-stakes STAAR causes undue stress for students and does not help teachers improve instruction throughout the school year.
State lawmakers moved to eliminate the STAAR and replace it with a series of shorter exams, although that proposal died at the end of the regular legislative session after the Texas House and Senate could not agree on the details of a new assessment system.
How students perform on the STAAR is the primary factor in the accountability ratings Texas school districts and campuses receive. State law stipulates that A-F accountability ratings be issued by Aug. 15 of each year; however, that system was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and two lawsuits.
Accountability ratings were not issued at all in 2020 or 2021, due to the pandemic. In 2022, schools that received a C or lower were deemed “not rated” as they recovered from pandemic-related learning loss.
Over 100 Texas school districts sued Morath in August 2023, after the TEA adjusted certain accountability indicators that districts said would cause disproportionately lower ratings. The 2023 scores were released in April, and 2024 ratings are pending in a state appeals court.
Morath told reporters in April that he plans to release A-F ratings for the 2024-25 school year Aug. 15, per state law.
