What you need to know
House Bill 8 would eliminate the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness and replace it with three shorter tests, which students would take at the beginning, middle and end of each school year.
HB 8 passed the House 82-56 on Aug. 26, with opposition from most House Democrats and a few Republicans. House members who voted against the bill argued it would increase the amount of time students spend taking exams and essentially create “another STAAR test” developed by the Texas Education Agency.
Senators approved the bill with a 21-5 vote Aug. 27 and did not debate it beforehand. HB 8 was sent back to the House, whose members must consider changes made by the upper chamber before sending it to the governor.
Lawmakers and educators have said the high-stakes STAAR, which launched in 2012, causes undue stress for students and does not help teachers improve instruction throughout the school year. Bill author Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, said his proposal would “reduce test anxiety, provide teachers with immediate feedback and create a pathway for trust in our system again.”
“If we fail to act and pass meaningful reforms, we'll remain in the same place where we've been for the last 13 years,” Buckley said on the House floor Aug. 26.
Buckley said HB 8 was “significantly different” from a previous attempt to scrap the STAAR test, which received nearly unanimous House support months earlier but did not make it to the governor’s desk. At the time, House lawmakers wanted to have students take an existing third-party assessment, while senators pushed for new state-owned exams.
The legislation being considered during the current special legislative session stems from negotiations between Buckley and bill sponsor Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston. Buckley said his bill would:
- Require schools to administer diagnostic exams in the fall and winter, with a test measuring student progress near the end of the school year
- Ensure that test results are released within 48 hours
- Require new tests to be developed “in partnership with Texas teachers”
- Direct the TEA to provide updates to lawmakers before implementing the new tests in 2027
- Adjust Texas’ school accountability system and establish “hard deadlines” for the TEA to change performance standards
The TEA would create three new exams under HB 8, including a beginning-of-year assessment to be administered in late August or September, a mid-year assessment in January or February, and an end-of-year assessment in May. Students would be expected to spend up to 75 minutes on each of the earlier exams and up to 105 minutes on the end-of-year test, according to the bill.
Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat and vocal critic of the STAAR, said she was concerned that between the three exams, students would spend more time taking tests. The current STAAR is designed to last about three hours, according to the TEA.
School districts would be required to implement the state-developed end-of-year exam, which would measure year-over-year growth, according to the bill. Districts could continue administering third-party assessments, such as the MAP test, in the beginning and middle of the school year, Buckley said, although those exams would have to be approved by the TEA.
Hinojosa said she did not think new state-owned exams would differ significantly from the STAAR.
“The way you restore trust in the test is you give it to an outside vendor,” Hinojosa said on the House floor Aug. 26. “We should have a separate entity, not all related to the TEA, who is creating those tests.”
Buckley pushed back against Hinojosa’s concerns, saying there was an “illusion... that [TEA Commissioner] Mike Morath goes into some back room and writes these tests.”
“This bill provides for unprecedented transparency, unprecedented oversight of the legislature and collaboration with teachers,” he said.
Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, said he wanted to eliminate the STAAR test but voted against HB 8 because he thought the proposed assessment system “may be worse.”
In an Aug. 26 post on X, Harrison said the bill “transfers an inordinate amount of authority from elected officials at the State Board of Education to unelected bureaucrats at the Texas Education Agency and increases the frequency of state-mandated testing.”
More details
Lawmakers also questioned Buckley about how HB 8 would impact state intervention in struggling campuses and districts. Three Austin middle schools, which Hinojosa represents, received their fourth consecutive failing scores when the TEA released its annual school accountability ratings Aug. 15. Austin ISD is now at risk of a TEA takeover or campus closures in 2026, according to previous Community Impact reporting.
Buckley said he hoped fewer districts would face state takeover as a result of the proposed testing system, which would take effect in 2027.
“I hope that when we have tests that are more instructionally relevant and actionable by teachers, that we'll have more kids achieving at a level that will keep conservators out of our school districts,” he told House members Aug. 26.
Hinojosa disagreed, arguing that HB 8 would give the TEA too much power. Currently, school accountability ratings are based largely on students’ STAAR performance, and Buckley’s bill would retain that status quo.
“We’re going to have TEA create the test that determines whether or not a school district [is] taken over by them,” Hinojosa said. “That’s a conflict—they should not be in charge of creating the test.”
Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, urged lawmakers to postpone the changes to Texas’ testing system until they could be studied by an appointed commission. He said House members were voting on a bill they did not fully understand, noting that with the new academic year starting in mid-August, school leaders were unable to travel to the Capitol and speak to lawmakers.
“I think we can all agree that this bill is too big,” Bernal said Aug. 26. “No one on the floor understands it, and if you do, you’re one of maybe three people.”
Buckley said lawmakers and educators participated in a state assessment and accountability commission in 2015.
“You know what has happened since then? Nothing,” he said. “A commission, quite frankly, is an opportunity to get together and kick the can down the road. If you move to a commission, you will [continue to] have one test on one day—high-stakes testing for our kids.”
