Texas public school administrators, parents and education experts worry that a new law to replace the state’s standardized test could potentially increase student stress and the amount of time they spend taking tests, instead of reducing it.
The new law comes amid criticism that the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, creates too much stress for students and devotes too much instructional time to the test. The updated system aims to ease the pressure of a single exam by replacing STAAR with three shorter tests, which will be administered at the beginning, middle and end of the year. It will also ban practice tests, which Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath has said can take up weeks of instruction time and aren鈥檛 proven to help students do better on the standardized test. But some parents and teachers worry the changes won鈥檛 go far enough and that three tests will triple the pressure.
The law also calls for the TEA to study how to reduce the weight testing carries on the state鈥檚 annual school accountability ratings鈥攚hich STAAR critics say is one reason why the test is so stressful and absorbs so much learning time 鈥 and create a way for the results of the three new tests to be factored into the ratings.
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