OPINION // LETTERS
Letters: STAAR should be canceled
Standardized testing
Regarding “Cancel STAAR,” (A18, July 22): We agree state-mandated standardized exams should be the “last thing” students and teachers need to worry about. A substantial body of research shows that current tests are indeed “invalid indicators of student progress.”
The next question is: If not STAAR, then what?
When it comes to testing, two kinds of growth can be assessed.
“Growth” can be evaluated relative to achievement — how much students have learned. Or “growth” can be evaluated on a scale similar to measurements of height. Just as children get taller with age, they also get generally better at certain kinds of problem-solving tasks.
The first kind of growth — in achievement — is the only kind for which schools can be held accountable. But current assessment methodologies give results that behave like measures of biological growth. Such results are of little use to teachers — the first responders of our school system.
Tests intended to address inequalities in our educational system end up having the opposite effect: keeping groups of students in the same relative position year after year.
The last time our legislators gathered in Austin, they passed a bill, HB-3906, directing the Texas Education Agency to “establish a pilot program” field-testing alternative measures of achievement. Let’s put that mandate into action and help schools and teachers do what they do best — educate our children.
Walter Stroup, chair of the department of STEM education and teacher development and an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Anthony Petrosino, associate dean for research and outreach in Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School.
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