TEXAS — A new study released from Texas A&M - Commerce has found that the STAAR Test is not quite aligned with student grade-level.
The study, conducted by professors Susan Szabo and Becky Barton Sinclair, found that reading tests given to students during STAAR testing were at least one year above their grade level.
The study looked at reading passages from the 2018 test. They looked at tests for grade levels 3 to 8.
In the study, Szabo and Sinclair found that third-grade testing had a reading-level test average meant for 5th-grade. Fourth-grade had a reading-level average for 5th-grade; fifth-grade had an average for 6th-grade and sixth-grade for 7th.
The study found that the only grade that didn't have a higher-grade reading test average was 8th-grade, which scored lower for seventh-grade reading level.
In the study's conclusions, the researchers stated that they believed that students taking the STAAR reading test could be failing because the passages required for them to read on the test are higher than their grade-level. As for eighth-graders, researchers said that they could struggle with high school level reading due to a "false sense of accomplishment" from the test designed at a lower reading-level.
You can read the full study here:
