Data Integrity Issues Plague STAAR Testing

More bad news for Educational Testing Service, the company that provides the bulk of school tests for Texas students: Education Commissioner Mike Morath has basically scrapped much of this year's exams due to massive and continuing problems with the whole system.

When Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Morath, a Dallas Independent School District trustee, to become education commissioner last year, public school advocates feared they would soon clash with the notorious and outspoken reformer. Instead, he is going full bore after their shared nemeses in the testing industry. On June 10, Morath announced that ongoing problems with the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readi­ness (STAAR) tests provided by ETS have reached such dire levels that he was removing the requirements for students to pass reading and math at grades five and eight, and canceling the retesting scheduled for June 21-22.

Normally, if students fail a STAAR test three times, they must go before a Grade Placement Committee to assess what additional assistance, if any, they need before moving up a grade. Instead, Morath wrote, districts "should use local discretion and all relevant and available academic information to make promotion/retention decisions for these students as you see fit, such as the recommendation of the teacher and the student's grade in each subject."

While the cancellation takes the pressure off students, it also denies districts a potentially powerful tool. Edmund Oropez, Austin ISD's chief officer for Teaching and Learning, voiced appreciation for Morath's decision, but added, "It is unfortunate that ETS continues to have data integrity issues, as we use STAAR data as one of our markers for tracking student progress." To ensure that struggling students can get the help they need, AISD has confirmed it will still run summer schools, and expects students already enrolled to complete the session.

This is the latest failing grade for ETS after only a year providing the STAAR tests. In 2015, the TEA dumped longtime contractor Pearson Education after years of complaints about the quality and cost of their services. However, ETS is faring little better. In April, 14,220 Texas test-takers – including 9,000 special education students – found themselves locked out of their online exams, due to a bug in ETS' systems (see "No Quick Answers on STAAR Glitch," April 15). Around the same time, Houston-area superintendents representing over 1.1 million students wrote a letter to Morath listing dozens of problems with the tests, how they were delivered and administered, and how ETS responded to complaints. The list included everything from exams shipped without blank answer sheets, to districts having to pay UPS to pick up completed tests, to the results for 7,000 testers being included in the wrong district's data file. One school reported that their end-of-course tests were originally delivered to a church, and then turned up at the campus at 8pm "in the back of a pickup covered with a tarp." Morath's decision came the day after Eanes ISD confirmed that ETS had "misplaced" the district's STAAR tests for grades 3-8.