Texas spends $90 million on a broken system. Money that can be used to contribute to many other things in so many ways.

Every student in Texas schools from grades 3-12, like me, a student in Frisco ISD, take STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) at the end of every year. This standardized test, like many others, has much more negative impacts than positive. The STAAR tests can disrupt student learning, affect the curriculum, constraining it to only the things needed for the test, and even the test itself is not always accurate.

In my school district, multiple weeks are taken out of the end of the year just to study for STAAR tests. This has two problems. First, valuable time for learning is taken away from students. Often, students in my school, like others, feel rushed and stressed in almost all their assignments. This extra time could provide some cushioning and also allow for more fun projects like STEM projects. Second, this makes STAAR tests similar to other tests where students can just cram before the tests, not actually learning anything and just doing good on the test.

Another negative effect of STAAR testing is curriculum changes for test preparation. According to Negative Impacts of Mandatory Standardized Testing on Teachers and Students by Nicole Stefanko of Grand Valley State University, only 18% of important topics show up on standardized tests, making teachers focus on solely these "power standards". Focusing only on power standards to get god test scores deprives students of information needed in the future, damaging them in the long term. This practice has become incredibly common in my school, with our own version of power standards, called TEKS, taking control of the class. Multiple times, teachers have explicitly said they are covering some TEKS more than others solely because they are on the STAAR test.

Finally, the STAAR test itself is not an accurate way to asses student scores. Research suggests that standardized test scores are not always an accurate representation of what a student is capable of. The test could be subpar in "reliability, validity, and comprehensiveness. Research also shows that these tests do not cover all of the student's skills, and socioeconomic status and anxiety can both affect testing. There are simply too many variables for standardized testing for it to be an accurate measure of student learning. This matters so much because the STAAR test scores can drastically affect the funding of schools, among other things, putting this valuable resource at the mercy of an unjust system.

Recently, the Texas House has passed Bill 4545, which makes it so that if a student fails STAAR tests from 3-8th grade, they have to take 30 hours of extra tutoring either in the summer, before or after school, or during school time instead of an elective, without regard for the student's actual grades. This horrible system where a student must take so much more tutoring time based on one test clearly should not have a place in our school systems. 

We must take this issue to the Texas Education Agency and demand reforms to our system, for the benefit of the students of Texas.