No, You Don’t Have to Pass STAAR in 5th or 8th Grade
OK, so a mom from Kissam Elementary is being told that passing STAAR is required to go to 6th grade. Let’s examine how we know this is not true.
First, search for the Academic Performance Report for your school from 2014-2015. It is located here:
The cover looks like this:
Now let’s look at the STAAR passage rate for 5th grade Reading, the only one that counted for SSI last year:
We can see that the failure rate for 5th grade reading last year was 23%. Now if STAAR passage is required for promotion, then the retention rate in 5th grade would be 23%. Basically 1 out of ever 4 kids would have to repeat 5th grade. So let’s see what the Academic Performance report says about retention in the 5th grade:
We see that rather than a 23% retention rate, the actual rate was 0%. (For full disclosure, 15% of special ed kids were retained, but that number gives total retention of about 1.3%, nowhere near the 23% that would be required is STAAR passage was necessary for promotion.
As you can see, every kid who appealed their retention to the GPC was promoted.
This is one example of many. The idea that passing STAAR is required for promotion is utter nonsense. Know the facts and arm yourself!
Modified:
awesome dose of reality! Thank you!
can they keep high school kids from graduating if we opt out and they pass their classes?
Read the article whAt About high School
My grandson attends a school as a transfer student. He’s an a/b student My daughter opted him out of testing and now she’s been told that the boys cannot return to school there next year. Is there anything that can be done.
Transfer students can be subject to all kinds of conditions of attendance. Other than asking them to reconsider, nobody has a legal right to a transfer (except in very limited circumstances).
Thank you for this but I guess I must be a push over because at my gpc meeting I was told it’s the law to go to summer school. That she HAS to go to summer school. I was adamant that I did not want her to go but he kept insisting that she had to go. I told her that I did not agree that she be held back solely because of the test since she has passed all her classes including math which is the subject she did not master in the staar test. So now they want her to go and pretty much felt bullied into having her go into summer school. 🙁
Well, it’s not the law. Sorry your school treated you badly. File a grievance. Call the superintendent. Let them know you won’t be a pushover anymore!
I looked up my schools record and it shows that 100% of the students took the STAAR test last year which is soo not true. My daughter did not take it and yet it says that she did. I wonder if i can get them for lying. I just got my 5th graders letter in the mail stating that she did not make the passing requirements for the staar tests for 2016, behind it was the Actual staar results paper from pearson which stats she was absent during both test.Wonder why the school is lying about her taking it.
So did you just not send her to school on the test days or did you notify the school as well? And them at the end of the year, after you opted out, how did it affect things for her? Did they just go ahead and promote her of did you have to have a meeting? Sorry, we are military and from Ohio so this is all very foreign to us! Thanks for any information you can offer.
Does this still hold to be true
Yes
Ware can I find this academic performance report for my school district?
https://tea.texas.gov/perfreport/tapr/index.html
Where the GPC promotes to the next grade level is * on my school. The legend says it is to protect the privacy of the students which is BS. How would anyone know who those children were since only percentages are used.
There is a general rule that is the subgroup is below a certain number of kids (5 I think) that the data should not be aggregated and reported.
I am confused at reading my kids’ school report after looking it up. It’s got a HIGH pass rate at their school. Like above 90% for all subjects. So I don’t know how I argue this if my kiddo doesn’t pass the math portion in 5th this year. She barely passed it last year but did in fact pass, but math is where she struggles.
Does the retention rate equal the failure rate? I doubt it. If not, there is your argument. Stop taking STAAR.