Questions about the Texas STAAR exam and its suitability for students at certain grade levels have prompted studies to determine appropriate testing content.
The question goes back at least to 2012, when two Texas A&M-Commerce professors studied STAAR exam reading passages and found that the readability was written at least two grade levels above the intended level—except for the eighth grade questions.
Associate Professors Dr. Becky Sinclair, PhD and Susan Szabo, EdD also found that students in the fourth and seventh grades had the most “on-your-own” questions in the exam.
“As the reading levels of these passages are so high, it is believed that the majority of students will most likely fail to pass the new STAAR,” they wrote in the study abstract.
More recent studies, such as this 2018 redacted Media Metric technical report have found that in examining different percentiles, scores reported in the "Lexile" metric were higher than norm values. The STAAR reading assessment of the 50th percentile was slightly higher than the Lexile 75th percentile for Grades 3 and 4, and below the Lexile 75th percentile in Grades 6 through 8.
The Lexile measure is a popular method of determining a child's reading ability or, in the case of schools, their reading grade level. It is currently used by teachers and librarians to match students with texts and books at their reading comprehension level. or that provide a little challenge without causing frustration. Ensuring that the Lexile scale and student’s comprehension are similar means that children might read more and could read better.
The STAAR Lexile measures reflect performance of a sample of tested students. Another sample could perform higher or lower on STAAR Reading, English I, or English II; their corresponding Lexile measures would potentially be even higher or lower than the norm values.
The relation between the Lexile score (L) and comprehension rate is explained in the Media Metric report as follows:
“A reader with a measure of 600L who is given a text measured at 600L is expected to have a 75-percent comprehension rate. This 75-percent comprehension rate is the basis for selecting text that is targeted to a reader’s reading ability.”
The report also questions what the comprehension rate would be if a student were given a passage with a higher or lower Lexile score than they are measured, how well will they comprehend it?
A 2019 examination of the STAAR exams by the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas at Austin examined content alignment, readability on questions and answers for 17 tests, and readability of passages students are expected to read and respond to.
In terms of passage readability, 86 percent of those examined fell within or below the expectations for the grade level. However, researchers were unable to reliably examine and make conclusions on item readability. Additionally, in reading, 85 percent of passages fell within or below the grade band for the grade level being examined.
This research will likely continue and perhaps eventually produce a definitive answer to the question of whether students are tested using materials at their appropriate grade levels.
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