Parents Can Soon See Kids’ STAAR Answers

Education agency officials say that the portal is designed to help parents prepare students as they progress from grade level to grade level…

by Undria Wilson

According to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), parents can now see the answers to their kids’ state standardized tests.

Starting June 30th, parents of third- through eighth-grade students will be able to log on to TexasAssessments.com to see how their child answered each question of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. Texas is among the first states in the nation to offer this kind of tool, according to the education agency.

STAAR scores have been relatively stagnant since the test was first administered five years ago. Elementary and middle school students demonstrated mixed results this year in their performance on the first administration of Texas’ standardized tests.

STAAR math scores for fifth- and eighth-grade students showed improvement, but reading scores for both grades dropped.

“The ability for each parent to view the actual STAAR questions posed to their child, along with the answers their child provided, should provide greater insight into the expectations at every grade level,” Education Commissioner Mike Morath said in a news release last week.

TEA officials say that the portal is designed to help parents prepare students as they progress from grade level to grade level.

Each student is assigned a unique access code to view their scores through the portal. The code should be available on a paper version of the student’s scores mailed to their home.

Each question on the test also lists the state curriculum skill that the student was supposed to master to answer the question correctly. The portal offers additional learning resources to help the student master those skills.

Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson didn’t say last week how much the revamped portal cost the state.

The change was initiated by Morath, who became Education Commissioner in 2016 after serving as a Dallas school board member and starting a couple of tech companies.