In the Texas K-12 education system, student assessment systems like the STAAR test have been under a spotlight. After student achievement setbacks during the pandemic, Texas families want to know whether their children are making sufficient progress toward moving to the next grade. Some parents and even educators question whether STAAR is the best tool available.
Mary Lynn Pruneda, Director of Education and Workforce Policy at Texas 2036, says the underlying problem is more complex. “The real enemy here is kids that are not being properly supported in the public school system and cannot read even by the end of third grade,” she says. “We should be very concerned.”
Pruneda came to education policy after going to law school. “I like difficult decisions,” she says. “It turns out public education is a lot more difficult and a lot more controversial.”
She previously served as Governor Greg Abbott’s Education Policy Advisor and now focuses on assessment, accountability, and school finance at Texas 2036. “I’m thankful to be in the field and thankful to help make my state better.”
Classrooms and classroom instruction are complex, according to Pruneda. “Imagine you’re a teacher and you’ve got 25 second graders,” she says. “Half come in at a kindergarten level in reading, 25% at first grade, and 25% in second grade. You have to advance all of those children by the end of the year to be ready for third grade.” She calls that task “doing neurosurgery on top of a moving train.”
Debates over testing often miss this reality, she says. “We spend so much time forcing people to question the exam that is telling us kids can’t read or can’t do math. What if we use that talent and energy to try and improve literacy?”
After passage in the last legislative session of House Bill 8, Pruneda says it is more important to get the new assessment system right than to get it done fast just to move away from STAAR. “It’s going to take a while to construct this new test. We should not do it too quickly,” she says. Under the new legislation, the new test will go into place in the 2027-28 school year.
Under HB 8, instead of one test at the end of the year, students will take a series of tests to measure their proficiency in subjects such as reading and math. “The state says you have to do three times-a-year tests,” Pruneda points out. She refers to the first two tests at the beginning and middle of the year as “norm-referenced” and says school districts can choose among test options. The end-of-year test will be a “summative, criterion-referenced test,” according to Pruneda.
Critics of the change have said that more tests mean more time spent on the tests. Pruneda disagrees. “One of the unsung pieces of House Bill 8 is it outlaws excessive benchmark testing,” she says. “Districts were administering STAAR prep constantly,” which she calls “a huge waste of time.” She says that the new approach under HB 8 will return 25 to 30 instructional hours to schools. “It is profoundly less testing if you actually read the legislation,” Prunella says.
She explains that the legislation focuses measurement of apart from performance averages of other students. “If we made the end-of-year a normed test, curves would hide how far behind students are,” she says. “Parents would see the 70th percentile and think it’s fine when the child needs serious remediation.”
Pruneda sees amazing changes taking place in school districts across Texas. “Houston ISD is on track to have only ‘A’ and ‘B’ campuses within the next couple of years after the state take-over,” she says. “Dallas ISD made one of the single greatest turnarounds by putting their very best teachers in the very worst schools.” She highlights a standout campus in Laredo, Texas. “My favorite elementary school in Laredo serves overwhelmingly low-income, largely English-learner students,” she says, of which “over 95% are on grade level in all four subjects.” She calls this “an educational miracle.”
Pruneda says new policies are already having a great impact. “Literacy academies put in place in 2019 are one of the core reasons we returned to 2019 levels in reading,” she says.
Among the policies are new incentives for teachers. “Incentive-based teacher compensation will be transformational,” Prunella says. While she says some teachers are being paid over $100,000 to stay in classrooms, the Legislature “doubled down” and added incentive-based principal pay. “If we hold fast to these reforms and execute with fidelity, outcomes will improve,” she says.
Pruneda emphasizes parental action. “A parent is a child’s first and greatest teacher,” she says. “If your kid is ‘approaches’ or ‘did not meet’ on the state assessment, you have to pick up the slack,” she says. Her advice is to “find a couple of math problems or a paragraph and work with them every night.”