Texas is ending STAAR, but it is not ending high-stakes testing. The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, the exam most Texas families have grown up with, is being phased out and replaced with a through-year “Student Success” tool that spreads testing across the school year instead of concentrating it in one spring window. So if you have heard that STAAR is going away, that is true, and it is also incomplete: statewide testing is staying central, the format is changing, and the timing is moving from one big test to several checkpoints. This page explains STAAR as it works now and what the shift means for your child.
What STAAR Looks Like: Format and Item Types
STAAR spreads across a few days depending on grade: grades 3, 4, 6, and 7 generally test over two days, grade 5 over three, and grade 8 over four, while high schoolers take their five End-of-Course exams across their high school years. Each test has a roughly two-week window, and a student who is absent can be rescheduled later in that window. Question types go well beyond multiple choice and include drag-and-drop, hot text, inline choice, equation editor, and short and extended written responses, and no more than 75 percent of points come from multiple-choice questions.
Accommodations fall into accessibility features, locally approved supports, and state-approved supports, and they are decided by the appropriate campus team, such as an ARD committee for special education or a 504 committee. Examples include large print, oral or signed administration, calculation aids, and an extra day. One firm limit to know: reading passages on the reading language arts test cannot be read aloud, because that test measures reading comprehension rather than listening. Students with the most significant cognitive disabilities may take STAAR Alternate 2 when the ARD committee determines they qualify.
STAAR today, and the Student Success Tool coming next
Right now, STAAR is a state-built test aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the TEKS, which are Texas’s own standards rather than Common Core. The Texas Education Agency runs the program, one contractor hosts the online platform and reporting, and another develops the questions. STAAR is primarily online, with paper, large-print, and braille versions available for students who need them.
The replacement is a through-year model with beginning-of-year, middle-of-year, and end-of-year components for grades 3 to 8. The early checkpoints are designed to adapt to each student’s responses, and the end-of-year piece is a fixed form. The practical takeaway for you is that the future looks more like Florida’s several-times-a-year progress monitoring than like a single April exam, though Texas will still test against TEKS. One change worth noting for high schoolers: the English II End-of-Course requirement is being removed as part of the transition, though students graduating during the changeover still meet the requirements in place for their class, so confirm your teenager’s specific graduation requirements with the campus counselor.
No opt-out in Texas, and what refusal really means
Texas does not recognize a parent opt-out from STAAR. The state’s position is that eligible public school and open-enrollment charter students in the tested grades and courses are required by state and federal law to participate. District FAQs often cite the Texas Education Code provision that lets a parent temporarily remove a child for a religious or moral conflict, and they add that this right does not exempt a child from testing or allow removal simply to avoid a test.
In practice, some families do refuse, and this is where it gets messy. There is no single statewide refusal script, so handling varies by district: a campus might present the test anyway, assign a score code, or schedule a makeup. Refusal can also ripple into accelerated instruction obligations and, for high schoolers, End-of-Course graduation concerns. If you are considering this, get the written procedure from your district testing coordinator rather than relying on a parent forum, because the local details are what actually affect your child.
What happens if your child does not pass
Here is the point families most often get wrong. The statewide consequence for a student in grades 3 to 8 who does not reach the passing bar on STAAR is accelerated instruction, not automatic grade retention. Accelerated instruction can mean supplemental help or assignment to a teacher who meets specific criteria. State law changed how this works: an accelerated education plan is required after two consecutive failures in the same subject, required tutoring is limited to two subjects, and small-group tutoring generally runs at a set ratio unless a parent authorizes a larger group.
Whether a child is actually held back is a local promotion decision governed by your district’s board policy, not an automatic result of a STAAR score. If someone tells you a fifth or eighth grader is automatically retained for failing STAAR, treat that as a claim to verify against your district handbook. For high schoolers, the End-of-Course exams do carry graduation weight: currently a student satisfies the requirement by reaching satisfactory performance on the required exams or by passing a state-approved substitute assessment.
How STAAR is scored, and the machine-scoring question
STAAR reports four performance categories: Did Not Meet Grade Level, Approaches Grade Level, Meets Grade Level, and Masters Grade Level. Currently, Approaches Grade Level or above is considered passing. Scores are reported on a scale rather than as a simple percent correct, which is why a raw score under 70 percent does not automatically mean failure: the scale accounts for how hard a particular test form is.
One detail catches many parents off guard once they learn it. Written responses in English are first scored by an automated scoring engine, at least a quarter of responses in each grade and subject are routed to human scorers, and Spanish written responses are fully scored by people. The state distinguishes this automated engine from generative AI. If you disagree with a writing score, you can request a rescore of constructed responses, and the fee is waived if the score changes. Through the Family Portal you can see each question, the TEKS expectation behind it, your child’s actual answer including essays, and the rationale for the correct answer.
The bigger fight: school ratings
STAAR scores do more than land on your child’s report. They feed the state’s A through F accountability ratings for campuses and districts, and that is where the loudest Texas fights have happened, with more than 100 districts joining litigation over how ratings were calculated and released. This matters to you because a rating shapes a school’s public reputation and can trigger intervention pressure, and because the ratings tend to track community poverty, which fuels the debate over fairness. Knowing this helps you read a school rating for what it is: a measure that leans heavily on test results and carries real consequences beyond any single student.