How will HB 4 improve testing for Texas kids?

House Bill (HB) 4 by Chairman Brad Buckley (R–Salado) has been voted out of committee and will be headed to the House floor soon. The bill would substantially overhaul Texas’s testing and accountability system.

Key changes to testing

The revised version of HB 4 overhauls the testing system by switching to a nationally norm-referenced test and creating short, through-year tests that more accurately measure student growth. These changes would provide educators with timely feedback in order to help inform instruction. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the current STAAR system and the HB 4 proposal:

	STAAR	HB 4 Proposal
Type of test	Criterion-referenced (measures a student's performance against a predetermined standard or set of criteria [the TEKS], rather than against the performance of other students)	Nationally norm-referenced (compares a student's performance to the performance of others in a specific group, such as a class, school, or even a national group)
When tested?	Annually in grades 3-8 as well as in high school end-of-course (EOC) exams for Algebra I, English I, English II, U.S. History, and Biology	Three short online tests at beginning, middle, and end of year
Test Length	Four or five hours, depending on the test (high school EOCs are five hours)	Designed to be 60-90 minutes per test
Campus shutdown required?	Yes	No
Scoring turnaround	Takes weeks. Test results are not available until after the end of the school year.	Within 24 hours
Learning integration	None. (Data is from former students and useless once received.)	Teachers can use data from the beginning or mid-year test to inform instruction and target areas where students need more depth.
How many tests?	Math and Reading/Language Arts in grades 3-8 Science in grades 5, 8 Social studies in grade 8 High school EOCs: English I, English II, Algebra I, Biology, US History	Reduced to federally mandated minimums No more social studies No more English II

Key changes to A-F accountability system

The bill would additionally reform the A-F accountability system by doing the following:

Allowing for a better representation of student growth by taking into account the results from all three tests administered to a student throughout the year.
Allowing districts to opt in to additional performance indicators in order to better demonstrate student success. These optional indicators can include things such as locally developed assessments and other indicators, including student work portfolios or postsecondary readiness indicators.
Requiring a quicker turnaround of scoring data. This increases transparency, as well as allows districts more time to analyze their data and potentially challenge any inaccuracies.
Permitting the commissioner of education to revise the accountability framework only once every five years.

ATPE opposed the original version of HB 4 but supports the current version. We have also asked for the punitive pieces of the A-F accountability system, such as district takeovers, to be paused for three to five years in order to allow districts to make adjustments to the new system.