Students in the San Antonio region and across the state are struggling with math and science, despite making some gains last year, according to state data released last week.
State leaders chalked up the drop, which was substantial, to the lingering impacts of the pandemic, while some local district leaders pointed to changes to the test and how it is scored.
The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, which has undergone several iterations over the years, measures state standards in math, science, reading and social studies.
For the first time this year, free-fill questions were graded by computers.
Other changes included scoring some free-fill questions as zero if the answers are off-topic, instead of giving partial credit for providing any answer like in the past, according to the nonprofit City Education Partners, which releases an annual analysis of STAAR data for San Antonio schools.
Dalia Flores Contreras, the CEO of the nonprofit, said policy makers, school leaders and parents should use the scores as a starting point to ask questions about how to do better, including better communication about such changes.
The students’ scores are aggregated and analyzed to make up state accountability scores, which come in the form of letter grades given to each campus and district annually. Those grades did not come last year, however, and are still in limbo after districts sued to block the grades over dramatic changes to how they were calculated.
How local districts fared
Third-grade reading, which is seen as a pivotal metric for academic success, improved slightly in Judson ISD, the fourth largest district in the region, as well as San Antonio Independent School District. But the number of students in fifth grade not performing on grade level for science in Judson jumped from 47% last year to 59% this year, according to the data.
The number of students mastering science in the same grade level was halved from 8% to 4% in Judson ISD. Similar trends were seen in eighth grade.
In both San Antonio ISD and Northside Independent School District, among the largest in the region, fewer than half of students performed on grade level in both math and science.
In a statement, SAISD said the district is still “analyzing the data and conducting root cause analysis for our results.”
The district will hold a “public conversation” with the board next Monday to share findings, “effective practices and barriers we have encountered,” according to the statement.
Leaders will also share a plan for how to accelerate academic growth moving forward, according to an emailed statement.
Even North East ISD, which scored above the state average in several grades, saw declines in math and science.
Ravae Villafranca Shaeffer, executive director for secondary curriculum and instruction for NEISD, said the district takes every STAAR test as an opportunity to learn but also pointed to an upcoming shift in standards for science as part of the reason for the dramatic decline.
“The science K-12 is in the last year of the current standards,” she said. “When you have a new STAAR test, and almost old standards that you’re still assessing, that does factor in.”
Shaeffer said a more accurate analysis will be available next year as a result.
Both statewide and locally, the scores show that students have not yet returned to academic levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted learning in 2020 and after, something education commissioner Mike Morath said will require “a sustained effort to improve student outcomes.”
“Pandemic-induced disruptions to learning exacerbated students’ difficulties in mastering fundamental math concepts,” he said in a statement. “As a result, we must keep our foot on the gas to intensify efforts in providing targeted interventions and research-based education strategies to ensure that students obtain necessary foundational skills and concepts and achieve the desired academic outcomes not only in math but across all subject areas.”
In the meantime, students risk losing future opportunities as a result of a trend experts, like Texas A&M University San Antonio associate professor Lawrence Scott, say is “very concerning.”
Scott, who teaches in TAMU’s College of Education and Human Development, said the workforce could be affected, as well as the ability of the state to attract employers.
“There are career and college readiness implications because if students are placed in interventions due to testing outcomes, they are in a perpetual state of catching up,” he said.
The gap that widened during the pandemic years makes sense due to how math is taught, he added.
“Some subjects, especially math, are practice-based, which learning, and mastery can easily be ensured and assessed in class,” he said. “Many students lost this collaborative learning process with the virtual modality during Covid.”
