Amidst numerous reports of Pearson Education monitoring the internet and social media postings of students taking assessments in the northeastern United States, TPERN has requested that Commissioner Williams disclose to Texas parents the extent to which Pearson is contracted to monitor the social media postings of Texas students.  A copy of our letter is below: […]

If you are asking about Opting Out, as a parent you have already reached certain conclusions. Maybe you believe the STAAR has had a negative effect on curriculum and you can’t support it. Maybe you find it developmentally inappropriate. Maybe you have seen the physical and emotional toll it takes on kids and don’t want […]

How to Opt Out/Decline/Refuse STAAR January 2024 Update: This article has been updated to reflect the practice of the TEA which permits schools to accept parental refusals without placing the assessment in front of the student. In response to a lot of “how do I do this” questions, we’ve put together this step by step […]

Updated January 19, 2021 STAAR season is upon us.  And with it comes the annual posting of opinions, “law” and procedures that people have been told are true or represent a sure path to successful refusal of the assessment.  In this post, we discuss seven common myths that represent things that schools say, that parents […]

Note: the article refers to a single year suspension of Math SSI requirements.  It is left up here as additional examples of schools lying about STAAR.  However, the issue discussed in this article is not applicable to any other year.  That discussion is obsolete. Tonight, I again received a question from a parent whose 8th […]

On December 19, 2014, the TEA published a proposed amendment to 19 TAC §101.3041, dealing with STAAR performance standards.  This proposed rule ostensibly provides for the publication of percentile ranks on the STAAR, theoretically making comparison between test takers easier.  (TPERN believes that the purpose of an academic readiness assessment is to determine readiness of the […]

We have received two reports of parents in the Midland ISD being threatened with retention of their child if they follow through on their opt out plans.  These students are not in 5th or 8th grade.  As a result, state law does not require passage of the STAAR for promotion to the next grade level. […]

If there was any doubt that the Opt-Out movement is gaining steam and raising real concerns among school districts, administrators and the TEA, that doubt was put to rest when one of the state’s premier education law firms, Walsh, Anderson, which represents dozens, if not hundreds, of school districts around the state, created a special […]

A recent posting on the Texas Parent’s Opt Out Facebook Group raised the issue of schools removing children from elective courses several days a week for STAAR Intervention or Tutoring.  Thanks to some information from teacher members of the group, we were alerted to a provision of HB 5 that limited pull out instruction to […]

On August 21, 2014, TEA Commissioner Michael Williams announced that Texas would once again delay implementing increased performance standards for its STAAR examinations which are used to assess academic readiness, are required for automatic promotion to 6th or 9th grade, and which must be passed by high school students in five different areas in order […]