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STAAR Interim Assessments Educator Guide

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STAAR Interim Assessments Educator Guide

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23-24 ATF Letter Distribution to RTCs.docx

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Updates to Coordinator Resources - District and Campus Coordinator Resources - Confluence

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The Calendar of Events identifies key dates for required assessment programs.

Specific due dates have been added, by administration, in order to ensure that all eligible students are registered in the Test Information Distribution Engine (TIDE). The number of test administrator manuals included in a district's initial order will be based on the number of students registered in TIDE by the due date indicated.

Specific due dates for district testing personnel to submit paper by request orders have been added for the December and spring administrations of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR ®). Paper by request orders for the spring STAAR end-of-course (EOC) assessments will carry over to the June administration.

Trainings should be completed by the recommended dates, but additional trainings may occur after the recommended dates if necessary. Regional testing coordinator training is provided by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and offered on one date only.

The testing windows for the STAAR spring administration are defined by content-area grouping; however, most of the pre-administration activities are scheduled together and all post-administration activities are scheduled together. Although there are three separate testing windows based on content-area grouping, these testing windows are considered one administration.

Specific due dates for district personnel to enter or adjust score code information in TIDE to ensure all eligible students have been accounted for have been added for each administration. Students not accounted for by the due dates will not be included in accountability reports.

Submitting student responses or Observable Behavior ratings in the Data Entry Interface (DEI) is a critical step for many assessment programs. Data entry must be completed before the close of the testing window associated with each specific test. Due dates for data entry are provided for each testing window.

The initial data correction window for the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) is only for students who are at the advanced level for speaking or writing. All other rescore requests may be submitted after July 24 but will not be reflected in accountability reports.

Results are reported in three phases: early, preliminary, and final. Early results may be used by district personnel for making student-level decisions. Preliminary results for accountability are available before data corrections, and final results for accountability are available after data corrections.

The Important Dates section of the Testing Personnel webpage lists upcoming dates included on the Calendar of Events. You can click on a date for more information.

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Calendar of Events - District and Campus Coordinator Resources - Confluence

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The Calendar of Events identifies key dates for required assessment programs. Specific due dates have been added, by administration, in order to ensure that all eligible students are registered in the Test Information Distribution Engine (TIDE). The number of test administrator manuals included in a district's initial order will be based on the number of students registered in TIDE by the due date indicated.

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Region 4 serves a seven-county area composed of 50 public school districts and 45 public charter schools, representing more than 1.1 million students, 87,000 educators, and 1,500 campuses.

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Region 4 serves a seven-county area composed of 50 public school districts and 45 public charter schools, representing more than 1.1 million students, 87,000 educators, and 1,500 campuses.

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Within TIDE can we have a way to denote when a student has an ARD that accepts the students current scores (i.e., "exempts" student from future retesting), and a way for us to mark when/what type/score of a substitute assessment, when that is used?

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Within TIDE can we have a way to denote when a student has an ARD that accepts the students current scores (i.e., "exempts" student from future retesting), and a way for us to mark when/what type/score of a substitute assessment, when that is used?

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Upcoming Texas Assessment Program Activities (11.13.23)

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Upcoming Texas Assessment Program Activities (11.13.23)

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November 13, 2023 - Cambium Communication.pdf

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Q: Does the algorithm used to yield the predictive STAAR score take into account the time of year that test is taken?

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Q: Does the algorithm used to yield the predictive STAAR score take into account the time of year that test is taken?

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November

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How can we support you?

Please submit agenda items that you would like to discuss at the February meeting and/or suggestions for Region 4 offerings.

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Q: Will the EOC flag retester flags that are coming in October be from only Spring 2023 or both Spring 2023 and Summer 2023? A: Both Spring and Summer 2023.

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Q: Will the EOC flag retester flags that are coming in October be from only Spring 2023 or both Spring 2023 and Summer 2023? A: Both Spring and Summer 2023.

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September

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Q: For the EOC Previously Passed Field, if a district marks a student in TIDE and then another district transfers in the student, will that flag move with the student? A: Yes, flags will transfer with the student.

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Q: For the EOC Previously Passed Field, if a district marks a student in TIDE and then another district transfers in the student, will that flag move with the student? A: Yes, flags will transfer with the student.

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September

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Q: Will the embedded Word Prediction (Co:Writer) feature be available in English and Spanish? A: Yes

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Q: Will the embedded Word Prediction (Co:Writer) feature be available in English and Spanish? A: Yes

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September

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September 11, 2023 - Cambium Communication

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Upcoming Texas Assessment Program Activities (9.11.23)

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Upcoming Texas Assessment Program Activities (9.11.23)

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Texas Assessment Program Updates for the 2023–2024 School Year | Texas Education Agency

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The purpose of this communication is to inform local educational agencies (LEAs) about updates to the Texas Assessment Program for the 2023–24 school year. These updates are a result of legislation passed during the 88th Texas Legislature, U.S. Department of Education (USDE) requirements, and feedba…

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Student Assessment Correspondence with Districts | Texas Education Agency

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06/30/21 House Bill 4545 Testing Calendar Updates

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Please share...

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Paper by Request: Is your district providing a paper administration for a STAAR assessment?   

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Please share...

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Is your district administering STAAR Interims this school year? 

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Please share...

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Is your district administering assessments via TFAR this school year? 

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To The Administrator Addressed Correspondence

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This page contains TEA Correspondence entitled "To the Administrator Addressed" and are important messages of interest to school districts, charter schools, and regional education service centers. Links and attachments contained in letters published prior to January 2017 may no longer be available.

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Please submit agenda items that you would like to discuss at the November meeting. Additionally, please submit this form if you would like to present or share resources that our network members could benefit from.

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Please submit agenda items you would like to discuss at the November meeting.

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The purpose of this communication is to inform local educational agencies (LEAs) about a delay in the issuance of the final rule for the accountability manual and a delay in the issuance of 2023 A-F Accountability Ratings.

As communicated previously, issuance of A-F ratings this year was already planned to be delayed from the typical mid-August release date due to the standards-setting process required with the redesign of STAAR. Based on timelines published previously, ratings were to be issued publicly on September 28, 2023.

The A-F accountability system itself is also being refreshed this year, with some changes to cut points and some changes to indicator methodology. For more than a year, the Texas Education Agency (TEA or agency) has publicly shared timelines and preliminary frameworks related to the A-F refresh.

As part of the refresh, in January 2023, TEA published proposed cut points and updates to the previously published methodology changes, noting some areas of change and some areas which remain unchanged. Those details included information about changing methods and cut scores to be used in calculating student growth on STAAR. Feedback obtained to that point included recommendations to appropriately account for the impact of COVID-19 in evaluating new baseline data, so the agency proposed setting growth cut scores using a baseline of the average level of student growth for the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years.

However, since that time, statewide growth data for the 2022-23 school year has become available. Analysis of that growth data shows that the 2021-22 growth was more anomalous than expected, so setting baselines that partially incorporate data from the 2021-22 school year may not adequately take into account the impact of COVID-19.

As a result, the agency will be delaying the issuance of the final rule for the accountability manual and delaying the issuance of ratings to conduct further analyses of the growth data to inform cut scores in Domain 2a-Academic Growth, and Domain 3-Closing the Gaps.

Besides changes to growth cut scores, the agency will be incorporating a few additional changes in its final rule based on other feedback gathered during the rulemaking comment period:

Alternative Education Accountability (AEA) STAAR Methodology: Within Domain 1, update the STAAR methodology for AEA campuses to better reflect the intention of AEA Taskforce recommendations.

Minimum Indicators for Student Achievement Domain Score: STAAR Component Only: Within Domain 3, reduce minimum number of indicators from four to three to allow campuses with only one lowest performing racial/ethnic group to be evaluated.

English Language Proficiency: Within Domain 3, allow progress in TELPAS Writing to count towards the current calculation.

Identification of Schools for Improvement: Additional Targeted Support (ATS) campuses will be identified based on student groups' performance relative to the cut point established for Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) campus identification (bottom 5% of Title I schools' Closing the Gaps Scale Scores, by school type).

The agency is not considering other changes for the final rule from what was published in the proposed rule.

TEA anticipates the additional growth analysis will delay the issuance of final rules and ratings by approximately one month, and the agency will provide specific dates for 2023 ratings release at least two weeks ahead of the release of public ratings.
School Improvement
Once specific dates for 2023 ratings are available, TEA's School Improvement Division will also be providing revised timelines for targeted improvement plan submissions and grant funding for eligible identified campuses.
Results Driven Accountability
The 2023 Accountability Manual will also incorporate a chapter on Results Driven Accountability (RDA), which has historically been a standalone manual. The delay in the issuance of the final rule will also cause delays in RDA determinations and the required actions stemming from the determinations.

Background on the Periodic Update of A-F Indicators and Cut Points

Prior to 2017, cut points and indicators in the accountability system were updated annually, preventing school systems from easily comparing year-over-year performance in reaching goals for students across the state. Since the passage of House Bill (HB) 22 in 2017, state law requires cut points and indicators in the accountability system to be updated periodically, not necessarily annually, to achieve the statutory goals of reducing achievement gaps and ensuring Texas is a national leader in preparing students for postsecondary success. Given this policy change, cut points and indicators in the A-F system have remained largely unchanged since 2017.

This approach of holding cut points and indicators constant for the last five years was maintained even though the agency received consistent feedback about needed changes in the system design - especially with regard to district rating methodology. In addition, the underlying performance of schools across the state would have warranted some annual cut point increases - especially with regard to college, career, and military readiness. Rather than making those changes in prior years, the system remained static, and instead changes are being made only once over a five-year period.

Given the statutory shift to periodic, rather than annual, updates, the last five years have provided educators an effective way to discern year-over-year continuous improvement. But during the refresh year, with a variety of changes being made to the A-F system ratings methodology, there is a greater need to communicate about the changes, so the agency has provided communications resources this year designed to help inform educators and the public that year-over-year comparisons are more difficult this year. To help provide a year-over-year comparison, "what if" re-evaluations will also be publicly released using last year's data and this year's cut points and methodology.

For similar reasons stemming from the HB 22 (85R) statutory changes, indicators and cut points established in the refresh will remain largely unchanged for approximately the next five years, so the refresh establishes a new five-year baseline. Also of note, under more recent statutory changes, A-F ratings are required to be issued statewide each year; the commissioner of education is no longer permitted to consider the use of "Not Rated" on a statewide basis, even as part of a transition in the accountability system.

For more information about the A-F Refresh, please visit the 2023 Accountability Development Materials webpage. Please direct questions to the Performance Reporting Division at (512) 463-9704 or performance.reporting@tea.texas.gov.

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Delay in 2023 A-F Academic Accountability Ratings

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The purpose of this communication is to inform local educational agencies (LEAs) about a delay in the issuance of the final rule for the accountability manual and a delay in the issuance of 2023 A-F Accountability Ratings.