Assessment Edition - STAAR 2.0
General Education Services

This edition of Curriculum Connections is devoted to information about the STAAR redesign. Please pass this on to your administrators, instructional coaches, and teachers.

Tammy Becker
Director, General Education Services
Phone: 254-297-1240
STAAR Scoring Guides for Constructed Response Items
These Scoring Guides for RLA, Science and Social Studies are found on the TEA's STAAR Redesign site. Click the link below and scroll to find the section titled Resources to Support New Questions Types. See the image below for the Scoring Guides location under this heading.
New Item Type Point Values
by Content Area
Are you wondering what item types will be part of your content area STAAR assessment? TEA published the following slide to show the new item types for each content area and the point value for each type. Click the link below to get this slide from TEA for each of the four content areas.
TEA Provided Practice!
TEA has a practice site that will give students practice in the same testing environment they will experience with the STAAR test. Parents, students, and educators can enter by clicking Sign-in at the bottom. Next, choose an assessed grade level and you will find a Full-Length Practice Test and a Sampler of new item types. Unfortunately, this open site does not collect data or count as an At-Bat for students.
TEA Provided Practice that COUNTS!
Options for At-Bats, Practice in Cambium, and Data Collection
Region 12 TFAR Contacts
Kristin Arterbury
Assistant Director of General Education Services
ESC Region 12
254-495-9532
Lisa Cisneros
Lisa Cisneros
Science, GT, TEKS RS Specialist
ESC Region 12
254-495-3013
What percent of the points on each test correlate to the new item types?
Well, it varies. This is what we know so far. The blueprints tell us the number of two-point new item types, but we need to add a + sign because we don't know how many one-point item types each assessment will have. For all content areas, it looks like it will be more than 25%.
38% +
40% +
38% +
33% +
35% +
33% +
31% +
37% +
36% +
36% +
35% +
30% +
27% +
27% +
27% +
25% +
25% +
25% +
25% +
25% +
STAAR Redesign Online Course
Lead4ward's STAAR 2.0
Instructional Connections
PDF
TFAR Pre-made Sampler Assessments for District Purchase
TFAR contains sample items that reflect how TEA might assess the new item types on STAAR 2023. Purchase assessments for your students to give them at least two "at-bats" to be ready for STAAR/EOC 2023. Use the previous grade level assessment at the beginning of the year to pre-assess and expose students to these items. Before STAAR, use the grade level assessment.
ASSESSMENTS INCLUDE:

  • RLA: 2nd - English II
  • Math: 2nd - Algebra I
  • Science: 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and Biology
  • Social Studies: 7th, 8th, and US History

The cost for the 25 assessments is $2,000 per district.
TFAR Training
The Texas Formative Assessment Resource (TFAR) is a free platform that allows teachers to create, administer, and share formative assessments.

This session will go over the basics of the TFAR system. Teachers will practice authoring items and creating assessments. When educators create assessments in TFAR, they can choose items from a bank of TEA-provided, TEKS-aligned questions, or they can author questions themselves. These assessments can be administered to students through an online portal that includes student accommodations. All tests administered online will generate data accessible to the educator through a reporting system. Teachers also can share the assessments they create in TFAR with other teachers in their district.

TFAR is meant to supplement and support existing district resources and formative assessment practices. Quizzes built using this tool should be combined with a broader set of classroom formative practices as part of a coherent instructional framework. 

Virtual Opportunity: November 10 from 1-3:30
ESC Region 12
Instructional Coaching Services
We have specialists across all content areas that are ready to provide coaching services to teachers in your district. Our services are tailored to the needs of each individual campus and are designed to empower teams of teachers. Teams may be identified by grade-level clusters, subject or course, department, or area of interest.
Arash Abnoussi
Tammy Payne
Yvonne Williams
Spelling Instruction

Presented by Dr. Wendy S. Farone
Sept. 20 | Sept. 27 | Oct. 4 | Oct. 11
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
ZOOM Sessions
Don't miss the Region 12 Social Studies Newsletter. Peruse the latest #r12socstud newsletter by following the link below. You can subscribe to this newsletter by clicking the FOLLOW JESSICA TORRES link found in the newsletter. Don't miss these great updates, upcoming session descriptors, and teaching strategies.
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