All students enrolled in Texas public schools and open-enrollment charter schools are required by federal and state law to participate in the Texas Assessment Program. Students are required to take academic achievement assessments in specific grades and subjects. Districts are required to provide a testing opportunity for students and to account for each student who is eligible to take an assessment.

For students receiving Section 504 or special education services, assessment decisions are made in accordance with agency guidelines by each student’s Section 504 committee or admission, review, and dismissal (ARD) committee. For emergent bilingual (EB) students, assessment decisions are made in accordance with agency guidelines by each student’s language proficiency assessment committee (LPAC). Refer to the LPAC Decisions Educator Guide on the Assessments for Special Populations webpage.

Participation Requirements for Students Enrolled in Grades 3–8

Students in grades 3–8 must take their enrolled grade-level assessments as required by Texas Education Code (TEC) §39.023(a).

Exceptions to this requirement may exist for students receiving instruction above grade level. These students should take STAAR for the subjects in which they are receiving instruction above grade level if an assessment exists for those subjects. For example, a student in grade 7 who is receiving instruction in grade 8 science would take the STAAR grade 8 science assessment and the STAAR grade 7 mathematics and RLA assessments.

For students receiving instruction in a subject area across multiple grade levels, district testing personnel should carefully evaluate the content of the instruction as it relates to the STAAR grade-level assessments to ensure that students are provided the best opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the grade-level content. For example, if students receive instruction in all grade 6 and some grade 7 mathematics curricula during a school year, they should be administered the STAAR grade 6 mathematics assessment. These students would not be eligible to take the grade 7 assessment since they have not been given the opportunity to learn all the grade 7 mathematics curriculum.

Students in grades 3–8 who are enrolled in a high school course will take the corresponding STAAR EOC assessment in place of their grade-level assessment in that subject area. These students must take all other STAAR grade-level assessments. For example, a grade 8 student enrolled in Algebra I will take the STAAR Algebra I assessment and the STAAR grade 8 RLA, science, and social studies assessments. When this student is in high school, he or she will need to take either the ACT or the SAT to fulfill federal testing requirements for mathematics.

Participation Requirements for Students Enrolled in High School Courses

Students at any grade level are required to take STAAR EOC assessments as they are completing the corresponding course since participation is required for federal accountability and passing these assessments satisfies testing requirements for high school graduation.

Accelerated students who passed STAAR EOC assessments in middle school for a particular content area are required to take the ACT or the SAT in high school to fulfill federal testing requirements.

STAAR Medical Exclusion

A process has been established to allow district testing personnel to exclude particular students’ lack of participation in testing (“Absent” score code) from the districts’ and campuses’ STAAR accountability calculations. This process ensures that scores for students who have experienced a significant medical event that has negatively affected their ability to receive instruction and caused their absence during the entire testing window do not impact districts’ and campuses’ participation rates. The STAAR Medical Exclusion process is for district and campus accountability purposes and does not impact or eliminate a student’s testing requirements or graduation requirements.

Eligibility Criteria

For a district and campus to receive a medical exclusion from STAAR accountability for a particular student’s score, that student must be absent during the entire testing window and all efforts to assess the student must have been unsuccessful. Medical exclusions must be considered on a case-by-case basis, and a student must meet one of the specific conditions listed below. The information used to make a medical exclusion determination must reflect the student’s situation throughout the testing window.

• The student is unable to receive sufficient or consistent homebound services due to medical issues. This means that although the student is currently receiving homebound services, the homebound teacher is unable to provide services for the majority of the documented time due to the medical issues.

• The student is unable to respond to test questions due to a terminal or degenerative illness. This means that the student’s condition is actively and currently affecting his or her daily activities to the extent that no available accommodations can reasonably mitigate those factors.

• The student is receiving extensive short-term medical treatment due to a medical emergency or severe injury (e.g., coma, major head trauma, organ failure).
  NOTE: Appendectomy, tonsillectomy, or broken arms or legs do not constitute a medical emergency or severe injury.

• The student is unable to interact with peers or educators without the risk of infection or contamination to themselves or others (e.g., measles, respiratory illness, malaria).
  NOTE: Colds and flu do not constitute a medical emergency.

Identification Process

After the testing window has closed and the student’s assessment record has been marked “A” for Absent, district testing personnel must determine if the student meets the STAAR medical exclusion eligibility criteria. If so, district personnel must maintain a copy of the medical documentation (e.g., note from a licensed physician) for five years, and the documentation must be made available if the district is audited.

To ensure that the student’s score is excluded from the districts’ and campuses’ participation rates, the district must indicate the assessments for which the student met the medical exclusion criteria in the Test Information Distribution Engine (TIDE) under After Testing > Data Cleanup > STAAR Medical Exclusion.

These data will be provided to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) Performance Reporting Division to exclude the student’s score from participation rate calculations.

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