ELAR STAAR DATA TRENDS from TEA

As we are digging into our STAAR data and preparing instruction for the upcoming year, TEA has provided guidance about statewide trends and areas of opportunity to help focus our work. As they have psychometricians and access to large amounts of data, their insights about what rises to the top like cream seems like a good place to make a big dent in our results: a rich source of information. Like butter in a cookie recipe, our lessons would benefit from using these ideas as a quality ingredient.

STAAR Data Analysis Trends from TEA: The link is here – salient slides are 57-63. While TEA can tell us what the problems are in the item analysis, the state of Texas leaves how that is to be addressed in the classroom to us - the practitioners. As I looked through the data, these insights resonate with my experiences as a teacher and administrator. I think they will resonate with yours too. I've summarized what TEA states in the bold heading and reference implications and recommendations as a subheading. 

Summary Statements and Implications

1. Items are addressed as “areas of opportunity” and address items that we have seen growth in since the inception of the assessment as well as those items in which we are seeing no movement.
2. Reading:
1. Purpose of the Selection: Students are missing these questions for all genres. They are basing their answers on the verb without considering the rest of the phrase. Synonyms for genres outside of the traditional persuade, inform, and entertain are used. Sometimes, two stems will use the same verb and data patterns indicate confusion.  
1. Implications and Recommendations: Teach additional vocabulary - synonyms - for PIE; Teach that author’s purpose extends beyond the verb to include the message/gist; Help students see the differences between theme or thesis. These look different depending on the genre.  
2. Summary: Students are selecting answer choices that consider the beginning, middle, and end as opposed to focusing on theme, message, author’s purpose, and text structure.  
1. Implications and Recommendations: Stop teaching BME strategies that bypass actual understanding of the nuances, meaning, and structures in texts. Address how summaries work in multiple genres and not just with plot structures. The correct answer for a summary will always reference the author’s purpose, theme/message (depending on the genre) and be written in a way that reflects the text structure. For example, if cause and effect is used to organize the text, you’re probably going to see the sentences constructed in the summary that reflects that structure.   
3. Text Evidence that Supports the Idea: Students are choosing a restatement of the main idea as opposed to the sentence that supports the idea.  
1. Implications and Recommendations: Make sure students know the difference between restatement and support. Explicitly teach the progression of meaning from idea to text and evidence. I think we also have to show them how these items are constructed – all the answer choices are directly from the text. Some kids don’t know that. One of the distractors is always going to be a detail. Kids need to be able to know how the distractors are composed.
3. Writing
1. Thesis: Students must understand the text at a macro-level that references the focus and purpose of the text. Most students are suggesting answer choices that are too broad (doesn’t capture the gist and focus on the topic) or too narrow (a detail from the text). Some students won’t consider a correct answer if it is shorter or not verbatim language from the thesis.  
1. Implications and Considerations: 1)Most kids reading the revision passages are not reading for meaning: they are reading to correct. You can’t revise something you don’t understand. Teach kids the purposes for reading revision passages as opposed to purposes and strategies we use for editing ones. 2) Students who avoid shorter, correct answers are reading to match and not reading for meaning. Summarization and paraphrasing lessons are warranted.
2. Runons, Sentence Combining, Comma Splices, and Fused Sentences: While students may be aware of the “rules,” they are not reading to correct sentences in terms of how the rules impact meaning and the relationship between ideas. 
1.  Implications and Considerations: Grammar instruction that focuses on rules and editing corrections does not address the components of reading for meaning and using punctuation as a tool for communication. Students also need to be able to identify the four basic ways sentences are flawed and show up as distractors (see bold items above).
4. Constructed Response - The Essay
1. Undeveloped Specific Examples: Students write “specific examples” as they are taught, but fail to explain them with how they connect to the thesis.  
1.  Implications and Considerations: Teach students organizational strategies besides or within the 5 paragraph essay format that structure the ideas by meaning (text structures or kernels). Teach students development and elaboration techniques such as looping or prove it.
2. Predetermined Expectations for Examples Forming Lists: Students are writing papers with a specified number of examples: usually three examples. This causes listing and undeveloped answers that do not add to the effectiveness of the response.
1. Implications and Considerations: Stop teaching the 5 paragraph essay. Stop telling people to use a predetermined formula for evidence and teach them how to develop ideas within text structures that match their purposes.
3. Lack of Personal Connection: Students are being told – in all grades – not to use personal anecdote. Kids are writing about stuff they know nothing about.
1. Implications and Considerations: This is bad advice left over from when kids got confused between literary and expository genres. People told them not to write anecdotes to keep them from wandering into narrative. The test doesn't work that way anymore. Hasn't for a long time. Let kids write anecdotes in informative essays. The rest of the world does. Teach them how to write an angled anecdote or embed them in more advanced text structures.

Edits: 7/26 - You can see more here: https://roseshona.blogspot.com/2019/07/elar-staar-data-trends-from-tea_15.html