Why is persuasive still on the blueprint? What will we be writing in 2022? And my other random confusions about STAAR

What Genres will we Read?      

When the blueprints came out for STAAR, I was SO confused. I guess I was a bit dense, but I couldn't understand how persuasive genres were still assessable on STAAR. After several back and forth conversations, trying to explain my confusion, Chelaine Marrion and Valerie Pannell finally penetrated my skull with wisdom about what this means. 

Here's what Chelaine said - she makes it very clear: 

Students can be and are exposed to multiple genres of text in the classroom. Teachers are continuing to have students read persuasive and literary nonfiction (also no longer mentioned in the TEKS) texts. Those genres still exist. The difference is that there are no SEs in the TEKS that specifically address the characteristics of persuasive or literary nonfiction texts. Therefore, students will not be asked questions on STAAR that ask for their knowledge of the characteristics specific to those genres. There is nothing that prohibits a student from simply reading a literary nonfiction text and being asked vocabulary questions, inference questions, author’s purpose of including photograph questions, or text evidence questions, etc.. As noted, teachers across the state overwhelmingly requested these genres still be available to students.

And, because their customer service is so prompt, Chelaine asked Valerie to give me a phone call. I met Valerie during a TEKS guide evaluation session and came to admire her reasoning there. As we talked, I felt more and more confident in how persuasive will be addressed. Valerie explained that they are being very careful about text selections. Guidance to folks writing the questions for the passages explains that a variety of unique items should be crafted for passages. For instance, it would not be appropriate to develop six inference questions or four vocabulary questions. They don't want questions to "overlap." This is what we usually see with passages - the questions assess many different SE's. Since there are few TEKS that can be aligned to persuasive and literary nonfiction, they are being very careful about the quality of these passages and the variety of questions. I think we can all feel confident about that decision. 

What Genres will English I and II Write this Spring (2022)? 

As we talked, I had to add in another question. What genre will students this spring be writing in? English I will be writing expository. English II will be writing persuasive. Nothing has changed. It will not be until 2023 that we see the full switch to informational and argument. 

(We talked some more about item development for the new constructed response. I'll write about that later. We have to remember that all of those decisions are made after the field test data comes back in. And we want decisions to be made on data, right?) 

ASK them for Clarification

Valerie and Chelaine are always so appreciative of questions. They want us to ask when we hear things that don't quite sound right to us. People are already writing test prep materials and are doing workshops about the test redesign. Ultimately, it is TEA's interpretation of the standards that we should follow. If you go to a training and hear something that sounds wonky to you, look at TEA's presentations on video and ppt's that communicate the reality. Look at the released item types. And if it still doesn't make sense, it is better to call and ask the experts at TEA than following someone else. They would rather talk to you personally than have you believe things that are not true.