Assessment and Accountability: HB 4 Back in the Spotlight

The state’s public education accountability system is back in the news with the recent release of the 2023 A-F ratings for Texas public schools. The nearly two-year-old ratings were caught up in a prolonged court battle centered around changes to state formulas for scoring tests and grading districts. 

It’s a stark reminder that it’s time for the state to measure what matters, not to rely on a single test on a single day, which is the case for our youngest public school students in grades 3-8. Nor should students, teachers, and local communities face uncertainty around shifting state formulas for awarding letter grades to campuses each year.

That’s why it’s heartening to see some forward progress on meaningful assessment and accountability reform in the closing days of the current Legislative Session. 

The new version of HB 4 can make a much-needed change to the system. A committee substitute unveiled in the House Public Education Committee on April 30, 2025, showed tremendous improvement toward much-needed reform. This updated bill was voted out of the House Public Education Committee 13-0 and is headed to the House floor sometime in May. Texas public school students, teachers, and local community schools are graded by the Texas Education Agency annually, but the current school accountability system relies overwhelmingly on one test, STAAR, to determine those ratings. 

Texas school teachers and parents agree  that students’ scores on a STAAR test simply do not reflect what students should know, how teachers support their students, what schools provide students beyond the classroom, or how much the state invests in public education.

Burkburnett ISD superintendent Dr. Brad Owen says, “Any given assessment is a snapshot in time of where a child is in relation to their learning journey at that moment. So, trying to say that every child in every school district in Texas should be at the exact same spot at the same moment in time in their journey is impossible, and it’s not justifiable.”

“The current system unfairly defines the success of our 3rd through 8th grade students solely by one high-stakes STAAR exam. This has caused early retirements among our staff, test anxiety and tears among our students, and misperceptions in our community about the quality of our schools — all tied to a single letter grade based only on STAAR results,” Dr. Brandon Enos, Superintendent of Cushing ISD told the House Public Education Committee in testimony on April 30.

House Bill 4 Can Catalyze Change

It’s time to return Texas to prominence as a national leader in school accountability reform. The current version of House Bill 4, which has been greatly revamped and improved from the original bill, should make significant steps toward accomplishing that goal. But progress on this critical piece of public school reform didn’t happen overnight. 

Starting in 2022, Raise Your Hand Texas engaged more than 15,600 people statewide, listening and interacting with parents, students, teachers, school administrators, policy experts, community and business leaders, and elected officials. Time and again, we heard the same refrain: ‘Measure What Matters.’ What we heard from Texans was clear and consistent:

• 83% said public schools should not be graded solely on STAAR results.
• 81% felt STAAR places undue pressure on students and interferes with quality instruction.
• 69% said STAAR does not accurately reflect how well students are learning.

And from those local conversations and careful review of best practices across the nation, we crafted policy recommendations to guide state lawmakers this session. Local district leaders also weighed in alongside public school advocates and parents. What happens next?

Forward Progress on Meaningful Reform

There’s less than a month until the Texas Legislature gavels out and lawmakers return to their home districts, but there’s plenty of time to pass meaningful policy that allows the state’s A-F accountability system to use more indicators than just a standardized test to “grade” our schools, students, and teachers on.

Texas can and should adopt an assessment and accountability system grounded on a more holistic approach, one that views school performance through the lens of expanded indicators that build a more robust system beyond single test scores.

And Raise Your Hand Texas agrees. We support broadening the scope of what the A-F system measures at every grade level and reimagining what postsecondary success metrics include.

The committee substitute for House Bill 4 would update the specific indicators that measure postsecondary success, including military enlistment and industry certifications to determine the best weighting in our accountability system.  

Meaningful, non-test-based indicators such as enrollment in advanced coursework, engagement in extracurricular and co-curricular programs, and participation in full-day pre-K should be part of the equation, too. Student engagement in these areas leads to stronger attendance, higher satisfaction with school, and fewer behavioral challenges that impede learning. 

Students, parents, and teachers agree that STAAR tests fail to capture important information regarding a student’s academic standing in a timely manner. Data should inform and support education that ensures individual student needs are met and critical learning gaps are closed. The state’s long-running overemphasis on STAAR undermines student-centered assessments that drive meaningful instructional improvement. 

That’s why in HB 4, by focusing on only federally required school subject assessments, we can also reduce the number of tests required of our students without sacrificing important data. 

Dr. Alicia Noyola, Executive Director of the South Texas Association of Schools, calls the revamped HB 4, “a powerful shift toward a more comprehensive, student-centered accountability system. One that still values academic rigor, but also recognizes that student success is more than a single score. It reflects the belief that what matters most is not just what students know today, but who they are becoming for tomorrow.”

It’s good to see HB 4 limiting the extent to which STAAR test scores impact A-F campus ratings, too. The shift from summative to formative assessments is critically important, too. Formative assessments provide through-year evaluations that help personalize instruction and capture student growth in a way that summative assessments like STAAR cannot.  Furthermore, HB 4 allows these formative assessments to be nationally norm-referenced. Unlike the criterion-referenced  STAAR, norm-referenced assessments create a more meaningful, uniform system of student measurement across the state and the U.S. while offering the ability to publish test results at a fraction of the time it takes to publish STAAR scores. 

HB 4 would also provide for local accountability grants, fueling innovation and funding the creation of local accountability systems, with at least one school district per regional Education Service Center (ESC) to participate in the pilot program. We know these local accountability systems work by bringing tested, data-driven, community-involved accountability to local schools. 

Just ask Dr. Brad Owen, whose district is among the early adopters of local accountability through the Texas Public Accountability Consortium (TPAC), which began in 2017.

“It’s a pretty robust system that looks at the whole child. Everything cognitive, everything character, everything engagement, organizations, volunteerism, community service feeds into it.,” said Dr. Owen. 

Owen notes that the current state-based system is a one-size-fits-all approach that’s ripe for improvement. “We want to talk about making sure that we’re doing right by parents. It’s time to reevaluate our accountability system because it is not doing what’s right for students, classroom teachers, or parents in any way, shape, or form. Let’s capitalize on a movement and let’s make a change,” Owen urged.

While not part of HB 4, the school voucher bill (SB 2) will require private schools that receive public taxpayer dollars to use a nationally norm-referenced test and submit the data to the Texas Education Agency. If both these bills become law, we can more easily compare students who are part of the school voucher (ESA) school system with the public school system. 

On the whole, House Bill 4, as adopted by the House Committee on Public Education, reflects many of the recommendations of experts, practitioners, and families across the state from our Measure What Matters campaign. 

Texas parents, students, and teachers are watching. As Dr. Cissy Reynolds Perez, Superintendent of Kingsville ISD told the House Public Education Committee, “Timing and trust are everything.” 

The time is now for Texas to advance a balanced and transparent accountability system – one that looks holistically at students and schools. Let’s finish the work and deliver a world-class assessment and accountability system worthy of the Lone Star State and deserving of its students, the future of Texas. Let’s measure what matters.