Texas Through-year Assessment Pilot

The Texas Through-year Assessment Pilot (TTAP) will explore whether Texas’s current summative assessment can be replaced with a cohesive progress monitoring system.

Overview of the Texas Through-year Assessment Pilot

House Bill 3906, 86th Texas Legislature, 2019, required the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to develop and pilot an innovative, through-year assessment model as a possible replacement of the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR^®) summative tests. A through-year assessment model refers to a progress monitoring system that provides students multiple opportunities throughout the school year to demonstrate their mastery of standards and to contribute to their summative performance level reported at the end of the year.

TTAP has been designed in collaboration with Texas educators, administrators, students, and families. The progress monitoring system will have three, short testing opportunities – one in the fall, winter, and spring. To ensure that all districts can retain their local curriculum, each TTAP progress monitoring opportunity will cover the full scope of the curriculum. Each opportunity will use a multi-stage adaptive design, allowing for shorter tests with greater accuracy to minimize the disruption to instructional time.

TTAP is a multi-year, fully online pilot that launched in school year 2022–2023. The model will be piloted over several years to assess its benefits and to ensure that the design maintains the rigorous level of validity and reliability that STAAR currently meets, in hopes of creating a scoring methodology that is comparable and can be used for state accountability.

Feedback from pilot participants (i.e., Texas students, teachers, administrators) will help measure the impacts of this progress monitoring system and inform how data can best be used to support instruction.

TTAP Year 2

Year 2 of the pilot takes place during the 2023-2024 school year. Participation in the pilot is optional and does not eliminate the obligation to administer STAAR. Year 2 will include the addition of the content and language supports and individual predictions to the STAAR, as well as additional supplemental training resources for TTAP participants.

The same grade levels and subjects that were piloted during year 1 will be offered during year 2. Additional grade levels and subjects will be added to the pilot in following years. 

• Grade 5 science
• Grade 6 math
• Grade 7 math
• Grade 8 social studies

Over 90 Texas public school districts and open-enrollment charter schools have volunteered to participate in TTAP for the 2023-24 school year. A list of participating districts can be found below in the Resources section.

Key Dates and Details for 2023–2024

Benefits of TTAP

Participation in the pilot is optional and does not eliminate the obligation to administer STAAR. Districts that participate in the through-year pilot will experience the following benefits:

• Multiple Testing Opportunities - Students will have three opportunities to demonstrate mastery of TEKS over the course of the school year. TTAP assessments serve as a viable replacement to locally adopted benchmarks and are 100% TEKS aligned. 
• Timely Student Reports - After each testing opportunity, teachers will receive individualized student reports, which include data such as performance levels, prediction to the STAAR, and in-year growth. These reports can be used in discussions with students and parents to share progress.
• Flexible Training Options - Teachers will receive training on accessing and interpreting student results to form instructional groups and support classroom instructional decisions. In Year 2, TEA  will continue to offer synchronous and asynchronous training options, along with additional training supplements for optional access.
• Additional Online Platform and Item Type Exposure - All TTAP progress monitoring opportunities will be administered on the same online platform as STAAR, giving students additional chances to interact with the system’s functionalities. TTAP participants will be also able to interact with different question types that are now used on the redesigned STAAR test.

Resources

• 2024–2025 TTAP FAQs (updated 04/03/2024)
• 2023–2024 TTAP District Participation (updated 07/25/2023)
• 2023–2024 TTAP Schedule of Events (updated 02/27/2023)
• 2023–2024 TTAP Data File Layout (updated 10/23/2023)
• 2023–2024 TTAP Test Administration Information (updated 10/24/2023)
• 2022–2023 TTAP Data File Layout (updated 11/02/2023)