Not so long ago, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released the STAAR test results for learners in Grades 3 through 8. It’s the second set of Spring results since the STAAR redesign in 2023, and it’s tough reading for educators in the state: we’ve seen dips in proficiency, and those losses are impacting learners across the curriculum.
↪️Science comprehension is down. Only 56% of fifth-graders met the Science grave-level standard, a 21-point percentage slip on 2019’s numbers.
↪️Mathematics performance across all grade levels has declined after two years of small post-pandemic gains. Only 41% of students in Texas demonstrated an adequate understanding of the subject in the most recent set of STAAR test results.
↪️Results from the reading-language arts assessment showed students’ proficiency in Grades 3, 5, and 8 had decreased, each dropping by 2%.
What could these STAAR test results mean for Texas’ educational futures?
That these results are better than some we had in recent years stands as a testament to how hard educators across the state have worked, and how incredible that effort is. Don’t forget, these STAAR test results are still better overall than some educators predicted we see less than five years post-pandemic.
But these are big skill gaps. And they’re in important subject areas, too—so if this gap growth becomes a long-term trend, then we’ll have to witness cohort after cohort of school leavers struggling to attain the basic proficiencies that they need to move on to the next stage, whether that’s college or transitioning into work.
“We’re setting up a generation of students to struggle to attain the certifications and degrees and diplomas that the generation before them was able to achieve.”
— Mary Lynn Prudena, Senior Policy Advisor at Texas 2036.
Reading, bandwidth, and 2024’s STAAR test results
We can see that there are some reading slips in these STAAR test results. They’re not chasms yet, and they’re not across the board in terms of grades—but they’re deepen unless there’s significant intervention on the horizon. That’s the nature of reading slips: they rarely recover on their own, especially at a scale, even with normal educational practice. Pandemic disruption runs deep in our learners and the right interventions and support technologies are a huge part of the recovery equation, so are dedicated reading programs and responsive teaching.
But historically those have required huge amounts of budget allocation and educator bandwidth to implement, which means that even as grades slip like they did this year, that recovery effort is asking schools, districts and educators to pour more from an increasingly empty pitcher.
Unless we can find budget-friendly solutions with proven reading rescue results.
Reading unlocks the curriculum…
…but it locks it down too. When reading skills aren’t up to grade standard, those deficits impact comprehension and achievement across the whole curriculum. It’s the key that unlocks the door: learners need to be able to read independently, with confidence and fluency, to succeed in almost every subject from math and physics to history and biology. When they can’t, a reading deficit can affect other subject areas too.
Science and math-based reading is harder than average grade-level texts, and has a lot of subject-specific lexis, it’s easy to make the connection that there’s a good chance Texas’ math and science slips might have reading at their root.
Scanning Pens’ educator feedback backs it up, too. We surveyed over 500 US educators this year, and asked them about reading needs in their school. The results are striking: according to the data we gathered, over70% of readers in the US are 12 months or more behind where they’re supposed to be, and the deficits run deeper when we take a look at groups of learners with SLDs and who are English Language Learners.
But reading needs in Texas go deeper than these STAAR test results.
Texas has the fourth-lowest literacy rate in the US, at 81%. This means that 19% of people in the state don’t have the level of reading skills necessary to function properly in their social, working and private lives, and struggle to read things like a bill or a bus timetable. That’s about three million adults, and that’s before we add in the millions of adults in Texas who come from other language backgrounds and are still in the process of developing their English fluency.
The correlation is evident: the state of Texas also ranks 49th out of the 50 states in terms of the percentage of adults who left high school or passed compulsory schooling age without gaining their high school diploma or equivalent. Low literacy results in low high school graduation rates, and these can have a powerful impact on both the economic future of businesses within the state and the personal lives of those people who have been left behind by literacy.
The causes aren’t linear, and educators in Texas are navigating a complex blend of pandemic-related literacy skill loss, student poverty, and ELL needs. 1.7 million children in Texas live in poverty, which is both a cause of and a result of low literacy. 6.5 million Texas residents speak a language other than English at home, which is almost twice the US national average.
What if these reading needs remain unmet?
A slide of a couple of literacy percentage points in any state means devastating real-world consequences for thousands of learners, but when we’re starting from a pronounced point of adult deficit, things amplify at a rate that creates generational literacy and employment problems while overwhelming in-school support capacity.
When learners leave school with low literacy and fail to achieve basic minimum qualifications, they often struggle to find work and break into higher education and clerical roles. This puts more people on the lower ranks of the employment ladder, meaning that competition for these manual and entry-level roles is high. And this results in wage stagnation, employees with low literacy result in poor business productivity, and a mismatch between the population literacy standard and the expected literacy standard for business can result in more and more people struggling to find work.
This kind of ongoing, generational low literacy and its impact on the job market can have a huge negative bearing on a state’s GDP. Texas’ GDP is the second highest in the US, and one that historically can be relied on to return annual growth—so there’s potential percentage loss on a national economic scale if Texas’ reading levels and STAAR test results can’t be pulled back onto the curve.
But on the flipside, increasing literacy scores by just 1% leads to a 2.5% rise in labor productivity and a 1.5% rise in GDP—which makes finding the right reading solutions all the more important as learners and their families deal with the rising cost of living.
Solutions aren’t always what you’d expect in 2024.
2024’s STAAR test results merit attention. We could recruit more educators to implement a full-scale reading taskforce for our public schools. But from where? Educators are dropping out of the profession at an alarming rate, and new graduate numbers aren’t what they used to be. And that’s before we’ve tackled the issue of paying those hypothetical salaries too, in an era where districts and individual schools are struggling to make ends meet and the expiration of ESSER funding approaches.
When it comes to reading support, what educators in Texas need is the ability to do more with less. Which seems like a big ask—but not when you’ve got the right tools for the job.
C-Pen Reader 2 is an award-winning assistive reading aid from the edtech experts at C-Pen. They’re the creators of the original text-to-speech reading pen and pride themselves on developing tech that responds to the needs of the educator communities they serve worldwide.
Reader 2 uses lightning-fast text-to-speech to support developing readers and anybody who needs a little extra confidence to catch up. It’s as simple as scanning a sentence on the page and hearing it spoken through the earbuds. You can even look up dictionary definitions, scan words to file, and customize speaking speed, accent and language to fit the needs of each and every individual learner.
…But you don’t just have to take our word for it.
Reaching for the STAARs? Fly out with a pilot you trust!
"Getting help is hard sometimes. The pen helps me do my work without needing to ask for help. I really like it. Other students don't even know I have it."
— 11th Grade Student
“All our EB students should have one.”
— Christina Knies, 5th Grade Science Teacher
“It is a device that is greatly supportive for a student to use with daily reading, and encourages students to follow along and read.”
— M. Burriesce, Dyslexia Therapist
Improving reading ability and giving learners the confidence to tackle text independently is key to boosting grades in every subject and ensuring better STAAR test results for next year. But we know that finding the right support is hard, too. You need to know that the method you pick is going to work for those learners because there’s no room for gambling when the stakes are this high and budgets are so tight.
That’s why we’ve created the Scanning Pens District Pilot Program!
❓ What is a Pilot Program?
It’s a simple enough process: we offer districts a 60-day pilot of our award-winning reading pen, the C-Pen Reader 2.
🧑🏻🏫 What do I get out of it?
When your district takes part, you’ll get a full 60 days to trial award-winning text-to-speech reading support with your learners, instead of the usual 30-day trials we offer. This gives you more opportunity to test them out with your learners and look at reading impact in a more long-term way. You’re also guided every step of the way by our dedicated Education Team, from implementation to tracking, adapting and troubleshooting.
The stats speak for themselves: secondary students, on average, report a 100% improvement in all categories and reading comprehension and self-efficacy when they use their reading pen. And 100% of primary readers report an increase in reading for pleasure!
🖊️ And what do you get out of it?
All you need to do is give us some educator and learner feedback on how these pens are working out for you— no, really! We’re interested in hearing your testimonials about how our assistive technology improves reading for all as this helps us target the resources we create and better understand the needs of the education community.
🏆 So how do I get started?!
To kickstart the reading support journey in your district find out more at our blog-- of if you're ready to get involved, fill out our...
District Pilot Program Request Form!
