Unlocking Student Potential: The TELPAS-STAAR Connection

Last year, we made a great deal of growth as a school.

In some of my earlier posts, I shared the challenges I encountered when I first arrived on this campus. But that is no longer the full story of who we are. Our current team has worked incredibly hard, and together, they have made significant progress with our students. That is something I am genuinely proud of them for.

Still, as their instructional leader, I am always thinking about what comes next.

What source of data am I not seeing clearly enough? What instructional moves do we need to implement and support? What are the specific needs of my students—not students in general, but the children sitting in our classrooms every day?

Like many principals, I turn first to our state assessment data. And if we are being completely honest, we prioritize STAAR.

STAAR is familiar to me. I understood it as a teacher. I studied it from the perspective of an instructional coach. Now, I examine it through the lens of a principal. I understand the standards, the rigor, the question types, and what student responses can tell us about instruction. I know how to look for patterns and begin identifying where our work needs to change.

But when I look more closely at our TELPAS data, I see many of our students remaining at the Intermediate level. They are developing, but they are not making the progress we need to see toward Advanced and Advanced High—even after spending several years in U.S. schools.

Approximately 60 percent of the students on my campus are emergent bilinguals. We live in a border community where English and Spanish flow together naturally. Our students may move between both languages throughout the day, sometimes within the same conversation. But using both languages conversationally does not necessarily mean they have fully developed the academic language needed to access complex text, explain mathematical reasoning, write about content, or demonstrate mastery independently.

I have always had an understanding of the ELPS and TELPAS. What I am realizing, however, is that I want to understand their instructional connection to the TEKS and STAAR with the same depth that I understand the relationship between the TEKS and STAAR.

When I see students remaining at the Intermediate level, I want to understand what that tells us about their daily classroom experiences. What are they able to do in listening, speaking, reading, and writing? Where are they getting stuck? How are their language needs affecting their ability to access grade-level content and demonstrate what they know? And what specific instructional practices will help move them forward?

For me, this is not simply about preparing students for TELPAS or improving a score. It is about understanding how language creates the pathway to increasingly rigorous content—and making sure our students have every opportunity to show us everything they are capable of, regardless of where they are in their English-language development.

I want to understand what TELPAS can teach us about the instruction students experience throughout the year. I want to look beyond the final proficiency rating and understand what that result tells us about the opportunities students have had to listen, speak, read, and write across the instructional day.

I also want to understand the connection between that language development and what students are eventually expected to demonstrate on STAAR.

TELPAS and STAAR are not the same assessment. They do not measure the same thing, and I do not want to suggest that they do. But I am beginning to believe that we cannot fully understand our STAAR results without also paying attention to the language students need to access the content being assessed.

If a student understands a mathematical concept but cannot explain the reasoning, what is the barrier? If a student can discuss an idea informally but struggles to make meaning from an academic passage, what support is missing? If a student has attended U.S. schools for several years but remains at Intermediate, what does that tell us about the language opportunities being provided in the classroom?

Those are the questions I want to study more carefully.

As the instructional leader of my campus, I need to understand this work deeply enough to lead others through it. I want to equip my teachers with the knowledge, strategies, and tools they need to become even stronger teachers for the students in front of them. I also want to ensure that our students have every opportunity to demonstrate everything they are capable of, regardless of where they are in their English-language development.

The truth is, we do not talk about the ELPS and TELPAS nearly enough. They do not receive the same level of attention as the TEKS and STAAR, and there do not seem to be as many spaces for educators and campus leaders to ask questions, deepen their understanding, and receive meaningful support.

That is why I am going to keep studying, questioning, and sharing what I learn along the way. I want to examine what TELPAS is actually telling us, what the proficiency levels mean for classroom instruction, how the ELPS connect to student engagement, and what all of this means for the way we support students from the earliest grades.

I do not know how many posts this will become, and I do not want to decide that in advance. I am still growing as an instructional leader, and I know that deepening my understanding will help me better support my teachers and continue growing my school.

Maybe you will join me in that learning.

Because the more I study this connection, the more convinced I become that it is time we start talking about TELPAS—and start asking what might change when we do.

What If TELPAS Is the Pathway to STAAR? begins an ongoing series about what I am learning as I study the connection between TELPAS, the ELPS, student engagement, and access to grade-level learning.

I do not have every answer. I am documenting the questions, shifts, and classroom implications as the work continues.

Have we been giving TELPAS and the ELPS the same instructional attention we give STAAR and the TEKS? I would love to hear how your campus approaches this connection.

Follow the series at thewildflowerwithin.blog, and follow me on Instagram @thewildflowerwithin_.