Grade STAAR Writing and TEKS-Aligned Work Against Your Own Rubric
Tag your rubric criteria to the TEKS you teach, and GradingPal keeps Readiness and Supporting standards apart in the report — so you can see where your class stands on the standards STAAR actually weights, not an average across all of them.
You approve every tag and every mark. Standards are optional — everything else works without them.
One Set of Standards, One Test That Weights Them Unevenly
The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills are the state’s own standards, used instead of Common Core, across every subject and grade. STAAR is the assessment built on them — grades three to eight, plus end-of-course exams in high school. The part that matters for grading is that STAAR does not weight every standard equally: some are designated Readiness and carry most of the test, and the rest are Supporting. TEKS and STAAR in full are covered in our complete guide.
The Work Texas Classrooms Actually Set
TEKS covers every subject; STAAR assesses four of them, plus five end-of-course exams. Both are marked here the same way — against your rubric, tagged to your standards.
- Reading and writing responses
- RLA TEKS, and STAAR’s written responses
- Short-answer social studies
- US History EOC review
- Maths problem sets
- Maths TEKS, method as well as answer
- Science investigations
- Science TEKS and the Biology EOC
- Practice tests and mock papers
- Mixed formats, marked in one pass
Tag Once. Every Grade After That Builds the Picture.
Pick TEKS for the class once, at the start of the year. On any rubric, each criterion has a suggest action — GradingPal proposes the matching standards and you accept or dismiss each one. Mark the work as usual. The evidence lands against the code, so a standard is not a checkbox but a list of the things students actually wrote. Across a term, that becomes a picture of where a class is against each standard.
What This Doesn’t Claim to Do
It does not predict how a student will do on a state test. It does not replace your district’s reporting. It does not certify that your rubric is correctly aligned — you tag the criterion, and GradingPal records the alignment you set. And a teacher approves every mark before it counts.
It also does not mark to a released TEA scoring guide. If your department works from one, build a rubric from it — the criteria you write are the criteria your students’ work is held against.
A Report That Knows Which Standards STAAR Weights
Texas is unusual: its standards are not all treated alike. Each STAAR-assessed TEKS is designated Readiness or Supporting, and Readiness standards carry most of the test. Every other framework a grading tool supports treats its standards as a flat list — which is why most standards reports show a Texas teacher an average that hides the only thing she needs to know.
Tag your rubric criteria to the TEKS as you normally would. Because the designation travels with the standard, the picture that builds keeps them apart: you can look at Readiness standards on their own and see whether the class is secure on the ones the test leans on, rather than reading a single number that averages them together.
One Readiness Standard, One Practice Set
- The standard
- A grade-seven RLA Readiness TEKS on analysing an author’s use of evidence.
- The rubric criterion
- “Explains how the evidence supports the author’s claim.”
- The tag
- Suggested by GradingPal, approved by you — with the Readiness designation attached.
- The work
- A STAAR practice constructed response.
- What lands against the standard
- The student’s own sentence, the criterion it was judged against, and the mark you approved — filed under Readiness rather than averaged in.
By the third practice set, you can see whether the class is secure on the standards the test actually leans on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can GradingPal grade STAAR practice tests?
It grades the written parts against your rubric — the constructed responses and short answers that make up the practice sets a department actually has to mark. Upload a batch, mark them with the TEKS tagged, and hand back feedback before the next practice.
Does it know which TEKS are Readiness standards?
Yes. The designation travels with the standard, so the picture that builds keeps Readiness and Supporting apart rather than averaging them together. That matters in Texas in a way it does not in states with a flat standards list.
Does it use STAAR’s own scoring rubrics?
No. GradingPal marks against the rubric you build. If your department works from a released scoring guide, build a rubric from it — the criteria you write are the criteria your students’ work is held against, and you approve every mark.
Can it predict my students’ STAAR performance levels?
No, and we would be wary of anything that claims to. What it shows is what students demonstrated on the work you set, against the standards you tagged. A prediction is a different question with a different method, and it is not this one.
Does it work for end-of-course exams as well as grades 3–8?
Yes. EOC subjects use the same TEKS catalogue and the same rubrics, so an English II or Biology teacher sets up exactly as a sixth-grade teacher does.
We already use a Texas curriculum platform. Does this replace it?
No. GradingPal marks work and records the standards you tagged; it is not your gradebook of record or your curriculum system. Most Texas departments use it alongside what they have and export the results.
Mark One Practice Set With the TEKS Tagged
Tag your rubric to the standards you teach, mark a set of constructed responses, and read the Readiness standards on their own.