STAAR questions in Problem-Attic

STAAR questions are in the Problem-Attic database, everything from the 2011 samples to the 2023 released tests. That’s about 13,000 questions, including Spanish, for all tested grades and subjects.

No subscription is needed to make use of the released questions. They’re in the free part of the website, along with questions from many other state assessments. However, depending on where you teach, you may not see the banks. The reason: under TEA rules, we can’t make the questions available publicly. Only teachers in Texas have permission to use them.

Further down, we’ll explain how you can get access to the questions if you are a Texas teacher. But first, we’ll provide some background information and show how the questions are organized.

Adding the question banks

The STAAR questions are in four banks, separated by subject: math, science, social studies, and ELA. Matching Spanish questions are in the respective banks.

On the Select tab in Problem-Attic, banks can be re-arranged. Depending on what you’ve already added to My Banks, the Texas-released questions will look something like this:

When you first log in to Problem-Attic, you’re asked what subject you teach. Based on your answer, various titles get added to My Banks. At any time you can go to Browse All Banks and see everything that’s available. If you don’t see the Texas titles, refer to the section at the bottom of this page, “How to access the released questions”.

If you have access to the questions, you can make use of them like any others in the Problem-Attic database. You select what you like, decide how the questions should be formatted, and make PDF documents which can be downloaded and printed or sent to your students electronically. (If your school has a subscription, you can also do online testing, scoring, and exporting to a Google Quiz or an LMS.)

We like to remind users of Problem-Attic that it’s not just a test generator. There are many options for using the questions for everyday instruction, as warmups, exit tickets, lessons, homework assignments, etc. To learn more, see this video overview.

Organization of questions

The four banks are organized in different ways, depending on the subject. In all cases, the released STAAR tests are presented in their entirety, by grade or subject and year. You will find them by clicking the Tests tab. If there are matching tests in Spanish, there will be a separate tab for them.

The math and science banks also have a TEKS tab, as shown above. For math, the questions are organized down to the level of student expectations (SEs). For science, there aren’t as many questions, so they’re organized into slightly broader TEKS categories. You can see the difference in these screenshots:

Please note:

• Texas’ math and science curriculum has undergone changes since the first STAAR tests were given. When possible, we’ve aligned older questions to newer TEKS. For math, to make the aligned questions more apparent—in case of second-guessing—the thumbnails are tagged with the old TEKS/SEs, including the word “old”. For science, we’ve gone ahead and updated the TEKS/SEs and marked them with an asterisk, to indicate they’ve been re-aligned.

• We were cautious when re-aligning questions. So the TEKS tab for math does not have 100% of the questions from older STAAR tests. For science, the TEKS tab does have all of the questions, but those which we couldn’t align are in categories called “Other (old TEKS)”.

Below are examples of the tags on thumbnails. You’ll notice the info panels are expanded. This is done by clicking the ‘i’ icon on each thumbnail. Tip: when an info panel is expanded, you can see the released test for the question and jump to it by clicking the link.

Regardless of the tab, Tests or TEKS, selection methods are the same. Simply drill down into a grade or subject and browse through the questions. When you see a question you like, click the Add button on the thumbnail (or double-click on the thumbnail itself). It will slide out of the way and into your document. Or you can use the Add button at the top of the page to select many questions at once. Some other shortcuts for selection are described here.

How to access the released questions

Because the STAAR questions can’t be made available publicly, we have to identify teachers who, under TEA rules, have permission to use them. We do that with district email domains, which look like mcisd.org or johnson.k12.tx.us. In effect, they tell us that a Problem-Attic user is a Texas teacher.

Therefore, two things are necessary for you to get access to the questions.

1. You must sign up for Problem-Attic with a school email address. If you already signed up with a personal address, like gmail, you can log in, go to account settings, and change your address there.

2. We need a request from a district administrator to make the STAAR questions available. (Typically the administrator will be in the curriculum or technology department.) The request can be be very simple, just a sentence or two in an email. It should be sent to support@problem-attic.com.

After we receive a request from a district, we add its email domain to our “whitelist”. Then any teacher who logs in to Problem-Attic with a matching domain will see the banks with STAAR questions. Nothing else has to be done; there’s no connection to a district’s directory services or uploading of any list. Logins are handled by Problem-Attic, and teachers’ email addresses are protected under our Privacy Policy.

One last reminder: no subscription is required for the STAAR questions. In fact, we never charge anything for questions that we re-publish, or for the PDF creation, sharing, and curriculum development tools in Problem-Attic. After we receive a request from a district, all teachers within that district can make use of the questions by signing up for a free account. (We also offer free training by webinar. Contact us for details.)

Please let us know if you need any more information about the STAAR questions. We hope you are able to make great use of them in Problem-Attic!