TEMPLE, Texas (KXXV) — "Unfortunately for math, reading and writing, they are two and possibly three years behind," said Carol Paull with Kumon.
"All these gaps keeps getting wider and wider as they progress throughout their school years."
Kumon is a tutoring service that helps students prepare for tests, like the STAAR test.
For Temple ISD, the STAAR tests numbers are close to, but lower than the state of Texas averages, as released by the TEA Friday.
Paull says focus is a big factor for state test scores — and lower overall numbers — as they dropped from this year to last.
"The STAAR reading test is two hours and you see the decline in motivation they start slouching they start guessing through the test," she said.
Comparing the reading scores in Temple to the Texas average, documents show a significantly higher average in grades three through eight in favor of the state.
The most notable difference comes in the mastery of math — the state of Texas averages five to 10 percent higher than Temple.
As for students not meeting expectations in math, those numbers are similar to mastery — it's five to 10 percent lower than the state average.
In a statement from the Temple ISD Chief Communicator, Christina Parks, it's said that the writing portion of the test is still being worked on.
For seventh grade math, both the Texas and Temple ISD averages were more than 20 percent for students not passing the tests — that's compared to the rest of the grades.
Those seventh grades students averages went down around five percent from Spring 2023 to Spring 2024.
