As my fourth grader and her classmates begin Round Two of the STAAR test this week, I’ve been asked several times about my opinion on student testing.

I think we should set high educational expectations for our students and I think classroom instruction is critical to achieving those expectations. I am all for removing unnecessary barriers to learning and for giving teachers the in-class time and resources that they need to effectively teach our kids.

I am glad that the state reduced the number of tests students are required to take. I am glad, too, in speaking with administrators across our district, to learn that we adhere to the state-mandated cap on the number of days students are allowed to take practice tests and benchmarks. I believe that in our district we are prioritizing depth of instruction and the education of the whole child.

We don’t yet know what the legislature will do this year, but for the moment the STAAR test is how districts all across Texas are measured. It is a fact that how our students perform is how we will be rated.

This does not mean, however, that we should direct our teachers to teach to the test. This means, instead, that we encourage our teachers to teach beyond the test.

I have seen teachers across the district doing this hard work. When my daughter Sadie took her 3^rd grade STAAR test last year, her teacher not only alleviated the students’ pre-test anxiety, she managed to make the test itself an empowering experience for her class.

I was amazed to see Sadie come home beaming after the exam and saying that “It was so much easier than what we do in class all the time.”

This same thing happened when my daughter took the two-day writing exam a couple of weeks ago. Her teacher had prepared the class well. My daughter understood how to craft an essay. She had learned how to organize her thoughts. From using punctuation for effect and altering her sentence construction, to incorporating relevant detail and descriptions, she understood the writing rubrics.

And after both days of testing, Sadie came home not stressed or anxious, but excited to tell me about the test prompts and the essays that she had written in response. This is because my daughter’s teacher has consistently taught the class that writing is not only a necessary skill to master and then given them the tools to do so, but she has taught them that writing—and learning in general—can be enjoyable.

My daughter’s daily classroom experiences do not reflect the harried rote drilling that may come to mind when one thinks of standardized testing. Instead, in her classroom the test becomes one part of the teacher’s skillfully adapted curriculum.

I want all of our teachers to have the chance to provide similar experiences to every student in our district—to give our kids the chance to feel that pride, to know that they have learned much more than a test expects them to learn. It is, after all, still a minimum skills test, and we want students to think of the test as a low hurdle.

The best teachers are drawn to school districts that hold high standards and let them teach. We need to be a district known as a home for educators who are committed and who excel at really reaching our students. That should be our first priority.