LEWISVILLE -- With two daughters at Lewisville High School, Nancy and Ray Kimbrell know how much stock is put into STAAR testing.
"I think quite a bit," Nancy said, "and if it makes a difference about whether a kid advances to the next grade or not, it needs to be accurate."
But their children's own district, Lewisville ISD, says it's made a bombshell discovery: It says some of the results on this year's high school STAAR English end-of-course exams were not accurate at all.
In fact, Superintendent Kevin Rogers says when they had a sample of the tests rescored, 20 percent came back as having been originally scored wrong.
"A huge discrepancy," Rogers said, "and it’s an unacceptable discrepancy."
One Rogers says might've kept some eligible students from graduating.
So, he wrote a letter to Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner of Education Mike Morath asking for a broader investigation into the exams.
"We were trying to raise a red flag for, not only Lewisville ISD, but for other districts across the state," he said.
It appears that's now happening.
Thursday, we learned dozens of superintendents from districts near Houston wrote a letter to the TEA saying they had a "lack of confidence in the entire testing system.” They then listed a slew of issues they'd found with the exam, including the materials.
The TEA says this is the first year Educational Testing Service (ETS) has provided exams for state schools. A spokeswoman confirms the issues at hand all deal with ETS exams.
The company had not responded to our request for comment as of late Thursday afternoon.
"There’s a whole host of other issues districts are seeing with testing and ETS that are not related to scoring and the grading process," said Sarah Fitzhugh, director of assessment at LISD.
A TEA spokeswoman told News 8 Thursday that Commissioner Morath has no intention of suspending STAAR testing. She says he is working with ETS on the issues, and points out they have the ability to re-open the contract.
"Ultimately, we don’t know -- until they find what caused the problem -- if any of the scores are accurate," Fitzhugh said.
The Kimbrells' daughters have not had issues with STAAR testing, but one daughter still has more exams ahead.
The situation is hard for dad, Ray, to comprehend.
"You want to give them the best opportunity to get into school, so it needs to be correct," he said.
