STAAR, SY 2025-26
All grades, all students. % Meets Grade Level or Above.Reading
78.0%
State avg 54.5%
District avg 71.9%
County avg 54.4%
+45.0pp since 2020-21
Mathematics
83.0%
State avg 45.3%
District avg 67.6%
County avg 45.1%
+16.0pp since 2020-21
Science
84.0%
State avg 46.6%
District avg 70.8%
County avg 48.8%
Social Studies
N/A
State avg 47.2%
District avg 65.0%
County avg 52.3%
What this means: On the STAAR, Texas's statewide test, about 78 of every 100 students at this school read at grade level, about 83 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 84 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all Texas schools, those numbers are about 55, 45, and 47. Reading scores are up about 45 points since 2020, while math scores are up about 16 points.
Rank: GUS WINSTON CAIN EL places #208 of 4,401 Texas elementary schools, and #3 of 30 in Smith County for state test proficiency.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
OUTPERFORMING
Top 10% of TX schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
74.3%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
51.4%
based on TX schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+22.9pp
above demographic expectation
What this means: About 74% of students here test proficient in math and reading, well above the roughly 51% typical for Texas schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations ranks schools against others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school can post high scores and still fall short of its prediction, or post lower scores and still beat it. This school clears its prediction by about 23 points, placing it in Texas's top 10%.
BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual.
How this is calculated →What is STAAR?
STAAR (the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) is the annual statewide test used by all Texas public schools. Students in grades 3 through 8 take it in reading and math, with science added in grades 5 and 8 and social studies in grade 8. High school students take End-of-Course (EOC) STAAR exams in Algebra I, English I, English II, Biology, and U.S. History.
What does "% Meets Grade Level or Above" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school whose scores reached or exceeded the "Meets Grade Level" threshold on the test. Texas reports four performance levels (Did Not Meet, Approaches, Meets, Masters). "Meets" and above means the student is performing at grade level or above. A higher number is better.
What does 78.0% mean for Reading at GUS WINSTON CAIN EL?
It means about 78.0 percent of students tested at GUS WINSTON CAIN EL performed at grade level or above on the STAAR Reading test in 2025-26. The statewide average for Texas that year was 54.5%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Texas, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Texas Education Agency, State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), via the Texas Academic Performance Report (TAPR). School-level All Students subgroup. Headline metric is the cumulative "Meets Grade Level or Above" rate.
How often is it updated?
STAAR is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.
