STAAR, SY 2025-26
All grades, all students. % Meets Grade Level or Above.Reading
50.0%
State avg 54.5%
District avg 53.3%
County avg 63.2%
+25.0pp since 2020-21
Mathematics
42.0%
State avg 45.3%
District avg 48.7%
County avg 50.6%
+10.0pp since 2020-21
Science
21.0%
State avg 46.6%
District avg 56.0%
County avg 49.6%
+15.0pp since 2020-21
Social Studies
N/A
State avg 47.2%
District avg 57.0%
County avg 53.3%
What this means: On the STAAR, Texas's statewide test, about 50 of every 100 students at this school read at grade level, about 42 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 21 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 25 points since 2020, while math scores are up about 10 points and science scores are up about 15 points.
Rank: PONDER EL places #3,620 of 4,401 Texas elementary schools, and #119 of 136 in Denton County for state test proficiency.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
UNDERPERFORMING
Bottom 10% of TX schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
30.4%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
54.4%
based on TX schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
-23.9pp
below demographic expectation
What this means: About 30% of students here test proficient in math and reading, below the roughly 54% typical for Texas schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations compares each school with others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school lands here when its results trail those comparable schools, which is not the same as having low scores. A higher-scoring school can still fall in this tier if similar schools score higher still.
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 50.0% mean for Reading at PONDER EL?
It means about 50.0 percent of students tested at PONDER 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.
