AUSTIN (AP) - Top education leaders in the Texas House are to hear testimony on the state’s new standardized test and its effects on students, teachers, instruction practices and graduation rates.

Members of the House Public Education Committee will evaluate on Tuesday the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR.

Official figures released this month indicate that if the final standards being implemented gradually were already in place, more than half of Texas high school freshmen would have failed in five key areas.

When ninth-graders’ scores were judged against final standards coming in 2016, the biology passing rate was 41 percent, and 39 percent for algebra.

In English, it would have been 34 percent for writing and 46 percent for reading. In world geography, it would have been 40 percent.

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