According to the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), HB 4 is projected to have a significant fiscal impact on the state, with an estimated net cost of approximately $197.7 million over the 2026–27 biennium. The primary driver of this cost is the bill’s requirement for the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to adopt and administer a new, nationally norm-referenced assessment system to be administered three times per year. TEA estimates this will cost $156.1 million annually, largely due to development, implementation, and licensing costs for the new testing instruments.

Offsetting this, the bill allows for the discontinuation of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), which is expected to yield annual savings of approximately $81.4 million. However, the transition does not result in a net gain, as the new testing framework costs significantly more than what STAAR currently requires. Additional annual costs include $18.5 million for alignment and readability studies of the new assessments and $5 million for grants supporting the development of local accountability systems.

TEA would require an additional five full-time equivalent (FTE) staff to implement the new systems, costing around $600,000 annually. The bill also creates potential risk to federal education funding: if the new assessments are not aligned with federal standards, the state could jeopardize approximately $2.5 billion in federal funding annually. Furthermore, although the bill includes new judicial procedures related to challenges of TEA decisions, the fiscal impact on the court system is indeterminate due to unknown case volume and complexity.

At the local level, school districts may face significant but currently unquantifiable costs to adapt instructional materials, administer the new assessments, and comply with reporting changes. In total, while the bill represents a major investment in reforming school accountability and testing, it also introduces fiscal and compliance risks that will require close oversight.

HB 4 presents a sweeping overhaul of Texas’ student assessment and school accountability framework, replacing the STAAR exam with a new instructionally supportive, nationally norm-referenced testing system. On the surface, this transition appears to be a constructive response to long-standing concerns about standardized testing. However, the bill introduces substantial new costs, expands state bureaucracy, increases testing frequency, and overcomplicates an already burdensome system. For these reasons, Texas Policy Research recommends that lawmakers vote NO on HB 4.

The most immediate and measurable objection is the bill’s fiscal footprint. HB 4 is projected to cost nearly $200 million over the 2026–27 biennium, and over $150 million every year thereafter, according to the Legislative Budget Board. This cost is driven by the adoption of new testing instruments, annual item readability reviews, grant administration, and expanded staff at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). This is a sharp increase compared to the current cost of administering the STAAR exam, and it represents a considerable new burden on taxpayers without guaranteeing proportional educational benefit. The bill does not contain mechanisms to ensure that this investment leads to better outcomes, nor does it provide any relief to taxpayers currently facing rising education-related costs at the local level.

Rather than simplifying the state’s role in school accountability, HB 4 significantly expands the power and responsibilities of the Texas Education Agency. It creates new duties including the administration of a more complex assessment framework, implementation of a grant program for local accountability plans, and management of revised school performance rating systems. These expansions entail the creation of new regulatory processes, additional staffing, and permanent oversight roles that entrench state authority more deeply into the day-to-day operations of local education systems. This contradicts long-standing principles of restrained, efficient government.

Although the bill eliminates STAAR in name, it replaces it with a triannual testing model—requiring assessments to be administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. This means students will be tested more often, not less. While the new assessments are intended to be more instructionally useful, the volume and timing of these assessments risk disrupting classroom instruction, placing further stress on students and teachers alike. What was intended to reduce testing pressure may, in fact, multiply it across the school year.

HB 4 introduces a highly complex framework of performance indicators, scoring thresholds, and phased-in accountability metrics. This includes new rules for how campuses serving different grade bands are rated, multiple growth and readiness indicators, and a rotating schedule for updating accountability standards every five years. These changes, while well-intentioned, could create confusion and compliance challenges for districts and teachers, many of whom are already struggling with administrative overload. By shifting from one set of state-mandated rules to an even more layered system, the bill may make accountability less transparent, not more.

Ultimately, while HB 4 responds to the right criticisms—namely, that STAAR is too rigid, too punitive, and not instructionally useful—it fails to deliver a solution that is fiscally responsible, administratively lean, or pedagogically simple. Lawmakers seeking real reform should aim for a system that streamlines testing, reduces classroom disruption, saves taxpayer dollars, and keeps the focus on student learning rather than bureaucratic compliance. HB 4 falls short on each of these counts.

For supporters of education reform who believe in responsible spending, limited government, and minimizing unnecessary interference in local classrooms, HB 4 is not the right vehicle. It replaces one flawed model with another that is more expensive, more complicated, and more intrusive. Texas Policy Research recommends that lawmakers vote NO on HB 4.

• Individual Liberty: The bill attempts to improve the educational experience by moving away from high-stakes STAAR exams and toward assessments that are meant to support student learning and growth. This shift can be seen as a step toward protecting individual liberty by reducing the test-related stress that affects students' well-being and by providing more meaningful feedback to parents and educators. However, the bill replaces one test with three, expanding state-mandated assessments throughout the year. While these tests are intended to be more supportive, they may still infringe on the liberty of students and families by continuing to subject all public school students to state-controlled evaluations without opt-out provisions or local tailoring.
• Personal Responsibility: One of the stated goals of the bill is to empower educators and families with better data to guide instruction, which could support personal responsibility in education. However, because the assessment framework remains heavily top-down, driven by the Texas Education Agency rather than by local educators or families, the bill limits their discretion in how to act on that data. Responsibility is still concentrated at the state level, undermining efforts to empower local actors to be the decision-makers in their children’s education.
• Free Enterprise: The bill indirectly affects free enterprise through its likely reliance on large-scale contracts with national testing vendors to supply the new norm-referenced assessments. These contracts may favor a limited number of providers, reducing competition and potentially locking the state into expensive, long-term arrangements with little room for innovation. The bill does not contain safeguards to ensure open-market competition or encourage the development of alternative educational solutions by smaller, local providers.
• Private Property Rights: This bill does not directly impact private property rights. However, as a tangential issue, the new data reporting requirements and collection of detailed diagnostic information on students raise potential concerns about student data privacy. The bill does not include specific provisions to safeguard how this information is stored, used, or shared, which could raise future liberty concerns if this data were to be mishandled.
• Limited Government: The most pronounced impact is on limited government, and it is negative. The bill greatly expands the authority and operational scope of the Texas Education Agency, both in administering a more complex assessment system and in overseeing new grant programs for local accountability plans. It also creates new responsibilities around the timing, validation, and reporting of student testing and school ratings. These changes require more taxpayer funding, more staff, and more regulatory infrastructure, making the education system more centralized and bureaucratic, not less.