Magnolia ISD Beat the State on Nearly Every STAAR Test. One Score Went Down.
By The Magnolia Standard · August 18, 2026
Buses are running again and the lockers are full. Before the new year buries the old one, here is how last spring actually came out.
Magnolia ISD students came in above the state average in ten tested areas on the spring 2026 STAAR exams. The district's strongest showing was Biology, where 97 percent of students passed, up two points from 95 percent the year before. That is the highest score the district posted anywhere on the test.
The pattern held across most of the exam. Fourth and eighth grade math both rose over 2025 and finished above the state. So did seventh and eighth grade reading, Algebra I, and English I. English II and U.S. History held exactly even with the previous year, and both still landed above the state average.
Two results are worth sitting with rather than skimming past.
The first is fifth grade reading. Magnolia improved on its own 2025 number, which is the direction you want. But it did not pull ahead of the state this time. It tied it. That is the one place in the results where the district gained ground on itself and stayed level with everyone else.
The second is eighth grade social studies, at 62 percent. It is the district's lowest score on the exam, and it is the only one that moved backwards, down a single point from 63 percent. Here is the part that complicates the easy version of that sentence: even at 62 percent, it beat the state average. Roughly four of every ten Magnolia eighth graders did not pass, and the state as a whole did worse. Both of those things are true at once, and the second one is not a comfort.
Statewide, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath tied the year's gains to math, saying the agency was "encouraged by continued gains in mathematics, especially with the growing number of students participating." The Texas Education Agency released the grades 3 through 8 results in June and the end-of-course results alongside them.
A passing rate is a blunt instrument. It tells you how many students cleared a line on one day in the spring. It does not tell you which students, or how far above or below the line they landed, or what happened in the classrooms that moved a number two points in a year. Parents who want the version that actually applies to their own child will get more out of the individual student report than out of any district figure, including these.
Those individual reports go home through the district. If yours has not turned up, the campus office is the place to start.
Sources: Community Impact's July 6, 2026 report on Magnolia ISD's spring 2026 STAAR results, and the Texas Education Agency's releases of the spring 2026 STAAR results for grades 3 through 8 and for end-of-course assessments. Percentages cited are Magnolia ISD's, not the state's or a neighboring district's. Corrections to newsroom@themagnoliastandard.news.