To get permission from the Texas Education Agency to use the iPad app on STAAR tests, the team at Eanes ISD also had to restrict Wifi and camera access during the exams. They also added a bright blue bar across the top of the screen of the test-compatible app “so that teachers who are proctoring can easily see that students are using the right app,” Yenca explains. “We turned off example graphs, and a feature that solves quadratic equations,” says Eli Luberoff, founder and CEO of Desmos. Yenca collaborated with the Desmos team to create a version of the tool that would be appropriate for STAAR testing. So she figured, why not let students use a version of the familiar tool on their state tests? “Desmos is our go-to graphing tool throughout the school year,” says Yenca. The district provides each student with an iPad for the duration of the school year, which eighth graders can now use in the place of traditional graphing calculators during the exams.

On April 20th, 600 students attending schools in the Eanes Independent School District in Austin, TX piloted the Desmos Test Mode app during the eighth grade math STAAR assessment. “And after two test runs prior to testing day, there really weren’t any glitches.”

“It’s hard to believe, but my students were among the first in the world to do it,” gushes middle school math teacher Cathy Yenca.

Graphing calculator app for computer