I’ve taught STAAR English I and English II for the past 12 years, and every single year I dissect the STAAR exam. I especially like to track which editing skills appear, how often they show up, and how often they are actually the correct answer.
This matters because STAAR English Editing section isn’t random. It follows patterns. Some skills are tested repeatedly but are usually distractors, while a few quietly determine student success.
Below is a condensed, data-driven look at what actually mattered on the English 1 and English 2 2025 STAAR and how teachers can best prepare for the STAAR exam in 2026.
High-Frequency Skills That Are Often Distractors
These grammar skills appeared frequently on the STAAR English editing section but were rarely the correct answer:
- Spelling: assessed 10 times, correct only 2 times
- Verb tense: assessed 8 times, correct only 2 times
- Capitalization: assessed 5 times, correct 2 times
- Subject-verb agreement: assessed 3 times, never correct
- Possessives: assessed 2 times, never correct
➡️ What this means: These skills are commonly used as distractors. So students who know how to eliminate these from the start have a much better chance of answering the question correctly.
💡 Hot Tip: The spelling questions are FREE points, in fact on the English 1, there was a drop-down box where students had to choose the correct spelling! Thanks TEA for that easy point!
Your students need to be comfortable using the STAAR online dictionary and eliminating those answer choices. Here are the 3 worksheets I use to get students there.
Commas Continue to Do the Heavy Lifting
Comma rules remain the most important skill on STAAR English Editing section.
- Assessed: 9 times
- Correct Answer: 4 times
➡️ What has changed: In the past, students needed a strong foundation in using commas with compound sentences. This only showed up once, on the English 2 exam. I saw a lot of non-essential clauses and a few introductory clauses instead.
Bottom line: Strong comma knowledge is still the biggest payoff in Editing AND it is necessary in Revising as well. Hitting comma skills through the free platform Quill is one of my favorite ways to hit comma skills with low prep.
What’s Disappearing
A few years, post pandemic, the STAAR English editing section was full of simple pronoun questions where students were asked to change he to they, or his to him. It was also common to see answer choices that had students choose between a lot and alot or then and than. Now, what I see is:
- Pronouns: assessed 3 times, correct once
- Common Mistakes: not asked at all
You could also count on there being at least two colon and semicolon questions on each STAAR exam, but 2025 saw only one of each, and they were not the correct answer choice.
Bottom line: The post-pandemic ‘soft balls’ are gone. 😞
What’s Emerging Instead?
In 2024, for the first time, I noticed a couple questions that asked students to choose the correct preposition. In 2025, they returned to the English STAAR.
- Prepositions: assessed 4 times, correct 2 times.
And can I be honest with you? I have NO idea how to teach prepositions to high school students. It seems to be something you either know or don’t know.
- Quotation marks: assessed once, correct answer
Specifically, the question focused on adding quotation marks at the end of dialogue. Because the dialogue actually began in the previous sentence and continued for two sentences, students had to closely track the dialogue across sentences to answer correctly.
💡 Hot Tip: With incredibly limited time, I hit this skill naturally in my short stories unit. When reading, I will simply ask, “Where does this character’s dialogue start? Where does it end? When my students write with dialogue, I remind them to close it with quotation marks as well.
The Oddball Questions
These popped up on the English 1 STAAR editing section and left me scratching my head. New and not sure what purpose they serve:
- change “and build” → “they build”
- change “but they” → “they”
➡️ What this means: They could have been field questions, which means that we may or may not see them again in 2026. Either way, none of these answer choices were correct.
The Good News for Students and Teachers
If students:
- Know their comma rules, and
- Are willing to use the online dictionary instead of rushing
They can eliminate incorrect options and significantly increase their chances of choosing the right answer.
If you want students to practice the skills that matter the most on STAAR, my STAAR English Editing Unit for English I & English II does that work for you.
The unit is built from years of STAAR analysis and is scaffolded so students have:
- Notes on what the skill looks like
- Guided class practices on the skill
- Skill review with released questions
- Independent practice with realistic looking STAAR-style questions
If you’re ready for a focused approach to editing that saves you planning time and builds student confidence, you can find the unit here.
STAAR continues to make small changes here and there, but the main skills have remained mostly the same. With focused instruction, we can easily make gains on this section of the exam. We got this!
Need more STAAR strategies? Check out easy-to-implement ideas here.
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