Last Thursday, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released its most recent accountability ratings for Texas public schools and districts. Each school/district was assigned a grade from A to F based on criteria including standardized test results, annual academic growth, graduation rates and college, career and military readiness. Whitesboro ISD and S&S CISD dipped to a “C” while Collinsville ISD moved up to a “B”.
These ratings actually reflect data from the 2023 school year. However, due to a 19-month court battle involving several Texas school districts who challenged TEA for changing its standards, the results have only now been released. Ratings for 2024 are expected to be released later this fall.
In the reports, scores are essentially tallied in three main categories: student achievement, school progress and closing the gaps. In 2022, WISD earned 82, 78 and 76 respectively, totaling 80 with a “B” rating. In 2023, it earned 76, 74 and 78 respectively, totaling 77 for a “C” rating. This shows that the district dropped in overall student achievement (STAAR test scores, graduation rate, etc.) and school progress (academic growth) but improved in closing the gap.
“Whitesboro ISD received a ‘C’ rating from a grading system that is designed to make as many school systems look as poorly as possible for the purpose of continuing the state’s pursuit of repurposing taxpayer dollars,” Whitesboro ISD Superintendent Ryan Harper said. “At Whitesboro, we do not teach to the test. We teach for the betterment of the whole child, and our amazing staff is doing better than ever! Do we have things that we can improve on? You bet we do, in all areas. However, to ever correlate a one-off letter grade with the effort your educators are putting into their daily mission, is ignorant and insulting in its entirety.”
Harper said that while Whitesboro would love to get an ‘A’ or ‘B’ on testing day, the district would prefer that pursuit not be at the expense of the whole child.
“Regurgitation of memorized facts works for a computer, but we are first trying to produce thinkers and doers that will be strong, successful, contributing members of society,” Harper said. “We will continue to place high standards and high expectations on our students, and we will continue to endeavor to produce the best, well-rounded, future-ready students that we can here at WISD.”
In 2022, S&S CISD scored 87, 88 and 77 for a total of 87, a high “B” score. In these latest results, they scored 76, 69 and 59 for a total of 71, a low “C”. The day after the results were released, the school board took to Facebook to address the significant drop in score.
“It’s disappointing – and frankly, it’s something we should all be concerned about,” the post read. “To respond proactively, we will hold a special-called board meeting within the next two weeks to discuss these scores in depth and determine a clear path forward. We invite the community to attend this meeting and be better informed and engaged in the process.”
The post also listed several actions the district is taking to raise their score, including higher accountability for school principals, higher standards for teachers and additional testing to gauge academic levels and provide more data on student growth and performance.
Unlike Whitesboro and S&S school districts, Collinsville saw an increase in their ratings across the board. In 2022, the district earned 80, 76 and 71 for a total of 77, a high “C” rating. In 2023, it increased to 82, 80 and 80 for a total of 81, a low “B” rating.
The 2023 scores are from Superintendent Matthew Davenport’s first year at Collinsville. The increase in score is no accident. When he came to Collinsville in the summer of 2022, the district made increasing its academic rating a priority.
“Performance on the STAAR test is important. It’s not everything, but it is one data point that we look at. Unfortunately, it is the only data point that most of the general public uses to gauge a school’s academic performance,” Davenport said. “We needed to change some individuals’ perception of the STAAR test and the STAAR’s importance. In 2022, we held summer school for every student who did not pass the 2022 STAAR test.”
Additionally, during the 2022-2023 school year, CISD prioritized student attendance. At that time, the district’s attendance rate was 94.0 and student chronic absenteeism was 20.2%. In 2023, they increased student attendance to 95.7% and dropped the chronic absenteeism to 9.1%.
“The only way for students to receive quality instruction is for them to be at school every day,” Davenport said.
He also stressed that these ratings are not just about passing the STAAR test; they’re about seeing annual growth in a student.
“That is what we have really focused on in the 2024-2025 school year: just obtain a year’s worth of growth each year,” Davenport said.
It’s been five years since TEA has released a complete set of school ratings. In 2020 and 2021, ratings weren’t published due to COVID-19. In 2022, Texas lawmakers prevented TEA from releasing scores to give schools time to recover from the learning disruptions presented by the pandemic.
In that time, the TEA made changes to its accountability rating system, which included raising benchmarks to reach the highest ratings for districts. School districts filed a lawsuit against TEA, claiming the changes weren’t provided at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year as required by the state – therefore, districts weren’t given enough notice to change their approach for optimum results.
A judge in Travis County sided with the school districts, then TEA appealed the decision and this month, the 15th Court of Appeals ruled the TEA commissioner didn’t overstep his authority by making those changes. This allowed the 2023 grades to be released last week.
However, there is another lawsuit over the TEA’s 2024 ratings, which is currently awaiting a decision from that same appeals court. This means 2024 Accountability Ratings won’t be released until a decision has been made.
For more detailed information regarding the 2023 TEA Accountability Ratings, visit https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/perfreport/account/acct_srch.html?year=2023