AUSTIN (KXAN) – After years of legal battles and delays because of COVID-19 the Texas Education Agency has now released the 2023 A-F accountability ratings.
The A-F ratings are based on multiple factors including graduation rates, the number of college, career, military-ready students and State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) results.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath went over the data in a virtual interview pointing out how 2023 A-F ratings decreased overall from 2022, driven by a decline in student academic growth.
“What you can see is that campus performance between 2022 and 2023 declined,” said Morath.
Morath said there were about 1084 campuses that increased their year-over-year ratings between 2022 and 2023 , with 3,675 staying the same and 3,609 having a grade that decreased.
A look at high poverty campuses shows 305 schools earned an A in 2023.
“Even in those schools, they are getting extraordinary high results,” said Morath. “It is proof positive that demographics are not destiny. All children can learn and achieve at a high level, you don’t have to be born to a wealthy family.”
You can find how your school or district did in 2023 by viewing the report online.
How did we get here?
In 2023, the state announced the A-F system would be refreshed, this refresh included adjustments to cut scores, the way certain domains and indicators were calculated, and the overall system's design according to the TEA.
Following this announcement, some districts said the new system would make it more difficult for schools to reach certain benchmarks to get good ratings.
More than 100 school districts pushed back and joined a lawsuit against the TEA, hoping to stop the release of the 2023 performance ratings.
The districts argued that they did not have enough notice before introducing the new standards.
“There were some school districts that had schools that had significant performance challenges that sued us in order to prevent the ratings from being issued and to prevent any interventions from being executed,” said Morath.
Morath said that now that the ratings have been released you will see some districts that will face additional intervention from the state.
For schools or districts that receive a failing grade for five consecutive years, the state can intervene or replace leadership.
Did the refreshed methodology increase standards making it harder for campuses to achieve an A?
Morath says the A-F refresh did not cause performance decline.
“What unfortunately happened was schools did not grow the students as rapidly as they had the year before, that is the big change,” said Morath.
What is Morath’s takeaway from the 2023 A-F accountability ratings?
“I think the biggest statewide trend is that year-over-year grade level student proficiency was flat between 23 and 22,” said Morath. “Year-over-year growth, so that our effectiveness at growing kids a year or more in a year’s time went down in 23 versus 22. Then year-over-year performance in terms of career readiness in particular for kids coming out of high school went up.”
Morath says the system is transparent and allows people to gauge how the school or district is doing.
“School boards could have easily released this information to their families in 2023, we were enjoined from releasing ratings, but everyone knows the ratings methodology people can calculate it and the raw data was out there,” said Morath.
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