After a lengthy court challenge, the Texas Education Agency released its 2023 Texas school and district accountability results Thursday morning.
Scores declined.
Education Commissioner Mike Morath summarized the findings for reporters during a Dallas visit Wednesday.
"The rate at which we grew children academically — their year-over-year academic growth — it was very high in 2022," he said. "It was not nearly as high in 2023. The number of kids broadly passing stayed about the same, but the rate with which we were growing kids declined materially."
Morath suggested the legal delay may have damaged student education.
"We have a strong amount of evidence that the fact that this lawsuit has gone on for two years has actually caused reduced learning in math and reduced learning in reading," he said.
That lengthy delay began in 2023 when more than 100 Texas school districts, including Dallas and Richardson ISD, stopped the TEA from issuing the grades by suing the agency.
Districts argued they were unprepared for a change in the scoring benchmark, which updated rating standards. As a result, they said grades could be lower than a school's previous scores, which would be unfair.
And up until this month, those results had remained tied up in court. But on April 3, the state's 15th Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the TEA.
The Texas School Alliance, which advocates for 50 of the state's largest districts, said the grades gave a distorted view of how schools fared.
"It's an apples-to-oranges comparison," read a statement from TSA Executive Director HD Chambers. "The Commissioner moved the finish line without consent or collaboration — and now schools are being judged against a scale that didn't even exist when the work was done."
Morath did not make the full grades available to KERA News ahead of their Thursday morning release.
The ratings look at STAAR test scores students take every year beginning in third grade.
The ratings also consider a school's progress over time and how it compares to other similar campuses and examines how a school closes learning gaps. It measures success of students with different racial and ethnic backgrounds and family incomes, among other criteria.
To what end? Morath says it's a valuable tool so parents like him — he has children in public schools — can pick the best school for their kids.
"We want to make sure that families have that information so they can then make decisions that are in the best interest of their family," he said.
He maintained the tool works, even when a school bottoms out, because a D or F-graded campus actually improves quickly after the school learns what's not working. It can then make rapid changes.
A school with an F five consecutive years can be ordered closed or board replaced. It has happened, though rarely.
The TEA, for example, installed Mike Miles to oversee Houston ISD in 2023 in response to years of poor academic performance.
More typically, D and F ratings force improvement plans by the district to improve academic outcomes for a school's students.
"Without that," he said, "you don't necessarily see the change of adult behavior happening to support the campus."
The release of 2023 ratings doesn't erase the blackboard of all legal barriers — 2024 ratings remain withheld because of a separate lawsuit. Several districts argued it wasn't right for a computer system to grade essay questions on the state test.
While TEA did not make the results available ahead of Wednesday's release, school districts did have access — and some have already responded.
At Arlington ISD, for example, 16 of its campuses were now expected to receive an F for 2023 despite having no failing schools in 2022. And 14 campuses could get an F rating for the 2024 period, the district projected.
"While this data reflects where we were at that moment, it does not define who we are or where we're going," read a statement from Superintendent Matt Smith. "We've taken bold, intentional steps since then to support our students and staff—and we're already seeing progress."
Bill Zeeble is KERA's education reporter. Got a tip? Email Bill at bzeeble@kera.org. You can follow him on X @bzeeble.
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