As I’m sure you’ve heard, with the new year will come a new state mandated A-F rating system for Texas schools. I wanted to a. inform you about the new A-F system and b. provide you with my professional opinion.
On Dec. 1, the Texas Education Agency released the criteria for the new A-F accountability system mandated by the 84th Texas Legislature. These labels won’t be formally applied to campuses until the 2017-2018 school year, but the Education Commissioner must submit a report to the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2017. Ratings will be assigned based upon 2015-2016 data. Neither penalties nor distinctions are attached to these assigned ratings.
To date, districts do not know how the criteria will be measured. The timeline is as follows:
- December 16: Data tables are released without ratings
- December 30: State legislators receive school district A-F ratings
- January 4: School districts and campuses receive A-F ratings
- January 6: A-F ratings are released to the public
Unfortunately, this timeline supports claims that the primary reason for the A-F system is to provide legislators with ammunition against public education. If this is not the purpose, then why release information over Winter Break and why release information to legislators before the schools themselves?
The 2018 ratings will be in the form of A-F letter grades assigned for each district and campus in five domains, which include:
- I: Meeting standards at satisfactory and college readiness levels on STAAR
- II: STAAR annual improvement at satisfactory and college readiness levels
- III: Reducing “academic achievement differentials” from different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds; that is, closing the distance to a predetermined target for specific student groups on the STAAR
- IV: Academic attainments (other than STAAR) that differ by campus level, including drop out and graduation rates, CTE sequence completion, AP course completion, TSI benchmarks and more for high schools; attendance, dropout rates and high school, college and career preparatory instruction for middle schools; and attendance for elementary schools.
- V: Three self-selected categories of the Community and Student Engagement ratings.
- These ratings do not account for factors unique to each district nor are they a complete reflection of any child or campus. We can anticipate that there will be inconsistencies. Campuses that are rated as “Met Standard” may receive a “D” or an “F” in a particular category. Conversely, campuses that are “Improvement Required” may receive an “A” or a “B” if there is significant growth.
Organizations such as the Texas Association of Schools Administrators (TASA) and Texas Classroom Teachers Associations (TCTA), representing districts from across Texas have spoken out against the A-F ratings citing the high correlation between a school or district’s ratings and poverty levels. The A-F system is built on a bell curve ensuring that there will be schools that receive “A’s” and schools that will receive “F’s”. In North Carolina, nearly 90 percent of schools rated “A” had fewer than 50 percent of their students living in poverty, while 98 percent of “D”-rated campuses and 100 percent of those who received an “F” had poverty levels greater than 50 percent.
When the A-F ratings are released, please look at them in context. They are just one source of information. They should not be used as the sole indicator to judge a child or a campus. I join Belton I.S.D. Superintendent Dr. Susan Kincannon, in stating that as a District we will not be attaching a great deal of significance to these ratings.
We measure our success by the bottom line. Temple I.S.D. students, regardless of their income level, graduate at a higher rate than the state average and our peers. Our students may take a little longer, but when they stay with us, they not only catch up, but often exceed state averages, and they are graduating!
- Robin Battershell, Temple ISD Superintendent of Schools