Editor's note: Community Impact reached out to LHISD for comment and will update this story with the district's response.

Liberty Hill ISD received a B on the Texas Education Agency’s A-F accountability rankings for the 2022-23 school year.

The details

The ratings system is designed to evaluate schools based on several metrics, including:

• State assessments
• Graduation rates
• College, career and military readiness

According to the TEA website, 70% of the evaluations are based on student achievement, or how much the student knows and can demonstrate, and school progress, or how much they’ve grown over time; the remaining 30% measures how well the district or campus closed the gaps for students in need.

LHISD earned a B rating overall with a rating of 85 out of 100. The district earned an 86 under the student achievement metric, an 82 on school progress, and an 84 for closing the gap. The rating is consistent with the district’s ratings from the 2021-22 school year. TEA made statewide district rankings public April 24.

Some context

The TEA ratings have been held up in legal proceedings that prevented information from the last two school years from going public, according to previous Community Impact reporting.

In 2023, more than 100 school districts sued TEA Commissioner Mike Morath over the TEA’s refreshed ratings system, in an attempt to stop the agency from “unlawfully calculating and assigning A-F performance ratings.” TEA was required to refresh their standards after five years, but some districts felt that some of the changes would make it too difficult for districts to reasonably comply.

A Travis County district judge blocked the release of the reports in October 2023. Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals overturned a lower court injunction April 3, allowing the reports to be released.

The ratings for the 2023-24 school year are still blocked under the injunction. While those figures are still pending, Morath anticipates the scores for the 2024-25 school year will be released Aug. 15, in accordance with state law.

Data for the ratings were not released for the 2019-20 or 2020-21 school years due to the pandemic.

What else?

TEA also added a “What If” rating, which applies the newly refreshed standards to previous years to help compare them to the 2022-23 school year. LHISD’s "What If" score for the 2021-22 school year came in at a C with a 79 rating, down from its original unadjusted score of 88. Based on this metric, Liberty Hill's performance improved on their 2022-23 score, when comparing it to the previous year's performance using the same calculations.

Hannah Norton and Chloe Young contributed to this article.