The Hays CISD board of trustees discussed joining a litigation about the changes during its agenda workshop meeting Aug. 19.
The context
A Travis County judge recently blocked the TEA from releasing its 2023-24 A-F accountability ratings for schools, as previously reported by Community Impact. The ratings, which were set to be released Aug. 15, are designed to provide insight into the quality of each school and are based on student performance on the STAAR, high school graduation rates and more.
“The Legislature adopted a strong A-F framework to help improve the quality of student learning across the state, give parents a clear understanding of how well their schools are performing and establish clear expectations for school leaders so they can better serve students,” a TEA spokesperson said in a statement previously reported by Community Impact. “It is disappointing that a small group of school boards and superintendents opposed to fair accountability and transparency have once again filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing A-F ratings from being issued and keeping families in the dark about how their schools are doing.”
Community Impact also reported last year changes made to the accountability system, which plaintiffs in the current lawsuit say could make it “mathematically impossible” for schools to receive an “A” rating. The changes also impact the way the STAAR is graded.
“During the 2023-24 school year, [TEA] Commissioner [Mike Morath] radically changed the way the new STAAR test is being administered by replacing human graders with AI grading,” the plaintiffs said. “This change was made without ensuring that this radical change would not impact the new STAAR test’s validity and reliability. In fact, it appears that AI grading has resulted in a test that is not “valid and reliable” and cannot lawfully be used to assign A-F ratings for school districts and campuses.”
Zooming in
Superintendent Eric Wright said the more districts that join the lawsuit, the less the legal service fees will be. HCISD joined the A-F accountability rating lawsuit in 2023, and the total fees were around $5,000.
Wright said about 67 Texas districts were on the original conference call to join the lawsuit as of mid-August.
“I think we owe it to our students and to our teachers to make sure that what we are teaching is in-line and assessed properly,” Wright said. “I think for a very small fee, we’ll be able to find out the truth of the matter, and if for some reason the test comes back and it is vetted appropriately, we’ll know, and this will be our new baseline that we can move forward from.”
Stay tuned
The board will vote to adopt the legal services agreement to join the litigation at its next regular meeting Aug. 26.
