Texans can access 2023 ratings for K-12 districts and individual campuses on www.txschools.gov. Alongside these ratings, the TEA also published “what if” scores for the 2021-22 school year, reflecting how schools would have performed under the current accountability system, which was updated in 2023 to better align with student performance.
“Accountability works—the public issuance of ratings for school systems does positively affect the academic and life outcomes of children,” TEA Commissioner Mike Morath told reporters on April 22. “We do this because it helps children. ... When we don't do it, you don't get the benefits of those public ratings and it is very logical to then presume that performance declines as a result.”
At a glance
Texas schools are rated on an A-F scale based on three criteria: student achievement, school progress and closing the gaps. Elementary and middle school ratings are largely based on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, which students begin taking in third grade, while high school ratings are based on the STAAR and how well students are prepared for success after graduation.
Campus performance declined statewide between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. Of the 8,368 campuses given both 2022 “what if” scores and 2023 ratings, 44% received the same grade, 13% received a higher grade in 2023 and 43% received a lower grade in 2023, Morath said.
In 2023, 1,646 campuses earned an A; 2,873 campuses scored a B; 2,107 campuses received a C; 1,264 campuses received a D; and 649 campuses scored an F, according to the TEA’s statewide summary report.
Nearly 11% of school districts received an A rating for the 2022-23 school year. Forty percent of districts earned a B, while about 32% scored a C, 14% received a D and about 3% received an F, according to the TEA.
For more details about how local school districts performed, visit visit www.communityimpact.com or subscribe to local newsletters.
Zooming in
State law requires that the A-F system be updated every five years, Morath said.
“There are changes because we are statutorily required to make sure that we set goals in the A-F system to make Texas a national leader in preparing students for postsecondary success,” he told reporters. “So, we will continue to raise the bar over time, but we don't do it every year—we do it once every five years.”
Morath attributed declining campus performance to changes in the system and less-rapid gains in student performance a few years after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“What unfortunately happened was, schools didn't grow students as rapidly as they had the year before,” he told reporters.
Morath said he plans to release ratings for the 2024-25 school year on Aug. 15, per state law.
The background
Texas’ school accountability system, designed in 2017 and updated in 2023, was created to give parents insight about the quality of their children’s campus and district through annual A-F ratings. Over 100 Texas school districts sued Morath in August 2023, arguing that the agency made “unlawful” changes to the system that they said would result in lower ratings despite indications that performance had improved, according to court documents.
Morath told reporters that some elementary and middle school campuses performed better under the redesigned system, noting that the changes better reflect “how well schools close the gaps between students and how well they're accelerating students, basically catching students up to grade level.”
For high schools, the new system raised the bar for campuses to receive an A based on students’ readiness for college, a career or the military from 60% to 88%, according to previous Community Impact reporting. Morath said this change caused some declines in high school scores, “which is one of the reasons why we always give a ‘what if’ rating.”
“It is absolutely mathematically possible for every [school] to get an A, but they have to earn it,” Morath said April 22. “It's not just given away.”
State law stipulates A-F ratings be issued by Aug. 15 of each year, but that date was repeatedly pushed back in 2023. The agency had not issued ratings for the 2022-23 school year by the time a Travis County district judge blocked their release in October 2023.
Two other Travis County judges later prohibited the TEA from assigning ratings for the 2023-24 school year.
Schools have not received complete A-F ratings since 2019. Accountability ratings were not issued at all in 2020 or 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, schools that received a C or lower were deemed “not rated” as they recovered from pandemic-related learning loss.
