The board will finalize the scorecard in December, trustee Geronimo Rodriguez said. The board is tasked with determining equity goals laid out on the scorecard, he said. How the district measures up against its goals will affect whether Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde continues as superintendent.
“At the end of the day if we don’t produce those results, I don’t get to stay in the chair,” Elizalde said during the Nov. 11 agenda preview meeting ahead of the regular voting meeting Nov. 18.
Among the goals included in the current draft of the scorecard is a goal for the percentage of economically disadvantaged students who meet expectations on the standardized State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness—or STAAR—and who go directly from high school graduation to enrolling in a higher education institution.
Elizalde pointed out that, based on STAAR scores, economically disadvantaged AISD students perform worse than economically disadvantaged students in the state at large.
“Austin ISD disparity is significantly larger than that of the state,” Elizalde said.
In 2021, 47% of all AISD students met expectations on STAAR reading assessments compared to 43% of all students in the state. At the same time, 26% of economically disadvantaged students met expectations within the district, compared to 33% of economically disadvantaged students in the state.
Trustee Kevin Foster said he found performance markers for Black students in AISD, including test scores and rates of entrance into college, “criminally low.”
“The biggest measure is how many Black people have just left,” Foster said. “What has happened to Black people in Austin is a virtual disappearance.”
Foster said he believes Black families leave the district for charter schools or neighboring school districts due to AISD’s track record of inequitable learning outcomes.
Trustees discussed priorities for the scorecard, including readability so community members can clearly understand what each measure records. The draft measures equity by looking at outcomes for economically disadvantaged students rather than breaking students down by race and ethnicity.
