A report released this morning by the Texas Education Agency shows a vast majority of Austin ISD schools have met state academic standards.
Four possible ratings—Met Standard, Met Alternative Standard, Not Rated or Improvement Required—are assigned each year to districts as a whole as well as individual campuses.
In AISD, 112 schools were rated as Met Standard, and four were identified as Improvement Required. Those ranked in the latter included Burnet, Martin and Mendez middle schools and Govalle Elementary School.
To receive a rating of Met Standard or Met Alternative Standard, a school must meet certain benchmarks set by the state on three of four performance indexes, which include student achievement, student progress, closing performance gaps and postsecondary readiness.
AISD schools that met state standards in all categories include LASA—Liberal Arts and Science Academy—as well as Blackshear, Gullet, Cowan and Blazier elementaries.
Mendez Middle School was the only school in the district to not meet state standards in any of the individual performance indexes.
As a district, Austin ISD met state academic standards in all four performance categories.
Beginning in August 2018 the state's accountability system will be revised to include a fifth performance indicator. The A-F system, which includes a marker for community and student engagement, has been widely criticized for its alleged over-reliance on standardized test scores.
Preliminary A-F rankings released by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year assigned AISD a "D" grade in the domain measuring postsecondary readiness.
On Dec. 19 the district's trustees
unanimously passed a resolution calling on the state to repeal its A-F accountability system.