Two elementary and two middle school campuses in Willis ISD scored the lowest on the state's A-F accountability report. Susan Clardy, Willis ISD’s Executive Director of continuous improvement and accountability, presented detailed plans on how the district intends to improve them.
The framework
There are currently four campuses receiving improvement plans from the WISD board. The grades for each campus are as follows:
Hardy Elementary School: F (58)
Cannan Elementary: D (67), down from C (78)
Brabham Middle School: C (74), same as last year
Lynn Lucas Middle School: C (78), up from D (64)
According to Clardy, Hardy's biggest area for improvement in its turnaround plan is in the Math category for the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. Clardy said that 101 out of 115 qualified students stayed in the "did not meet expectations" category for the math assessment.
The campus currently has a STAAR component score of 30, and achieving a 42 on the next assessment puts the campus at a C. The campus is also targeting a math "meets expectations" score of 40%, up from its current score of 24%.
For Cannan Elementary School, the current score of 67 is a drop of 11 points from last year's 78. It's also 3 points short of maintaining its overall C score at 70. Clardy says the path to becoming a C campus once again includes raising the STAAR component exam from 41 to 47. The current Math growth score for the campus is 44%, and the target score for 2027 is 61%.
Brabham Middle School, despite maintaining its current C rating, was targeted because its students of two or more races missed federal targets. The current target is 47% in “meets expectations” in reading and 32% in math. Clardy said one of the goals for the campus is to get both of these scores to 55% by June of 2027. The campus also plans to track students of two or more races individually on their academic improvement.
Unlike the previous 3 campuses, Lynn Lucas Middle School is a district success story, rising from a D (64) the previous year to a C (78) this year. The goal for year 2 is to sustain that growth in math, closing the gaps and improving attendance.
At the end of the presentation, the WISD board of trustees voted to approve all four of the campus improvement plans going into the next school semester. The plans will run until June, when the Texas Education Agency will receive a detailed report on the results of each improvement plan.
