School districts across Texas are expecting to receive the first iteration of a revised accountability rating system from the Texas Education Agency later this month.

Plano ISD trustees received an overview of how the new ratings will be calculated during the Aug. 6 meeting. Staff said that changes in the metrics used to evaluate school districts may result in a lower letter grade compared to past rankings.

Two-minute impact

The new formula includes three groups that remain unchanged, said Lisa Wilson, deputy superintendent for Teaching, Learning and Life Readiness.

All school districts, including Plano ISD, are evaluated based on the following:
  • Student achievement, which is based on STAAR results and college, career and military readiness metrics
  • School progress, which allows districts to take the higher rating between relative performance of students with similar backgrounds or progressing students from failing grades to passing grades on the STAAR
  • Closing the gaps, which focuses on students with the most need meeting certain learning objectives
The new accountability rating will place a 70% weighting on student achievement and school progress, while 30% of the rating is derived from the closing the gaps score.


“We have some new systems in place this year that we’re trying to improve our processes, systems and expectations to elevate everyone to the next level,” Wilson said. “We’ll be looking at middle school really closely because we see that in both MAP and STAAR that that’s a leveling off we need to take a look at.”

Zooming in

With the new ratings, extra emphasis has been placed on college, career and military readiness, Wilson said. Superintendent Theresa Williams added that it could take the district three to four years to catch up on meeting the new college, career and military readiness standards.

“We have lots of pockets of success and we need to celebrate those things, but we also have real work to do,”Williams said. “We need to spend some time making sure we’re very clear, intentional and purposeful by design about how we’re supporting kids that are not getting the outcome for all students to have in Plano ISD.”


With the new accountability system, individual campuses that fail to achieve at least a 70 in three of the four scores cannot receive a higher total than 69, Wilson said. It is also possible that the district’s accountability rating could drop because of the new criteria, despite improved academic performance.

What’s next?

Districts are expecting to receive their accountability ratings from the state Aug. 13, Wilson said. Ratings should then be released to the public Aug. 15.

Wilson said that the new system means that comparisons with past accountability ratings is difficult since the criteria have changed.