The big picture
At a workshop meeting Sept. 11, the CCISD board of trustees received an update on the state’s new A-F accountability system, which, among some key changes, will shift how school districts are graded for their previous year’s performance.
In some cases, more weight will also be given to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, also known as STAAR.
Final ratings are expected to come out in October, but many school district officials across the state have expressed worry it will cause their ratings to come in lower than previous years.
Because of the changes, the new accountability scores will not be comparable to previous years, according to documents from the Texas Education Agency.
A few trustees at the Sept. 11 workshop took issue with several factors of the new ratings system, such as the timeline in which it was created; the emphasis being put on the STAAR; and worry over how it could affect the upcoming election, which has the district asking for millions of dollars from the public.
A closer look
The new accountability system includes a new scaling system but still will incorporate three general buckets for grading school districts. According to district documents, those are:
- Student achievement
- School progress
- District's success in closing gaps between different student groups
Some aspects of the new accountability system are yet to be released, such as how the state will exactly calculate its “Closing the Gaps” bucket and how progress on exams testing English language learners will be scored.
District’s ratings will also be weighted based on their student enrollment, according to district documents. That means for CCISD, high schools will weigh the most in final ratings.
What they’re saying
At the CCISD workshop meeting, Trustees Bowen and Jay Cunningham said they felt district officials needed to start looking for other ways to measure success rather than just the STAAR.
“There are a lot of problems with this,” Bowen said. “I think we need to find alternative [measures of success] that work for us better [than the STAAR].”
With November’s election looming, which will see CCISD constituents vote on a $302 million bond and a voter-approval tax rate election, Trustee Jonathan Cottrell said there needs to be an effort to explain to residents how the new accountability system works.
“I just don’t think people realize how complicated that system really is,” Cottrell said.
