In a Senate Finance Committee hearing Jan. 24, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said he has heard “buckets” of feedback regarding the A-F system. He said there has been a small, quiet group in support of the evaluation, but a multitude of others had criticisms.
“My concern is that it creates an inaccurate picture,” Conroe ISD Superintendent Don Stockton said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion during the legislative session, so I’m confident that they’re going to get a lot of feedback and make a good decision about the future of it.”
A new systemThe new rating system is required by House Bill 2804, which was passed during the 2015 Texas legislative session. The bill required the TEA to present an informational report to the Legislature by Jan. 1.
The A-F system will replace the existing accountability system that determines if school districts earned ratings of Met Standard, Met Alternative Standard or Improvement Required under certain performance indicators. The A-F rating system, which will be fully implemented in 2018, will give districts and campuses an overall grade of A, B, C, D or F as well as an individual grade in five domains: Student Achievement, Student Progress, Closing Performance Gaps, Postsecondary Readiness, and Community and Student Engagement.
The results published Jan. 6
measured the first four domains and reflect a system that is a work in progress, TEA spokesperson Lauren Callahan said.
Despite concerns regarding the rating system from local school districts and boards of trustees, officials with the Texas Association of School Boards said they are not concerned by the accountability.
“We are not afraid of accountability at all,” said Debbie Gillespie, a regional director on the board for the Texas Association of School Boards. “I think that’s part of what has made public education better. But it needs to be fair, and it needs to be meaningful.”
Local reaction
CISD received an A in Domain II, a B in domains I and III, and a C in Domain IV, according to the TEA data.
“Conroe [ISD], I think, fared very well overall, but it’s very confusing when you try and pare down what goes into each of the domains,” CISD board President Melanie Bush said.
Bush said she has spoken with local legislators about how ineffective and complicated the new system seems. Some districts, such as Montgomery and Willis ISDs, have already passed resolutions stating opposition to the system, although CISD does not have plans for a resolution of its own, she said.
MISD Superintendent Beau Rees said that although he supports school accountability, he believes the new A-F system does not reflect the quality of education provided at local schools. MISD received a B in domains I, II and IV and a C in Domain III.
Rees said Montgomery Intermediate School, for example, received two B’s and two C’s in the new system despite having been one of 16 Texas schools to be nominated for the U.S. Department of Education’s Blue Ribbon Schools Program.
“It is nominated for the highest award the Department of Education can give, and it can’t muster an A. There has to be something wrong there,” he said.
Rees said he would instead favor a community-based accountability system that included feedback from local residents.
“At the elementary grade level, for example, we have our school enrichment model—which is a Gifted and Talented model that we apply to every student,” Rees said. “Those things are not measured, and we are spending taxpayer dollars on programs like that because that is what our community wants.”
WISD received a C in Domain I and D’s in domains II, III and IV. Superintendent Tim Harkrider said he supports House Bill 1333, which was filed this session by Rep. Jason Isaac, R-Dripping Springs, and is known as the Teaching Over Testing Act. The bill seeks to reduce the reliance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exam throughout the state as well as the weight STAAR scores have in the A-F ratings.
One of the shortfalls with the new rating system, Harkrider said, is school districts are rewarded more for higher-scoring students rather than the amount of students who receive passing grades. Instead, he said he would like to see a system that measures a student’s growth throughout the year.
“I wouldn’t have an issue with taking smaller assessments two or three times per year,” he said. “That would truly measure where things were when they got here and—over the course of different exams—where they are at the end of the year. I think that is a better measurement of whether a student is learning.”
Next stepsAlthough school districts across the state have adopted resolutions to repeal the A-F rating system, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said the system would not be repealed or replaced. CISD officials said similar assessment systems have been repealed in other states.
“I think we’ve found in all of the states that have done this previously, that it has not worked,” Bush said. “We have 15 other states that utilize this type of system, and none have shown it to truly be that effective. Virginia recently repealed it. That says something.”
In addition to HB 1333, other bills have been filed this session to address the new rating system, including bills that would add more indicators to Domain IV or slightly change the wording in the Texas Education Code regarding the accountability system.
Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who sponsored HB 2804 in 2015, said the system is not going away. During the Senate Finance Committee hearing Jan. 24, Taylor said he would devote part of this session to refining the domains so they would be better indicators of student performance.
“Our students and parents deserve a grading system that helps individual students, their campuses and their districts transparently measure academic success and clearly delineate where improvements are needed,” Taylor said.
Additional reporting by Emily Donaldson and Jesse Mendoza
