Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect the comprehensive distribution of 2022-23 ratings for traditional school districts statewide.

Cy-Fair ISD received a “B” for the 2022-23 school year with 80 out of 100 possible points in the Texas Education Agency’s 2022-23 accountability ratings for school districts statewide. The ratings were released April 24 after a delay due to lawsuits, TEA officials said.

The announcement follows an April 3 ruling by Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals, which overturned a lower court's injunction that had blocked the 2023 ratings for over a year.

In September 2023, CFISD was one of over 100 school districts to sue TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, arguing the agency’s revamped accountability system was “unlawful” and would unfairly harm school districts.

"The court ruled that although the system was unfair and unreasonable to districts, it was not illegal," CFISD Superintendent Doug Killian said in an April 22 message to the community.


In a nutshell

The state’s A-F accountability system was designed to measure whether students are ready for the next grade level and how well each district prepares them for success after high school, Community Impact previously reported.

“For far too long, families, educators and communities have been denied access to information about the performance of their schools, thanks to frivolous lawsuits paid for by tax dollars filed by those who disagreed with the statutory goal of raising career readiness expectations to help students,” Morath said in an April 24 news release.
TEA officials said the methods of calculating 2022-23 ratings were “updated to more accurately reflect performance.”

Killian said the district participated in the lawsuit because:
  • The TEA didn’t release the accountability manual for 2022-23 to districts until Oct. 31, 2023—after the school year had already wrapped up.
  • The TEA changed accountability guidelines after State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness and end-of-course exams were completed.
  • An investigation is underway related to a new scoring system for STAAR tests that year, including an automated scoring engine using artificial intelligence.
  • The STAAR exam that year was required to be taken online “with an expectation that students in third grade and older would have expertise in manipulating online tools.”
“Students are punished with no knowledge or control over the change in rules they were playing by. This is the equivalent of winning a close football game, then discovering your touchdowns were only worth three points each instead of six—so now you lost the game,” Killian said.


The breakdown

According to the TEA’s latest accountability report, 9.5% of traditional school districts across Texas earned an "A" rating, while 42.4% earned a "B." About 33% received a "C," 13.7% earned a "D" and 1.2% earned an "F."

With 117,686 students enrolled in 2022-23, CFISD is the third-largest public school district statewide. About 58% of those students were economically disadvantaged, 11.5% were in special education programs, and 19% were emergent bilingual students, TEA data shows. The average attendance rate in 2022-23 was 92.6%, and 21.7% of CFISD students were chronically absent, missing 10% or more of the 2022-23 school year.

Out of the CFISD campuses that received ratings:
  • 20 earned an A
  • 24 earned a B
  • 37 earned a C
  • Six earned a D
  • One earned an F
CFISD schools with 50% or more economically disadvantaged populations averaged a 77, while campuses where less than half of the students were economically disadvantaged averaged a 90, according to TEA data.


Elementary schools averaged an 80, middle schools averaged an 85.6 and high schools averaged a 78.5.

"The [college, career and military readiness] scoring change negatively impacted high school letter grades, which comprise a significant percentage of our overall district grade,” Killian said.
Zooming in

Texas school districts last received ratings through the A-F system for the 2021-22 school year, when about one-third of districts statewide earned an "A" rating for 2021-22, and slightly more than half earned a "B," according to prior reporting.

Since the A-F system launched in 2017-18, CFISD has only received three official ratings due to three years of State of Disaster declarations:
  • 2017-18: Not rated due to Hurricane Harvey
  • 2018-19: B (89)
  • 2019-20: Not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • 2020-21: Not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic
  • 2021-22: A (90)
  • 2022-23: B (80)
“Accountability works. The public issuance of ratings for school systems does positively affect the academic and life outcomes of children. This is a good thing. We do this because it helps children,” Morath said during an April 22 press call.


What’s next

The TEA remains blocked from issuing ratings for the 2023-24 school year due to a separate lawsuit, which is pending in the state appeals court. Morath also said the TEA intends to release ratings for 2024-25 on Aug. 15, per state law.

“A-F ratings are very public, and so that is a leadership challenge that our leaders bear, but this is the cross that we bear for being publicly funded and having the public’s children in our schools. It’s up to us to operate with the highest degree of transparency to deliver the best outcomes that we can for our kids,” Morath said April 22.

Hannah Norton contributed to this report.