At the Aug. 18 board meeting, Jaretha Jordan, deputy superintendent of teaching and learning, highlighted the district's progress, but also revealed widening gaps for students in special populations categories—especially at the middle school level.
"We are making progress, but we’re not perfect yet,” Jordan said. "It’s great to celebrate, but we must dig deeper. It’s every student, every day—and some of our groups are getting left behind."
Breaking it down
Jordan said the score is derived from three separate domains, including:
- Student achievement, based on State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, performance, graduation rates and College, Career and Military Readiness, or CCMR
- School progress, which measures academic growth and compares schools with similar demographics
- Closing the gaps, which focuses on performance among subgroups such as special education, English language learners and economically disadvantaged students
In the last three years, Jordan said school progress has been the “bread and butter,” accounting for the growth in overall score. Now, district officials are moving forward with a focus on improving student achievement to ensure there is growth for “all students” on standardized testing and college and career readiness.
The May 2025 STAAR scores showed that FBISD outperformed state peers in 18 of 20 tests, which officials said was driven by district efforts to strengthen foundational literacy and expand access to advanced coursework. However, officials said they will provide targeted support to remedy dips in algebra scores.
What was done?
In the 2024-25 school year, Jordan said the district designated 20 “focus and measure” campuses—schools identified as needing targeted, intensive support based on data trends. She said 19 of these 20 schools showed growth, with many increasing at least one letter grade.
Jordan said the district will continue, with the majority of these schools on the focus list for 2025-26, while transitioning some into a “monitoring” status to allow for the addition of new focus campuses.
"Our goal is to touch every campus within the next three years,” she said. “We can't do it with the same intensity everywhere, but we will reach them all."
Growing challenges
Jordan said the STAAR data from the 2024-25 school year unveiled widening performance gaps among special education, emergent bilingual and economically disadvantaged schools.
“We see that ... the gap is smaller at the elementary level, but as they matriculate in the system, the gap is getting larger,” she said.
For example, in sixth-grade reading, 81% of all students met “approaches” level standards, but only 48% of special education, 65% of emergent bilingual and 72% of economically disadvantaged students reached that benchmark. She said similar disparities were observed in reading assessments across middle school and seventh-grade math.
Important to note
Three schools received an F, including Willowridge High, Missouri City Middle and McAuliffe Middle, per the TEA. Jordan said that McAuliffe and Missouri City middle schools were automatically downgraded from a D to an F rating due to what she called a "gatekeeper" policy that caps overall scores based on student achievement and school progress domains.
These campuses will have to submit turnaround plans to the TEA by Nov. 14, in addition to campuses that were rated D, including:
- Aldridge, Burton and Heritage Rose elementary schools
- Lake Olympia Middle
- Hightower and Bush high schools
To maintain momentum and close achievement gaps, Jordan said FBISD administrators employ a “strategic, data-driven, and targeted” approach to focus on strategies including:
- Emphasizing strong core instruction rather than relying solely on interventions at the middle school level
- Aiming for 90% of the class of 2026 to meet CCMR standards, up from the current 53%
- Reviewing staffing models, instructional tools and early interventions for emergent bilingual and special education students
- Ensuring gifted students are academically engaged to prevent academic stagnation
