Six Magnolia ISD campuses received a D as either an overall campus rating or a rating in one of three categories making up the overall 2018-19 campus ratings from the Texas Education Agency, which were released in August. These campuses must now implement Targeted Improvement Plans, or TIPs, to the TEA to leverage improvement in student achievement, said Anita Hebert, MISD assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, at an Oct. 14 MISD board of trustees meeting. According to TEA data, Ellisor and Magnolia elementary schools in addition to ALPHA Academy received an overall D rating, while Magnolia Parkway and Williams elementary schools and Magnolia Intermediate School received a D in one of the three categories—or domains—used to evaluate campus performance. "It's not a new process that we look at our scores and try to make an improvement plan. That's been ongoing," Hebert said during the meeting. "But the state accountability system requires some specific interventions for campuses to go through to work toward improvement." The 2018-19 year was the first year campuses as well as districts received a letter grade of A-F from the TEA, Community Impact Newspaper previously reported. Letter grades were awarded based on the three domains of student achievement, school progress and closing the gaps. The state required a Campus Intervention Team for each campus receiving a D be sent to a regional training session to determine the TIP needed for that particular campus, Hebert said. Hebert said each of the six campuses' TIPs include at least one focus area from the statewide Effective Schools Framework: strong school leadership and planning; effective, well-supported teachers; high-quality curriculum; positive school culture; and effective instruction. "[Each Campus Intervention Team] had to go through a self evaluation process based on the components of this framework," she said. "Honestly, that's been a good process ... [the state is] asking schools that didn't make the mark to really do a reflection process and see how [they] can get better and do the things that good schools do." All six of the campuses chose effective instruction as one of the two focus areas, Hebert said, and all but ALPHA Academy chose to revisit the campus mission, vision, values and goals as the second focus area. These focuses can be implemented in a variety of ways as determined by the CIT, she said. Districts with campuses that received overall D ratings, such as MISD, are also ineligible to receive an overall A district rating by the TEA. MISD received an overall B rating for the 2018-19 school year, having earned 87 of 100 points, TEA data shows. "I'm glad we have the [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] tests, that's wonderful, but our goal is to teach those kids," said Joe Duncan, assistant secretary for the board of trustees. "I'm glad we're accelerating the scores ... but at the end of the day, that child is going to graduate from our district, and how good of a job did we do [in] making that person ready to move on and do what they do?"