The preliminary results for the Texas Education Agency’s new A-F accountability rating system, which were published Jan. 6, have school districts across the state agitated, criticizing the process or even demanding a repeal.

In a Senate Finance Committee hearing held Jan. 24, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said he has heard “buckets” of feedback regarding the A-F system. He said a small, quiet group has been supportive of the evaluation, but a multitude of others  have provided negative criticism.

Locally, Spring and Klein ISD officials said the system is more a measure of the size of the schools’ economically disadvantaged and English language learning populations than an indicator of academic performance. The KISD board of trustees called upon the Texas Legislature to repeal the system in a resolution passed in December.

“A single letter grade is not and will never be representative of all that is occurring on our campuses and throughout our district,” KISD Chief Learning Officer Jenny McGown said. “The reduction of our schools and district to a single grade discards and devalues the unique qualities and gifts of over 51,000 students.”

New system feedback

The 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 state Legislature by Jan. 1.

The A-F system will replace the current accountability system that simply says whether school districts met standards under certain performance indicators. The A-F rating system, which will be fully implemented in 2018, will give districts and their 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 only the first four domains and reflect a system that is a work in progress, TEA spokesperson Lauren Callahan said.

Morath said although three of the categories in the new rating system have clear metrics, Domain IV—which measures postsecondary readiness—is a strange mix of remaining qualifiers that do not necessarily fit well together.

More than 60 percent of the nearly 1,000 school districts that received a grade in Domain IV received a C, D or F, according to the TEA.

None of the school districts in Harris County received higher than a C in Domain IV. SISD received grades of C and D across the four domains graded, including a C in Domain IV. Meanwhile, KISD, which received grades of B and C across the four domains, also received a C in Domain IV.

Judy Rimato, KISD associate superintendent for communications and planning, said the district’s stance is that several factors contribute to the low Domain IV scores, including the way the scores are rounded for different grade levels.

In the resolution that passed in December, the KISD board of trustees asked the Texas Legislature to repeal the rating system and develop a community-based accountability system to allow districts to develop their own assessment methods.

“We will engage in continuous improvement because it’s the right thing to do for our students and certainly not because of a complicated rating system that reduces the hard work of students and educators to an oversimplified letter grade,” KISD Superintendent Bret Champion said.

In early January, SISD Superintendent Rodney Watson told parents in a letter he was concerned the letter grades would be interpreted to have the same meaning as a traditional report card grade and give a false impression of the quality of the schools. The TEA has stated a “C” rating should be understood to be an average grade.

However, Watson expressed a willingness to work with the system at the Jan. 10 board of trustees meeting.

“We don’t make excuses; we will stand ready to respond to new accountability systems,” he said. “We do have a struggling population as it relates to at-risk [students], but it doesn’t mean our students aren’t able to meet the standards.”

Unlike KISD, SISD has not introduced a resolution and does not plan to do so, SISD Communications Director Karen Garrison 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 of the A-F system.

“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.”

Wealth affecting performance?

The KISD resolution condemns the rating system as “an invalid, disconnected reflection of school quality.” The district contends that the system marginalizes students who are economically disadvantaged, are learning English or who move between schools frequently.

In KISD, 40.8 percent of the student body is economically disadvantaged, and the mobility rate—the rate at which students move in and out of the district—is 14.5 percent, according to the 2016 TEA school report card for the district.

In several schools, high rates of economic disadvantage appear to correspond to lower ratings, official said. For example, Klein Forest High School, where 72.4 percent of the student body is economically disadvantaged, received a D in domains I, II and IV, and a C in Domain III. At Benignus Elementary School, where only 14.6 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged, the ratings were evenly split between A’s and B’s.

In SISD, where 70.6 percent of the district is considered economically disadvantaged, the letter grades were lower than those in Klein ISD in many cases. Among the schools that received lower grades, four campuses—including Bammel Elementary School—received three F’s and one D.

Bammel, which had previously received several Improvement Required ratings from the TEA, received a preliminary grade of F in domains I, II and IV and a C in Domain III. Despite the low scores, the school received a Met Standard rating in 2016.

The school, which has about the same percentage of economically disadvantaged students as the district at large, nonetheless had a much higher mobility rate at 33.6 percent in 2016. SISD has a mobility rate of 22 percent in 2016, according to TEA reports.

“Education evaluation is not a ‘one size fits all’ process,” said Barbara Jensen, president of the SISD board of trustees. “The A-F grading system is being designed to take into consideration the challenges that some school systems encounter in educating special student populations, although the corrective strategies do not account for some of the major challenges of providing instruction to mobile populations in urban settings with inequitable and insufficient funding.”

SISD has listed the district’s mobility rates as one of its chief problems in student performance and has underscored its importance as an area of focus in its Every Child 2020 five-year improvement plan that the district launched in 2015.

Next steps

Despite the fact that school districts across the state are seeking to appeal the A-F rating system, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said A-F will not be repealed or replaced.

However, some bills that have been filed in this legislative session either add more indicators to Domain IV or slightly change the wording in the Education Code for the accountability system.

In a statement, state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who sponsored HB 2804, said the new system will remain.

“I realize that some folks are frustrated with accountability, but the taxpayers of Texas deserve to know if their hard-earned tax dollars are being wisely spent and that our students are getting the quality education they deserve,” Taylor said.

During the Senate Finance Committee hearing held Jan. 24, Taylor said he would devote part of this session to refining the domains so they would be better indicators of student performance in the future.

“We need an accountability system that measures outcomes accurately, taking into account all aspects of a district and a student’s education,”  state Rep. Kevin Roberts, R-Spring, said. “An accountability system must not [negatively] impact the ability of administrators and teachers to do their jobs.”

The primary author of HB 2804, former Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, retired in 2015. The joint bill author, Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Dallas, declined to comment.

Emily Donaldson contributed to this story.