The preliminary results for the Texas Education Agency’s new A-F accountability rating system that were published Jan. 6 have some school districts across the state up in arms, especially the portion of the ratings that measure postsecondary readiness. About 60 percent of the nearly 1,000 school districts in the state received a grade of C, D or F in that category.

The new rating system is required by House Bill 2804, which was passed during the 2015 legislative session. The bill required the TEA to present an informational report to the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2017.

The A-F system will replace the current accountability system that states 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.

If the new rating system were in place, Leander ISD would have a grade of B in student achievement, an A in student progress, a D in closing performance gaps and a C in postsecondary readiness.

Several districts across the state have been considering passing a resolution asking the Legislature to repeal the new A-F rating system, though LISD has not filed an official resolution, said Brenda Cruz, the director of student information, assessment and accountability with the district.

“That does not mean we do not have, obviously, some concerns that have already been voiced, certainly with some other school districts and representatives,” she said.

In a Senate Finance Committee hearing held Jan. 24, Texas Education Agency 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 louder criticism.

Morath said although three of the domains within the new rating system have clear metrics, the domain that measures postsecondary readiness is a “strange mix of remaining qualifiers that don’t necessarily fit well together.”

“[The metrics for the postsecondary domain read] more like anything the commissioner can think of except for the STAAR test,” Morath said.

The results published Jan. 6 only measured the first four domains and reflect a system that is a work in progress, TEA spokesperson Lauren Callahan said.

Calculating Domain IV Domain IV looks at three variables at the high school level to measure postsecondary readiness: the graduation rate, the percentage of students graduating with a higher-level graduation plan, and college and career readiness.

Several indicators are considered to measure college and career readiness,  including SAT and ACT scores, postsecondary credits earned and how many students took Advanced Placement courses. The indicators that were not measured for the preliminary ratings will be used in the final ratings in 2018 and include the number of students who enlisted in the armed forces and the number of students who earned an industry certification.

Callahan said the Domain IV ratings may change by 2018 because the TEA did not have all the data required under HB 2804. The bill requires the TEA to gather data that the agency was not required to gather before.

Under HB 2804, all campuses are to be graded on postsecondary readiness, but in most cases a district’s score will only consider the postsecondary score for its high schools. For Domain IV, elementary schools are graded on the number of students who are chronically absent, and middle schools are graded on the absenteeism rate and dropout rate.

Cruz said LISD is concerned about the qualifiers that were used to calculate Domain IV, especially for elementary and middle schools. She said LISD has had students with chronic health issues that strongly affect their attendance, yet those students are still counted when calculating the absenteeism rate.

“Those are concerns certainly not just for LISD, but across the state,” she said.

College readiness The problem with determining whether students are ready for college-level courses is that there is no common definition for college readiness, said Raymund Paredes, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board commissioner of higher education.

“There’s a great variance in what might be college readiness at a community college and what might be college readiness at [The University of Texas] or Texas A&M University,” Paredes said.

According to The College Board, nearly 32 percent of Texas students in the class of 2015 met the SAT College and Career Readiness benchmark.

“There’s a persistent problem with the numbers of students who require developmental—or what is also known as remedial—education before they are able to take credit-bearing courses, particularly at community colleges but also at universities across the state,” said Harrison Keller, UT deputy to the president for strategy and policy.

Paredes said most first-time college students struggle with math, writing and science. Domain IV measures SAT scores and students who take AP classes, but it does not specifically measure skills in math, writing or science.

Keller suggested that students struggle with math because high school seniors are not required to take a math course, giving them an entire year of not using those skills.

Cruz said regardless of the change to a new system, it has been difficult to compare progress for individual campuses year by year. The current accountability system in place was implemented in 2012, though the data used to calculate each category changed each year, Cruz said, so it has not been an apples-to-apples comparison.

“In Leander [ISD], what we’re looking at is, regardless of the data elements that are going in, we just want to make sure our students are continuing to grow,” she said. “If they change this standard to this standard, it doesn’t matter. It’s how to do we know our students are growing.”

Aside from assessment scores, Cruz said LISD evaluates the district’s curriculum, instruction and assessment each year. For example, if the district sees a drop in progress in reading, staff members will evaluate to see if the reason is due to curriculum or how curriculum is delivered through instruction.

“When you’re assessing students, you’re assessing them on the content they have learned and how they have learned it in the instruction,” she said. “So it’s the curriculum-instruction-assessment piece that really comes into focus for us.”

Next steps Despite the fact that school districts across the state are seeking to repeal the A-F rating system, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has said A-F will not be repealed or replaced. State legislators seem poised to move forward with the new system.

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

In a statement, state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, who sponsored HB 2804, said the new system is not going away.

“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. “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.”

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 going forward.

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 comment to Community Impact Newspaper.

Emily Donaldson and Caitlin Perrone contributed to this story.