Public school advocates are voicing their concerns over the Texas Education Agency’s recent grades for school districts and campuses. (Photo by Matt Hennie)
The Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus — made up of 20 Democratic lawmakers — raised serious concerns about how the Texas Education Agency determines the ratings, calling it deceptive and harmful.
The Texas Education Agency released grades for public schools and districts across the state for the first time in five years — and many are faring worse than in previous years under the agency’s new ratings system.
A two-year court fight prevented TEA from releasing the scores after several districts sued the state, challenging the changes to the rating standards. TEA hasn’t released a complete set of rankings since 2018.
In a lawsuit first filed by Kingsville ISD outside of Corpus Christi in 2023, school districts argued that the new rating system made it harder to achieve an A — despite improved performances — and that the TEA did not give schools enough notice about the new method. The lawsuit also claimed the TEA scores penalized districts for factors they don’t control, such as standardized tests.
A Travis County judge found that the state’s changes were unlawful and would harm districts across the state. But the TEA appealed the decision, and the 15th Court of Appeals — a new court created to hear lawsuits against the state and filled by Abbott appointees — cleared the agency to release the ratings.
When the TEA released the scores on April 24, some school districts and a coalition of state lawmakers called the methodology “deceptive, harmful, and a blatant attempt to discredit neighborhood public schools to justify school privatization schemes.”
“Texas government officials like Greg Abbott and Mike Morath have intentionally crippled our public schools to keep millions of Texans locked into cycles of poverty,” Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos (D-Richardson), chair of the Texas Legislative Progressive Caucus, said during an April 24 press conference.
The new TEA rankings were released as state lawmakers were putting the finishing touches on school voucher legislation, a priority for Abbott.
“It is not a coincidence that these A-F ratings that were forced to be issued by Greg Abbott’s hand-appointed court are coming out right before Greg Abbott signs the voucher bill,” Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) said during the press conference. “That is a plan to rob our schools of their resources and hand it over to the profiteers so they can make money off the backs of our kids.”
Under the new TEA scoring system, districts and campuses get a letter grade based on three categories: Student achievement, which is test scores and graduation rates; school progress, or how students improve over time; and closing the gaps, which looks at how well schools are making sure students of all backgrounds are successful.
Texas has around 1,200 districts, and about half of school campuses received an A or B grade — which is a 20% decline from previous years.
The Texas School Alliance, which advocates for 50 of the state’s largest districts, released a statement claiming that grades gave a distorted view of how schools fared.
“It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison,” TSA Executive Director HD Chambers said in the statement. “The Commissioner moved the finish line without consent or collaboration — and now schools are being judged against a scale that didn’t even exist when the work was done.”
Only 10% of districts throughout the state got an A rating, 73% got a B or a C, and 17% got a D or an F. And districts with higher rates of low-income students were more likely to get a D or an F than wealthier neighboring districts. View the grades by school or district here.
For example, in Dallas, which scored a C, 141,042 students were enrolled in the 2022-2023 school year, and of those students, nearly 85% were economically disadvantaged. In Frisco, which scored an A, 66,780 students were enrolled in the 2022-2023 school year, and only 14% were economically disadvantaged.
“These scores don’t reflect all of the hard work that our districts have done,” Rep. Aicha Davis (D-Dallas) said during the April 24 press conference. “They have been starved since 2019, they have gone through COVID, and they have had to deal with some unimaginable things without any support from our commissioner. And yet these scores are still being released.”
“I want everyone to know our school districts have done a phenomenal job taking care of each and every one of our students in our communities,” she added. “They don’t turn away any of our students like other schools can. They have still had little support, and now they’re facing these accountability scores that have no predictive validity.”
In response to school districts suing to prevent the release of the scores, the Texas Senate passed a bill aimed at deterring school districts from using legal channels to challenge the ratings system.
Under Senate Bill 1962, from Houston Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the TEA could appoint a conservator to oversee any district that does sue the agency. The Senate passed the bill 20-11 — with only Republicans supporting it — on April 16. It now awaits action by the House Public Education Committee.
A separate lawsuit has blocked the release of the 2023-24 school ratings. TEA said it will release performance ratings from the 2024-25 school year in August.
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