Editors’ note: Last Thursday the Texas Education Association released data from school accountability ratings that had been withheld by a lawsuit for 19 months. A story in the nonprofit Texas Tribune by Sneha Dey and Rob Reid helped provide context for understanding the data; we appreciate the opportunity to reprint the opening portion of it here.
Texas public school ratings are grades on how well districts educate their students. They dropped significantly after the state implemented stricter scoring standards, according to new data released Thursday.
Low performance ratings on the state’s grading scale can have meaningful consequences. Due to these ratings, families may choose to enroll their students at a different campus, and businesses may forgo investments in those communities. Districts that get consecutive failing grades can face bruising state sanctions, like an order to shut down underperforming schools or a state takeover.
The Thursday release of ratings for the 2022-23 school year marked the first time failing grades for districts have been made public in five years. The percentage of schools in the state that got an F rating increased from 4.5% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2023.
Of the 8,539 public schools evaluated in the state, 19.3% received an A. Another 33.6% got a B, 24.7% a C, and 14.8% a D. Fort Worth ISD was the only district that had a school get an F rating five years in a row, meeting the threshold for a state takeover, the highest level of state intervention.
Performance scores for schools and districts are based on three categories: how students perform on state tests and meet college and career readiness benchmarks; how students improve over time; and how well schools are educating the state’s most disadvantaged students. The better score out of the first two categories — student achievement and student progress — counts for 70% of schools’ overall grade. The remaining 30% is based on the closing the gaps score.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath interpreted the 2022-23 declines as a stabilization of student improvement after rapid recoveries following the pandemic. School districts across the state, meanwhile, say new accountability standards made it harder to get a high rating.
The 2023 ratings show 56% of Texas’ high schools had more of their seniors prove they were ready for college, the military or the workforce than the previous school year. At the same time, nearly 90% of campuses saw their student readiness score decrease, a reflection of higher standards that went into effect that year. In the 2022-23 school year, for the first time, TEA only awarded an A in college and career readiness when 88% of a school’s graduates were considered ready for life after high school. That’s up from 60% in previous years.
A legal battle blocked the release of the ratings for 19 months. More than 120 districts across the state argued TEA did not give them adequate notice before rolling out stricter college and career readiness benchmarks. An appeals court earlier this month ruled cleared TEA to make the 2023 A-F grades public.
Districts with higher rates of low-income students were more likely to get a D or an F than their wealthier counterparts. Almost none of the school districts with a rate of lowincome students lower than 20% received an overall rating of D or F.
Schools in lower-income areas are often working with fewer resources to meet the same goalposts as every other school in the state. Opponents of the rating system say it is unfair for schools working with fewer resources and doesn’t reflect the enormous needs of educating students coming from struggling families.
Read more at www.texastribune. org/2025/04/24/ texas-schools-accountability-
