Judge extends order blocking TEA’s release of A-F scores

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports a Travis County state District Court judge has granted a temporary injunction to a group of more than 30 school districts — including Hays, Jarrell, Lockhart, Manor and Temple — to block the Texas Education Agency’s release of the 2023-24 A-F letter grades that rate the state’s school districts and campuses. An education agency spokesman told the American-Statesman the agency plans to appeal the recently released ruling. This is the second year in a row that a Travis County District Court has blocked the TEA’s public release of the scores it uses to assess campuses after two consecutive lawsuits brought by school districts. Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle of the 201st District Court granted the temporary injunction Sept. 18 because lawyers representing the school districts “made a sufficient showing of a probable right to relief.”

In the initial 2023 lawsuit, about 100 school districts argued that the TEA had unfairly recalibrated the rubric for scoring and waited too long to communicate those changes, and that those adjustments would result in lower scores for many districts. In the second lawsuit Aug. 12, five districts — Pecos-Barstow-Toyah, Crandall, Forney, Fort Stockton and Kingsville — argued that the agency still hadn’t fixed those issues, such as notifying districts of changes in a timely way. The districts also took issue with the introduction in February of computer-based grading for open-ended response questions on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. More districts have since signed on. The agency had already been blocked from releasing the 2024 scores under a temporary restraining order, which typically only last for a short time. The TEA calculates its A-F scores largely based on STAAR results as well as college and career preparedness, among other measures.