Four Texas school districts at risk for state takeover after 2023 ratings released

AUSTIN – At least four Texas school districts could be forced to shut down their chronically underperforming schools or submit to a takeover from the state, based on annual state ratings released Thursday morning.

The Texas Education Agency released its A-F grades for the 2022-23 school year, the first complete set in five years. Ratings had not been released due to court battles and pauses to the rating system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Beaumont, Midland, Fort Worth and Wichita Falls school districts all have at least one school that failed state ratings for five or more years in a row, putting them at risk of bruising state penalties.

Of the 8,539 public schools evaluated in the state, 19.3% got an A. Another 33.6% got a B and 24.7% got a C. About one in five campuses failed to meet academic standards, with 14.8% earning a D and 7.6% earning an F.

Performance scores for schools and districts are determined 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 their most disadvantaged students.

Overall grades declined for many campuses since the 2021-2022 school year. Half of the state’s campuses received A or B grades, a decline of about 20 percentage points from the previous school year. The state only released partial scores that year.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath attributed that decline to a drop in academic growth as schools worked to recover from the pandemic.

Many school district leaders, meanwhile, have attributed the declines to stricter college and career readiness standards. For the first time, schools had to show that 88% of their graduating high school students were college or career-ready to get an A, up from the 60% benchmark in previous years. About 10,000 more students met the requirements to prove college and career readiness.

“We keep raising the bar so that Texas is a leader in preparing students for postsecondary success,” TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said at a press roundtable.

The release of the A-F ratings comes after legal battles over changes to how schools are scored. More than 120 school districts sought to block the release of the 2023 ratings because they said TEA had not given them adequate notice before rolling out stricter college and career readiness benchmarks.

Earlier this month, an appeals court cleared TEA to make the 2023 A-F grades public, ruling that Morath did not overstep his authority when he changed the scoring metrics.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.