Texas Education Agency accountability ratings system

The Texas Education Agency accountability ratings system rates all public schools, charter schools, and school districts in the State of Texas.

Accountability under STAAR

Beginning in 2013, schools and districts receive one of three accountability ratings: "Met Standard", "Met Alternative Standard" or "Improvement Required", based on four indices, including student performance on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test. Schools and districts that receive "Met Standard" ratings are also eligible to receive one or more distinctions based on outstanding performance in specific areas of these indices.

Accountability under TAKS

Note: This ranking system was last used in 2011. Texas schools are now ranked under a new system using performance on the STAAR Test and several other performance indexes.

Based on school or district performs, the school or district received one of four possible rankings: Exemplary (the highest possible ranking), Recognized, Academically Acceptable, and Academically Unacceptable (the lowest possible ranking). In rare instances, the category Not Rated: Other will be used.

According to the agency, the number of state schools and districts who received the top ratings of "exemplary" and "recognized" increased from 2,213 in 2005 to 3,380 in 2006[1] - a 52.73% increase over the previous year.

Exemplary

In order to receive an Exemplary rating, a school/district must meet all four of the following criteria:

Recognized

The criteria are 75 percent pass rate on TAKS and SDAA II (again, required for all students as well as each subgroup), 85 percent on Completion Rate, and 0.7 percent on Dropout Rate.

Academically Acceptable

The criteria are 60 percent on TAKS Subsections "Social Studies", "Reading/ELA", and "Writing", 40 percent on "Mathematics", which were an increase in standards in 2006 from 2005.[1] Other minimum standards required to be met are 40 percent on "Science", 50 percent on SDAA II, 75 percent on Completion Rate, and 1.0 percent on Dropout Rate.

Academically Unacceptable

Any school or district not meeting all of the above criteria for Academically Acceptable will be rated thus. Any school or district with such ranking will be required to submit a plan for corrective action, and TEA may assign a monitor to the school or district to assist it in improving its rating.

A district with two consecutive Academically Unacceptable ratings can be closed by TEA (as was the case with the now-defunct Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District and the Mirando City Independent School District).

Not Rated: Other

Additional requirements

For a district to receive Exemplary or Recognized status, it cannot have any school rated Academically Unacceptable (even if the overall district statistics would rate such); if a district has any such campus, the district overall can be rated no higher than Academically Acceptable. Alternative education programs are rated using different criteria or forms of language.

Exceptions

In June 2008, the Dallas Morning News reported that TEA was granting "exceptions" to the system so that schools and/or districts could report a higher ranking than it had actually earned.[2]

Under the exception policy, each school may be granted up to four exceptions to the passing standards depending on the number of standards tested (up to the maximum 25 standards):

In order to qualify for a standard the actual score must be no lower than 5 points of the score needed to achieve a ranking. A school cannot use the same exception for two consecutive years, and if an exception is used the district must file an academic improvement plan with TEA.

References

  1. 1 2 "Schools improve across the state". The Daily Texan. 3 August 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-03.
  2. "Schools graded on a curve," Dallas Morning News, June 29, 2008

External links

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