The Texas Education Agency will finally release its accountability ratings for schools for the 2022–2023 school year on Thursday, after being delayed by a court injunction for over a year.

The system –

First and foremost, it’s important to understand what the TEA A-F accountability rating system is. The The A-F system essentially grades schools using “objective measures of student achievement.” Broadly speaking, there are two factors that go into this rating system: achievement or progress (these are two distinct factors) and “closing the gaps”. The first two factors measure students’ knowledge and progress (likely over the school year), respectively, and the third factor addresses equity-related issues or how various groups and demographics of students are performing with respect to each other. 

Based on how a school does in the first two factors, the TEA selects one factor – the one with the highest score – and combines it with the score for the “closing the gaps” metric, weighting the former 70% and the latter 30%. The integrated score is then used to determine a school’s A-F rating, along typically number grade to letter grade conversions.

What truly happened –

It was this system that came under fire in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic and, ultimately, led to a six-year hiatus in the release of accountability ratings starting in 2019.

The discord started in 2023, when the TEA updated the formula through which it calculated the accountability ratings, specifically related to how the “college, career, and military readiness” score – which is calculated through performance on AP and IB exams, among other factors – is determined.

Following this change in the formula in 2023, a judge blocked the TEA from releasing the ratings officially, after about 120 school districts contended that they did not have enough advance notice from the TEA to effectively adapt to the changes.

The school districts’ arguments centered around the fact that the TEA failed to release the previous year’s ratings (2022-2023) by Aug. 15 of the next school year, the designated deadline to release the ratings. In fact, by the time the aforementioned court issued the injunction in October 2023, the TEA had still not released these ratings. Additionally, the school districts also alleged that the redesigned STAAR tests which were factored into the ratings were not independently determined to be reliable and valid, since the TEA commissioner was the one to appoint the reviewers.

However, the decision was reversed by the state’s (conservative-majority) 15th Court of Appeals on April 3, which stated, that “the trial court could not block the ratings’ release and that TEA commissioner Mike Morath did not overstep his bounds in releasing accountability data past certain deadlines.” Additionally, the court stated that since the commissioner could suspend the ratings in emergency situations or disasters, like the pandemic, he also had the power to postpone their release. Furthermore, the court ruled that the statute on independent reviewing applied more to preventing collusion between STAAR test developers and those reviewing, rather than applying to those who were validating the test. 

Another key point of contention surrounding the ratings was the fact that the commissioner released the standards used to measure schools for the A-F rating after the 2022-2023 school year, waiting until Oct. 31, 2023. While Morath claimed that the schools were given information on preliminary standards, school districts claimed that Morath and the TEA’s actions were in violation of the Texas Education Code. 

Ultimately, the court determined that while the critical cutoff scores were unknown, schools knew the major indicators for the rating and that the districts failed to show that the commissioner acted outside his legal authority and instead criticized the use of his discretion.

The schools further argued that the TEA’s actions violated the statute that required all schools to have a “mathematical possibility” to receive an A rating, which the courts found to be untrue, as the schools technically had a mathematical possibility, despite awareness of the criterion necessary.

Going forward –

While the 15th Court of Appeals, as mentioned earlier, did overturn the first court’s temporary injunction, the accountability ratings from the 2023-2024 school year will still remain unreleased, due to a different court case specific to the STAAR tests.

This second lawsuit claimed that the redesigned, online-based STAAR tests were improperly designed and the use of computer grading, in particular, was unfair and led to lower essay scores. On the other hand, the TEA claimed that the sudden increase in zeroes for the essay portion of the test was instead a product of a harder test and a stricter rubric. The court, however, sided with the districts and prohibited the TEA from releasing the 2024 accountability ratings in August, a ruling that still holds true. 

After the April 3 ruling, the TEA stated, on April 8, that schools would gain access to the accountability ratings on April 17 before the general release of ratings on April 24.

Simultaneously, the state legislature recently saw the debate of Senate Bill 1262, which would overwhelmingly diminish school districts’ ability to challenge the A-F accountability ratings released by the TEA.

Ratings will be released to the general public on Thursday.