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Texas released long-awaited grades for school districts on Thursday. It’s the first time scores for underperforming schools have been made public in five years.
Under the state’s school rating system, all districts and campuses got a letter grade for the 2022-23 school year. Of the nearly 1,200 districts evaluated in the state, 10.4% got an A, 73% got a B or a C, and 16.6% got a D or an F. Fort Worth ISD is at risk of shutting down a school or facing a state takeover because of failing grades.
The 2022-23 school year ratings had been held up in courts after several districts sued the state to challenge changes to rating standards. But the 15th Court of Appeals earlier this month cleared the Texas Education Agency to release the ratings, ruling Commissioner Mike Morath had the authority to make those changes.
TEA still cannot release the ratings for the 2023-24 school year because of a separate lawsuit.
Before then, schools went without ratings for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. They got partial ratings for the 2021-22 school year.
Public education advocates celebrated the release of the ratings, which they say can help parents see how successful their local school districts are, businesses decide which communities to invest in and school boards identify areas for growth. Critics of the A-F system say it harms districts that serve poor communities, which are more likely to get failing grades and face state sanctions for them.
Districts and each of their campuses are graded on an A-F scale based on three categories:
- Student achievement: How well their students perform on state standardized tests and whether they are ready for college and careers. The state imposed higher standards to get an A under the new rules.
- School progress: How much students are improving on state tests
- Closing the gaps: How well schools are boosting scores for specific groups of children like as students with special needs and English language learners
Each category is weighted differently. Seventy percent of the overall grade comes from the better score between the “student achievement” and “school progress” categories; the remaining 30% is based on the “closing the gaps” category.
Search for your district or school to see how they did below:
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