GISD and Texas School Districts waiting for TEA rating changes
Though TEA has not released the final version of the accountability system’s revisions, it is the best information we know as of today. STAAR testing and other evaluations for the rating are currently happening, or already passed, despite final changes and rules for the next five years not being released until August.
The ratings for the 2022-2023 school year are set to come out in September. This means districts are making adjustments based on preliminary data and hoping the changes they are addressing ultimately come to fruition.
The TEA has put the manual out for public comment, and we do not know if that will change anything. Therefore, we are going to presume that this will be the accountability manual and the expectations by which we will be rated.
Assuming that the manual does stay the same, these are the proposed changes as school districts understand them today:
District Rating Methodology:
According to the TEA, beginning in 2023, district ratings will be determined proportionally based on the scaled domain outcomes of their campuses, instead of based on the entire student population.
The district rating will be more a reflection of all schools that have tested grades. The school’s impact on the district rating will be in relation to the size of the campus.
Domain 1, Student Achievement:
In the first domain at the high school level, the state takes STAAR test results combined with College Career and Military Readiness (CCMR) evaluations and graduation rates to calculate the domain score.
The cut points for STAAR and graduation rates are staying the same or changing only slightly to, “account for the impact of COVID-19 and the STAAR redesign”, according to the TEA in its preliminary framework outlines online.
However, the CCMR cut scores are changing drastically. These changes are significant.
Five years ago, the TEA initially recommended 90% as the percentage of CCMR graduates that should generate an A, however, they say very few campuses performed at that level at that time (the average performance in the baseline year was 47%), so the cut point was set at 60%.
The Accountability Rating redesign now has the new “cut score” as 88%.
The state says its analysis suggests that the score will ensure 60% of graduates achieve initial post-secondary success. The real concern is that CCMR data is a lagging indicator and will affect 2023 accountability using data based on 2022 graduates when a 60 was the cut score for an A. Districts have not had time to account and/or address the new expectation since it is based on the prior year’s data.
It’s last year’s data going into this year’s rating. It’s really difficult to have a new rule put in place when you have no control over it.
Domain 2, School Progress:
Those changes to CCMR will affect scores in the second domain as well. The domain is broken up into part A and part B.
Part B compares schools to others with similar economically disadvantaged populations. Part of that equation includes CCMR and the same change in the cut score from Domain 1 will be applied here, as well.
Part A measures student growth by looking to see if a student performed better on the STAAR test than they did the year before.
There are many new details in the proposed accountability manual affecting the calculation of academic growth, but districts are optimistic because of the different opportunities students can count for growth.
Domain 3, Closing the Gaps:
The last domain breaks students up into groups based on things like race, language and special needs. The groups are measured through four categories and the more student groups that meet a specific target in academic achievement, graduation rate, English language proficiency and CCMR, the more points the district receives.
In the refresh, things are changing. The final piece is by far the most challenging because it is where we have the absolute least amount of clarity.
They are proposing new scoring in Domain Three. Before you either had a yes that you made the target or no you did not make the target, so it was 0 points or 1 point. Now it is 0 to 4 points and we’re being told you need at least a 2 to do well in that area. But we really do not know what that means exactly. Honestly, we are waiting to see what the targets are and how the targets will affect us.
On top of these changes and the challenges they bring to districts in the state, there’s an additional piece plaguing schools. A new standardized test, known as STAAR 2.0 is getting rolled out at the exact same time. Some of these changes are, in prior years, only students taking 4th and 7th-grade Writing STAAR and English I and English II EOC were expected to construct written responses. As part of the STAAR 2.0 redesign, most assessments contained constructed written responses to various questions. Another major change in the redesign is that all students, except for those with special circumstances, were expected to complete all of their STAAR testing online rather than paper and pencil.