Low-income schools show improvement
They still rated lower than wealthier districts in A-F system.
Although they tended to perform better under the state’s new school rating system than under the previous one, Texas schools with the highest rates of low-income children still performed worse than schools with wealthier student bodies.
Among Texas schools with the highest percentages of low-income students, 6 percent of them failed to meet state standards, compared with 12 percent that failed last year and 22 percent that failed in 2013, according to an American-Statesman analysis. School districts with the highest percentage of low-income students also failed at the lowest rate in five years — 4 percent.
Despite improved performance under the new system compared with the old one, schools and districts with high rates of low-income students still trailed their peers that have wealthier students under the new rating system, according to analysis by multiple education organizations.
“We all want a good accountability system, but what we’ve seen is that despite (state officials’) best efforts, we still have a huge population of kids that just aren’t being graded fairly,” said Dax Gonzalez with the Texas Association of School Boards.
Last week’s ratings — school districts were assigned grades of A through F, and campuses were given labels of “met standard” or “improvement required” as well as a numeric score — were determined under a new state system that public school officials have criticized. They say that reducing
districts to a letter grade oversimplifies the varied programs and accomplishments of public schools, and they argue the rating system relies too much on student performance on state standardized tests. Research
has shown that poorer students — 59 percent of Texas public school students are low-income — tend to perform worse on such tests than their peers.
Advocates of the new rating system, including Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, have touted it as the fairest school rating system the state has seen yet. They point out that there’s a provision in the system, for example, that allows schools and districts to be compared to other schools and districts with similar student poverty levels.
“There is a modest correlation between level of poverty and a school’s performance, but this system has moved the needle pretty dramatically to lessen that correlation,” said Molly Weiner with Austin-based Texas Aspires.
Why poorer schools lagged
But fairer doesn’t mean the new rating system is fair, according to some public school advocates. The Texas Association of School Boards found that 82 percent of students in F-graded school districts are low-income. Austin-based Moak, Casey and Associates found that 92 percent of schools that earned a numeric score equivalent to an F had student bodies that were 50 percent low-income.
Under the new rating system, schools and districts are scored on student achievement, school progress and how well they did at closing learning gaps among students from different demographic backgrounds.
Public school advocates say poorer schools and districts lagged because student performance on STAAR tests factored heavily into their overall scores. Elementary and middle schools are almost exclusively rated on STAAR results; high school ratings also factor in grad- uation rates and how well students are prepared for college, a career or military service.
“Family income also makes a difference for the students, in terms of tutoring oppor- tunities, parental education levels and support at home,” said Clay Robison with the Texas State Teachers Asso- ciation. “Many low-income kids have under-educated parents who are working two or three jobs to make ends meet and don’t have the time or the educational background to help with home- work or tutoring. And these differences are still reflected in the so-called accountabil- ity scores.”
It also doesn’t help that state lawmakers haven’t adequately funded public schools to cover the higher cost of educating low-income students, said Lynn Moak of Moak, Casey and Associates, a school policy consulting firm. The multiplier the state uses to determine how much extra money districts receive to educate low-income students hasn’t changed since
the 1980s. The results “should be a message to the Legislature to provide districts with more assistance to level the playing field,” Moak said.
Moak and his colleagues recommend that the state rating system give bonus points to high-poverty schools and districts that do well. They also say the state should add more holistic measures to the rating system, like teacher and student absenteeism rates, whether students and families feel their schools value them or whether schools have fullday prekindergarten, adequate numbers of counselors and a school nurse.
In coming years, schools and districts could be evaluated in part on those holistic measures. School districts, including Austin, are piloting a locally developed account- ability system that could help boost the grades that schools and districts receive from state. However, the state says a school must earn at least a C to use a locally developed system.
Dee Carney, an associate at Moak’s firm, suggests the state replace the A-F rating system with labels that are more descriptive — exceeds expectations, meets expectations, does not meet expectations or not applicable.
“A C doesn’t tell anybody anything. Do we celebrate it? Is it a concern? The context is missing,” Carney said.
How did some high poverty campuses rebound?
Supporters of the system applaud the state for rating schools and campuses on how well their students improved year over year. They say measuring school progress avoids unduly penalizing high-poverty districts and campuses.
Thirty-six Austin campuses, whose average percentage of low-income students is 88 percent, scored higher in the student progress category than in student achievement.
“Many of these schools are actually doing an incredible job at taking students who are far behind and getting them up to speed. We always look at student achievement, adjusting for the level of poverty ... and TEA takes that into account in their new rating system, which helps explain why among high-poverty districts there’s a lot of variation in their overall ratings,” said David McClendon with Children at Risk.
McClendon found that based on this year’s state ratings, 48 percent of high-poverty districts — which he describes as those with at least 75 percent of their students qualifying as low-income — earned As and Bs. High-poverty districts that did well should be models for the state, he said.
According to the Texas Education Agency, 259 high-poverty campuses —
which the agency defines as those where at least 80 percent of students are low-income — received a numeric score equivalent to an A, an indication that student poverty was not a strong factor. However, Carney said a cursory look finds that some of the high-poverty campuses that earned an A might have selective enrollments and smaller student populations.
Although five Austin campuses failed under the new state rating system this year, three campuses rebounded after failing last year — Govalle Elementary and Burnet and Martin Middle Schools. Between 90 and 95 percent of the three schools’ students are low-income.
Govalle Principal Paula Reyes said the new rating system neither helped nor hurt the school’s performance
this year. She attributed the success at Govalle, which earned an
overall score of 85 — equiva- lent to a B — this year, to the staff building stronger relationships with students, stu- dents setting goals and knowing what their targets were, and teachers spending more time working together and aligning the curriculum from one grade level to the next.
“We had to change the cul- ture of our campus,” said Reyes, who is starting her fourth year at the helm of the school. “When you become an improvement-required campus, that hurts the staff and students. We did a lot of research on the culture of relationship building . ... After building those relationships, the teachers were able to gently push the students. The students felt inspired and motivated because they were part of the culture of the campus.”
The Hays school district turned around Hemphill and Science Hall elemen- taries, which have student poverty rates of 83 percent and 73 percent, respectively, by replacing principals and working one-on-one with struggling students, among other measures, Superin- tendent Eric Wright said. Hemphill and Science Hall’s STAAR passing rate jumped 11 percentage points from last year to this year. Wright doesn’t believe the new rating system did his schools any favors.
The new system “is just a gimmick to appease legislators, and Realtors trying to rank and sort schools,” Wright said. “I don’t think it enhances the quality of education one iota.”
Gonzalez, with the school boards association, said some district officials want the state to look at student prog- ress over a course of a single school year, rather than from one year to the next.
Ed Fuller, a Penn State University researcher who has analyzed Texas’ new ratings, said the system does not correctly identify schools that need help because the metrics aren’t constructed correctly.
He and others fear that unfairly penalizing schools and campuses with A-F ratings will make public schools look inferior, which can affect property values, the types of families, businesses and social services that move into the surrounding area and whether a community thrives or not.
“You can start that neighborhood in a downward spiral just by incorrectly constructing an accountability system that incorrectly labels a school as low performing,” Fuller said. “I don’t think people understand the seriousness of which the impact that this has on children and families and educators in neighborhoods. This alters people’s lives.”
The Hays school district turned around Hemphill and Science Hall elementaries, which have student poverty rates of 83% and 73%, respectively, by replacing principals and working one-onone with struggling students, among other measures, Superintendent Eric Wright said.