Judge blocks TEA from issuing A-F scores during lawsuit
A judge has blocked the Texas Education Agency from releasing A-F accountability scores for the state’s public schools while it fights a lawsuit over a new formula that was expected to send many districts’ grades plunging.
At least 100 school districts have joined the suit, arguing the changes are unfair and could lay the groundwork for state sanctions. Districts with a campus that receives a failing grade for five straight years open themselves up to state takeover, such as what happened to Houston ISD this summer.
Superintendents who sued the agency celebrated the temporary injunction Friday morning. A trial remains set for Feb. 12, but state District Judge Catherine Mauzy found the districts “made a sufficient showing” that TEA would be unlawful in implementing the formula without giving them the advance notice required by law – and that doing so would cause irreparable harm.
“On behalf of public school superintendents, boards of trustees, and all the students, teachers, and staff of the great state of Texas whom we serve, we are united here together on the steps of the Travis County Courthouse to announce that we are pleased with the judge’s ruling of the temporary injunction prohibiting the release of TEA’s A-F ratings for the 2022-2023 school year,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “We look forward to future conversations with Commissioner of Education Mike Morath about how to implement the assessment and accountability system in a manner that is fair and transparent for all school districts in the State of Texas.”
TEA officials said they would appeal the decision immediately.
“This ruling completely disregards the laws of this state and for the foreseeable future, prevents any A-F performance information from being issued to help millions of parents and educators improve the lives of our students,” a TEA statement reads. “The A-F system has been a positive force in Texas public education, supporting improved outcomes for students across the state, especially those most vulnerable.”
“There have been many constructive conversations about the methodology with districts and among legislators,” TEA continues. “Though about 10% of our school system leaders disagreed with the methods used in A-F enough to file this lawsuit, the complete absence of public performance information means that 100% of our school systems cannot take actions based on these ratings, stunting the academic growth of millions of Texas kids.”
The agency already delayed the release of the 2022-2023 scores once because the new scoring system was resulting in more drastic accountability drops than TEA expected, Commissioner Mike Morath said. The agency planned to tweak the formula, which skewed the numbers due to the amount of catch-up students played in 2022 after the pandemic, he said.
In the Houston area, the Cypress-Fairbanks, Humble, Klein, Splendora, Spring, Spring Branch and Willis school districts are part of the litigation.
The new formula upped the bar that schools need to reach to qualify for the best grades and was expected to see many schools drop at least one letter grade, even when STAAR scores improve, some administrators said.
Specifically, the planned changes relate to a section of the A-F formula known as “growth” scores, which looks at year-over-year STAAR test scores to measure what percentage of students are on track. Schools are entitled to be graded based on whichever score is higher: their raw performance on STAAR tests or their growth scores.
The percentage of campuses that used the “growth” score to calculate their A-F rating surged to more than half last year, up from only 19% in 2019.The spike was due to COVID-19,
Morath said: STAAR scores decreased in the early years of the pandemic, before rising significantly in 2022 when students returned back to schools. The result was an exceptionally high growth year.
The agency had planned to use the 2022 growth numbers as part of the new grading baseline, but then the 2023 growth numbers dipped closer to the prepandemic scores. As a result, many schools would have seen their accountability grades suffer.
TEA last updated its accountability system in 2017, the same year lawmakers passed legislation that the agency can update the formula any time during the school year before the grades’ release. The school districts fighting the suit have argued that the legislation at least entitles them to be given adequate notice on changes before the rules are applied.