Schools across the state have seen their academic ratings drop as a result of changes made in how the Texas Education Agency computes them.
The new accountability ratings released Friday for public school campuses in the state’s 1,228 districts and charter schools present a “far more accurate look” at academic performance, Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott said.
They are also markedly lower — with far fewer schools achieving the highest ratings than last year. Instead, most schools fall in the middle “acceptable” category.
Many districts find themselves with lower ratings even though their student achievement has remained the same. That’s because the formula used to calculate the ratings, based primarily on students’ standardized test scores, no longer includes a mechanism called the Texas Projection Measure. The TPM gauged students’ future test scores based on a campus-wide average instead of using their actual test scores and had the effect of giving schools credit for students passing when they hadn’t.
In April, Scott announced he would discontinue the measure after state lawmakers took a unanimous vote against it during debate on a testing bill.
The Chron gives the local picture.
In the Houston Independent School District, the “unacceptable” campuses more than tripled to 25 — or 9 percent of its rated schools.
Statewide, about 7 percent of schools netted the lowest rating this year. The unacceptable list grew from 104 schools to 569.
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The ratings, from best to worst, are exemplary, recognized, acceptable and unacceptable.
Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, honored last year as the state’s largest “recognized” district, dropped to “acceptable.” HISD, the biggest district, also was “acceptable.”
Among the area’s other large districts, Katy, Pasadena, Conroe, Alief, Klein, Clear Creek, Humble, Lamar Consolidated, Galena Park and Pearland earned “recognized” status.
You can see ratings for all HISD schools here, and for all school districts in Texas here. It is important to remember that last year’s ratings were basically bogus. If you do keep that in mind, HISD actually showed some improvement.
The news that Houston ISD’s number of exemplary schools dropped from 101 in 2010 to 59 in 2011, according to the Texas Education Agency’s figures just released at 1 p.m. today, could only add more fuel to the fire of critics who are certain Superintendent Terry Grier is destroying HISD.
Except that if the now discarded and discredited Texas Projection Measure (a method of giving extra points to schools by predicting that certain kids who failed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills actually would pass in the next year) was removed from last year’s results, and other new “accountability measures” were factored in, according to HISD, then in 2010 there were 46 HISD schools that were really exemplary.
Which would make this year — at least in the exemplary category — an improvement. And Terry Grier a hero (or at least not a complete goat)?
Elsewhere in the annual ratings, the number of HISD’s academically recognized schools in 2011 was 106 (107 last year with the TPM), and academically acceptable increased to 79 (from 49 with TPM).
The number of academically unacceptable schools soared to 21 from last year’s 7 — but HISD’s recalculation last year’s effort says it would have been 23 — so hey, put another one in the win column.
In addition to the dropping of TPM, there were other ways in which the accountability system was made more difficult. Special ed kids were counted for the first time, and the standards for kids with limited English proficiency and math scores were raised. And before you get too used to this new/old way of scoring things, get ready for them to change again.
This is the last year for the TAKS testing program, which began in 2003. Schools will get a one-year reprieve from ratings as students take the new exams, expected to be more challenging.
Test scores traditionally rise over the years as teachers and students get used to the format of an exam. Statewide, at least 90 percent of students passed the TAKS in reading, writing and social studies this year. At least 80 percent passed in math and science.
HISD saw its scores remain mostly flat this year. The district’s passing rate in math rose two points to 83 percent, while writing dropped two points to 91 percent.
“Schools have a pretty good routine based on the TAKS,” said state Rep. Rob Eissler, a Republican from The Woodlands who chairs the House Public Education Committee. “It will change when we get to the (new) end-of-course exams and the STAAR tests.”
The forthcoming STAAR standard is already causing a lot of anxiety in school districts. The good news for Houston teachers is that they will be cut some slack in their evaluations.
In a startling reversal of previous statements and his own avowed philosophies, Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier today released a statement that he will recommend to the school board that teachers not be evaluated by their students’ test scores this next school year.
It was only in May that trustees — urged on by Grier — voted 7-2 (Carol Galloway and Juliet Stipeche dissenting) to include student test scores in the formal list of criteria used to evaluate a teacher’s performance.
The May vote came after several months of entreaty from HISD teachers who argued that it would be especially inappropriate this coming year to judge teachers on their students’ test scores given that the state was introducing a new standardized test system that is replacing the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. (Historically, student test scores drop after a new test is adopted.)
But Grier and his administration had remained adamant that it was inconceivable that the district have this information — student test scores — and not use it to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom. They have repeatedly said that teachers are the most crucial element in whether a child succeeds or fails in school.
It is difficult to understand what new information became available in the two months since May that would change Grier’s position on this. In his statement, he references “feedback we’ve heard this summer from teachers about taking on these challenges,” but he certainly heard plenty of this feedback before school was out.
Better late than never. How did your school do?
