Legal proceedings continue to delay the release of the Texas Education Agency’s 2023 accountability report for Dallas ISD and other school systems around the state.
Even though STAAR scores, graduation rates, and more have been made public, TEA still issues the following message to anyone attempting to view the accountability report for any district or campus in Texas for the 2022-2023 academic year:
“The 2023 accountability reports are not yet publicly available. The release of these reports is pending judicial ruling and decisions from the 88th Legislature during a special called session.”
The 88th Texas Legislature’s regular session ended in May 2023. Subsequent special sessions did not enact bills pertaining to the release of the scores; the last session adjourned in December 2023.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, a lawsuit filed last year against TEA’s adjustments to the A-F rating system has left parents and other stakeholders in the dark about whether schools are meeting the state’s expectations.
Dallas ISD was one of several public school systems to join the suit, which accuses Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath of “unlawfully lowering A–F performance ratings for the 2022–2023 school year by retroactively changing the rules in a way that will arbitrarily lower performance ratings for many school districts and campuses even though their performance improved.”
TEA has since released various tools aimed at easing school districts into the new accountability system, which was officially adopted again earlier this year.
The continued delay in publishing the 2023 accountability reports begs the question of when — or even if — the report will be released. DX tried to contact TEA for answers but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
DX‘s “Bad Apple” quarterly feature aimed to highlight the Dallas ISD trustee whose educational district had the most students attending schools with a letter grade of D or lower in terms of student achievement outcomes. According to the 2021-2022 accountability report, 57 Dallas ISD campuses received a grade of D, while 29 others received an F in student achievement.
Student achievement outcomes are determined by weighing graduation rates, STAAR scores, and a college, career, or military readiness metric (CCMR). While the first two factors are relatively clear-cut, the TEA update reportedly rebalanced CCMR weights, likely making this metric the most critical factor in determining student achievement scores under the new TEA accountability rating system.
Regardless, some student achievement dynamics can be gleaned from publicly available data.
Digging into two of Dallas ISD’s struggling campuses — Wilmer-Hutchins High School and Lincoln High School — reveals some startling trends. According to the district’s school report cards, both campuses have seen little, if any, improvement since the last TEA accountability report was published.
For instance, the four-year graduation rate at Wilmer-Hutchins was 76.4% in the 2021-2022 term and dropped to 76.2% in the 2022-2023 school term. However, this is up from 73.5% in the 2020-2021 school term. The campus-wide attendance rating is also well below the goal of 95%, hitting 85.5% in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.
The four-year graduate rate at Lincoln sank from 85.7% in 2020-2021 to 75.5% in 2022-2023. The attendance rate has also been taking a nosedive, going from 95.2% in 2020-2021 to 81.3% in the 2023-2024 school year.
Looking at STAAR performance and CCMR elements, trends that are further concerning can be observed.
In 2023, only 34% of students at Wilmer-Hutchins and 33% at Lincoln achieved grade level in English I & II.
In 2022-2023, Wilmer-Hutchins students scored lower on the ACT/SAT compared to 2020-2021. Only 10% of the test-takers were deemed college-ready based on their English language scores, while just 1% were ready based on their math scores. These percentages dropped by three points from the scores of the 2020-2021 test-takers.
At Lincoln, the decline was more marked, with 15% of students taking the ACT/SAT considered ready for college courses based on their English language score and 3% on their math score in 2020-2021. In 2022-2023, these shares dropped to 7% and 1%, respectively.