Superintendents from school districts around Central Texas will gather in Waco Friday in opposition to a new provisional ratings report for schools.
The Texas Education Agency used a new "A through F" formula mandated by House Bill 2804.
Superintendents from more than 25 Central Texas districts held a news conference Friday to discuss their concerns with the new system, what improvements need to be made and how it will affect their campuses and students.
According to the Texas Association of School Administrators, more than 140 school boards across the state have adopted resolutions opposing the new grading system for schools.
Many of the superintendents at Friday's conference say the new system is unclear and unfair. Schools known to perform well are receiveing letter grades of C and D.
"When you look at the scores that were released today, in all the domains, China Spring ISD has five D's," China Spring ISD Superintendent Marc Faulkner said. "I don't think you'll find anyone in Central Texas who would say China Spring is a D district."
The Killeen Independent School District released the lengthy press release below about the new system on Thursday night.
As a result of the 84th Legislative Session and the passage of House Bill 2804, the Texas Education Agency has been charged to change the public school accountability system to reflect letter grade ratings (A-F) over five domains to be issued by August of 2018 to all campuses and districts.
The law also required “preliminary, work-in progress reports noting potential grades by domain, to be issued to the legislature no later than January 1, 2017.”
• The Texas Education Agency admittedly has included “possible A-F grades based on the limited data available” for only four of the five domains.
• The Killeen Independent School District Met and Exceeded every performance standard (200 total) across all four indexes under the current accountability system. The “Preliminary, Work-in-Progress” A-F system devised by the Texas Education Agency is not reflective of this accomplishment. New measures such as chronic absenteeism have been added to the draft A-F methodology, which was just recently released by the Texas Education Agency to districts statewide.
District Position:
• The “Preliminary, Work-in-Progress A-F” rating methodology is very different and more complex than the current academic accountability system.
• It is imperative for the district to gain a better understanding of the “Preliminary, Workin-Progress” A-F rating system before being able to draw conclusions as to how the proposed A-F system could possibly help to improve teaching and learning.
• Based upon an initial review, it appears there is a strong correlation between the “Preliminary, Work-in-Progress A-F” ratings and campus economically disadvantaged student percentages. Generally, as percentages of economically disadvantaged student groups increase, letter grades across the four domains decrease.
In Summary:
Merely assigning letter grades based on a complicated system of calculations is neither transparent, nor are they useful for school improvement. Reducing a school to a single grade lacks the ability to articulate how schools are performing in regards to educating the “whole student” in preparation for their future.
Simply stated, A-F school ratings fail to offer communities useful or accurate information about their schools’ overall performance.
As a district, we support an accountability model which helps to drive continuous improvement and increased student achievement.
Accountability should provide the means for which overall campus and district improvement is the end result. Based on the initial review of the “Preliminary, Work-in-Progress” A-F rating system methodology, questions will likely remain as to whether or not local communities desire to have the instructional processes and the delivery of academic services in their children’s schools be driven by an arbitrary A-F rating system, such as the one being proposed.
The Killeen Independent School District believes providing students excellent educational opportunities extends well beyond standardized test score results and potential A-F labels.
As a district, we will remain committed to doing what is best for ALL students and dedicated to our daily mission, which remains “To teach so that students learn to their maximum potential.”
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