Cypress Edition | May 2025

Education

BY DANICA LLOYD & RYAN REYNOLDS CONTRIBUTIONS BY HANNAH NORTON

Cy-Fair ISD received a “B” for the 2022-23 school year with 80 out of 100 possible points in the Texas Education Agency’s accountability ratings system for school districts statewide. The ratings were released April 24 after a delay due to lawsuits, TEA officials said. The announcement follows an April 3 ruling by Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals, which overturned a lower court’s injunction that had blocked the 2023 ratings for over a year. In September 2023, CFISD was one of over 100 school districts to sue TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, arguing the agency’s revamped accountability system was “unlawful” and would unfairly harm school districts. According to the TEA, 9.5% of districts earned an “A” rating, while 42.4% earned a “B.” About 33% received a “C,” 13.7% earned a “D” and 1.2% earned an “F.” Cy-Fair ISD earns ‘B’ rating for 2022-23 Cy-Fair ISD accountability ratings Since the A-F system launched in 2017-18, CFISD has only received three official ratings due to three years of State of Disaster declarations. 2017-18: Not rated due to Hurricane Harvey 2018-19: B (89) 2019-20: Not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic 2020-21: Not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic

In a nutshell

the school year had already wrapped up. • The TEA changed accountability guidelines after State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readi- ness and end-of-course exams were completed. • An investigation is underway related to a new scoring system for STAAR tests that year, includ- ing an automated scoring engine using artificial intelligence. • The STAAR exam that year was required to be taken online “with an expectation that students in third grade and older would have expertise in manipulating online tools.” “Students are punished with no knowledge or control over the change in rules they were play- ing by. This is the equivalent of winning a close football game, then discovering your touchdowns were only worth three points each instead of six— so now you lost the game,” Killian said.

The state’s A-F accountability system was designed to measure whether students are ready for the next grade level and how well each district prepares them for success after high school, Community Impact previously reported. “For far too long, families, educators and com- munities have been denied access to information about the performance of their schools, thanks to frivolous lawsuits paid for by tax dollars filed by those who disagreed with the statutory goal of raising career readiness expectations to help students,” Morath said in an April 24 news release. TEA officials said the methods of calculating 2022-23 ratings were “updated to more accurately reflect performance.” CFISD Superintendent Doug Killian said the district participated in the lawsuit because: • The TEA didn’t release the accountability manual for 2022-23 to districts until Oct. 31, 2023—after

The breakdown

according to TEA data. Elementary schools averaged an 80, middle schools averaged an 85.6 and high schools aver- aged a 78.5.

CFISD schools with 50% or more economically disadvantaged populations averaged a 77, while campuses where less than half of the students were economically disadvantaged averaged a 90,

District snapshot, 2022-23

Cy-Fair ISD ratings by campus, 2022-23 A: 20 B: 24 C: 37 D: 6 F: 1

3rd largest school district in Texas 117,686 students enrolled 58% economically disadvantaged 11.5% special education

19% emergent bilingual 92.6% average attendance rate 21.7% missed 10% or more of the school year

2021-22: A (90) 2022-23: B (80)

SOURCE: TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY/COMMUNITY IMPACT

What’s next

with the highest degree of transparency to deliver the best outcomes that we can for our kids,” Morath said April 22.

“A-F ratings are very public, and so that is a leadership challenge that our leaders bear, but this is the cross that we bear for being publicly funded and having the public’s children in our schools. It’s up to us to operate

The TEA remains blocked from issuing ratings for the 2023-24 school year due to a separate lawsuit, which is pending in the state appeals court. Morath also said the TEA intends to release ratings for 2024-25 on Aug. 15.

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