San Marcos - Buda - Kyle Edition | August 2022

2022 EDUCATION EDITION

ACADEMIC ACCOUNTABILITY Updating

SAN MARCOS CISD

As a result of the pandemic, schools and districts have not received accountability ratings. However, the Texas Education Agency is adjusting the accountability framework based on these steps to be used in August 2023.

PERCENTAGE OF STUDENTS APPROACHING GRADE LEVEL

202021

202122

100%

80%

Improve ability to identify growth Increase focus on underserved populations Incorporate extracurricular leadership Use 2021-22 STAAR data to ensure appropriate goals are set for students Develop new designations that recognize district eorts

Increase alignment of district and campus outcomes Improve alignment with A-F system and special populations Recognize successful learning acceleration Create a unique alternative education accountability model Update college, career and military indicators

6 7 8 9

60%

2 3 4

40%

20%

3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th

READING

MATH

SOURCE: TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCYCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER

used to learn a student’s strengths and weaknesses. The program then has lessons that will meet a student’s individual needs. At the statewide level, the imple- mentation of House Bill 4545 has also been utilized to provide additional support to students who did not pass their STAAR test. HB 4545 requires districts to provide 30 hours of one- on-one or small-group instruction over the course of the summer or fol- lowing school year. “Now that we’ve got the data on what [the students] need, we can provide that additional instruction. … They stepped up, and they did it. They met the legal requirement, and then we saw the results of growth,” McDaniel said. “They saw the fruits of their labor come to fruition.” Keeping the momentum In addition to HB 4545, HCISD cre- ated a new math committee com- posed of teachers and administrators to address the range of knowledge. The committee met multiple times throughout the spring semester, as

the district did not need STAAR test data to know that math was one of the biggest pressure points for students, McDaniel said. Further south, SMCISD has upgraded its curriculum resources to continue the upward trajectory of scores, which is aimed at helping students with their conceptual knowledge. “We as a district, for this upcoming year, have been very intentional at looking at the materials and resources that are being used to make sure that they are deemed high-quality. If they are not high-quality, we are not going to use them,” Sanders said. Both districts have also imple- mented training and professional development to support the teachers on the ground level. “If we do not develop our teachers and our leaders, [then] our students will not be successful,” Sanders said. “You don’t have to be bad to be better.” New instructional documents have been created for HCISD educators to be “vertically aligned” and help go “up and down the ladder” of math, McDan- iel said. The documents have been

created by teachers in HCISD who are seeing, rst hand, how the pandemic has hindered learning and retention. Additionally, the new curriculum within SMCISD also goes hand in hand with the additional training that will be provided to educators with extra opportunities throughout the next school year. McDaniel added that, while the STAAR data is not the most important tool used to measure growth, it is still useful to identify what students need. STAAR data, along with graduation rates and college, career and military readiness outcomes, are also used by the TEA when issuing accountability ratings—which have not been assigned the past two school years due to the pandemic. “Next spring, they are moving to a new version of the AF [rating] sys- tem,” Malandruccolo said. “It won’t be until probably next April before we know how we’ll be graded, ocially.” Campuses and districts used to receive a grade of AF. However, as a

result of Senate Bill 1365, campuses and districts will receive an AC rat- ing; a campus or district will receive a “not rated” rating instead of a D or F for 2022. For the upcoming 2022-23 school year, the TEA will be updating its accountability framework and could return to an AF scale. They will con- tinue to update indicators of growth and desired outcomes for districts. “If the pandemic had never hap- pened, I don’t know if we would have changed our teaching practices as much as we have over the last [few] years,” Sanders said. “It was not something that we would have ever wished to happen, [but] it did force us to look at our practices and reexamine what we were doing. … We’ve had the opportunity to reinvent ourselves as a result of being forced to look at what we were doing.”

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SAN MARCOS BUDA KYLE EDITION • AUGUST 2022