Education
BY WESLEY GARDNER CONTRIBUTIONS BY EMILY LINCKE, JAKE NORMAN & HANNAH NORTON
Humble ISD received a “C” for the 2022-23 school year with 74 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 August 2023, over 100 school districts sued 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.” Humble ISD earns ‘C’ for 2022-23 school year Humble ISD accountability ratings Since the A-F system launched in 2017-18, HISD 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 (88) 2019-20: Not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic 2020-21: Not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic
What they’re saying
“The rating released is based on data from the 2022-2023 school year,” HISD Superintendent Roger Brown said in an April 24 emailed state- ment. “It does not reflect the effort and progress happening right now throughout the district.” Brown noted he believed the 2022-23 scores will ultimately help officials identify challenges the district has faced related to the ratings. “We understand that there were many com- plexities surrounding the 2023 accountability rating process, including: changes to scoring methodology; increased performance thresholds, and the use of new [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] assessments,” Brown said. He added the district is treating the ratings a challenge. “The rating is an opportunity for us to examine what’s working, what’s not, and how we can better serve our students,” he 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. Morath further defended the ratings system in an April 22 press call. “This is a good thing,” Morath said. “We do this because it helps children.” TEA officials said the methods of calculating 2022-23 ratings were “updated to more accurately reflect performance.”
The breakdown
The district’s lowest-rated schools that received an “F” include Jack M. Fields Sr. Elementary and Oak Forest Elementary.
HISD’s top-rated schools that received an “A” include Creekwood Middle School, Guy M. Sconzo Early College High School, Riverwood Middle School and Willow Creek Elementary.
District snapshot, 2022-23
Humble ISD ratings by campus, 2022-23 A: 4 B: 10
45,525 students enrolled 48.5% economically
11.6% emergent bilingual 91.3% average attendance rate
C: 17 D: 13 F: 2
disadvantaged 11.8% special education
29.4% missed 10% or more of the school year
2021-22: B (82) 2022-23: C (74)
SOURCE: TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY/COMMUNITY IMPACT
SOURCE: TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY/COMMUNITY IMPACT
What’s next
publicly funded and having the public’s children in our schools. It’s up to us to operate with the highest degree of transparency to deliver the best outcomes that we can for our kids,” Morath said April 22.
on Aug. 15. “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
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 school year
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