Plaintiffs include Pecos-Barstow-Toyah and Fort Stockton ISDs
AUSTIN — Five Texas school districts, including West Texas’ Pecos-Barstow-Toyah and Fort Stockton ISDs, are suing Commissioner of Education Mike Morath over the Texas Education Agency’s A-F accountability rating system for the second year in a row.
Last year, over 100 districts joined a similar suit against Morath opposing changes to the accountability rating system and blocking the release of the 2022-23 ratings; this year the five districts are opposing, among other things, changes to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) test they argue unfairly lowered their ratings and negatively impacted vulnerable students.
The last accountability ratings to be publicly released were for the 2021-2022 school year. Marfa, Fort Davis, Alpine, Presidio, Fort Stockton and Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISDs all received “B” ratings.
The A-F accountability rating system — established by the Legislature in 2017 with the goal of increasing public transparency into schools’ academic performance — generates A-F ratings annually for districts based on students’ STAAR test performance, graduation rates, and college and career readiness. A Travis County judge issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on August 12 preventing the 2023-24 school year ratings from being released.
“We wholeheartedly believe that accountability is a good process to measure a district’s success,” Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISD Superintendent Brent Jaco wrote in a statement to The Sentinel. “However, we also believe the proposed adjustments to the A-F Accountability Ratings system do not accurately reflect our students and staff’s hard work and progress. This TRO ensures that our schools will not be unjustly penalized while we seek a just resolution to this matter.”
A hearing scheduled for September 16-17 will determine whether the order is lifted or whether ratings will continue to be withheld while the case is decided. Last year’s suit is in the appeals process.
According to court documents, the five districts opposing the release of the 2023-24 ratings took issue with the fact that Morath “did not provide notice of the ‘measures, methods and procedures’ he would use to evaluate school districts and campuses” this year, as required by the Texas Education Code, until May, 14, 2024 after the school year had concluded.
Districts also took issue with the commissioner’s new policy regarding College, Career and Military Readiness (CCMR) accountability scores — particularly that students who already graduated were being measured against new standards that were not even in place when they were in school.
Under old policy, a score of 60 or above was considered an A rating, but in November 2023 the commission adopted a new rule stating that a score of 88 or above would be required for schools to receive an A rating.
“For many school districts and campuses, this retroactive, after-the-fact change to CCMR scoring means the commissioner has made it mathematically impossible for many school districts and campuses to achieve an A rating,” legal documents state.
Fort Stockton ISD Superintendent Gabriel Zamora said the CCMR policy change was one of the main reasons the district sued last year. “How do you come out and say, ‘We’re going to evaluate you and raise the standards by this much,’ when it’s already locked and sealed, delivered?” Zamora said.
Several issues in the lawsuit also center around the “STAAR Test 2.0,” a redesigned version of the state assessment introduced in the 2022-23 school year. Plaintiffs claim that the new STAAR test, despite costing the Texas Education Agency (TEA) $388 million, was never deemed “valid and reliable by an entity that is independent of TEA and of the entities that developed the assessment instrument,” according to court documents.
Under new policies many special education students that were previously eligible for an alternative STAAR test were no longer eligible if they were able to perform “self care routines with minimal adult assistance,” court documents state, leading many students to take a test that was “not appropriate for their educational needs.”
Zamora said Fort Stockton ISD, which has a higher percentage of special education students than most districts, was negatively impacted by this policy. “We got hit on it with about 46 tests this year that were students that previously were on an accommodated version of STAAR that was geared more for special ed students, but under the new criteria, they failed to qualify and had to be placed on regular STAAR,” Zamora said.
There’s also the matter of artificial intelligence being used for the first time this year to grade STAAR essays — a move districts were not made aware of ahead of time that resulted in a larger percentage of 0/10 scores. “Based on data obtained in July 2024, somewhere between 30 – 75% of these 0 scores from AI grading have proven to be inaccurate when reviewed and rescored by human graders,” court documents state.
More broadly, the lawsuit argues that the accountability rating system is constantly influx, making it impossible for districts to course correct. “Not only is that confusing, it is also unfair — allowing the Commissioner to calculate and assign ratings based on goalposts that are continually moving would prevent school districts from effectively implementing action plans to improve their performance ratings each school year,” court documents state.
The lawsuit further argues that school districts will “suffer probable, irreparable injury if the Commissioner unlawfully assigns performance ratings for the 2023–24 school year.” Lower ratings may result in enrollment decline, which adversely affects school funding, plaintiffs argued.
In a written statement, TEA said the A-F accountability system is “good for kids,” helping to “improve the quality of student learning across the state, give parents a clear understanding of how well their schools are performing and establish clear expectations for school leaders so they can better serve students.”
“It is disappointing that a small group of school boards and superintendents opposed to fair accountability and transparency have once again filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing A-F ratings from being issued and keeping families in the dark about how their schools are doing,” TEA said.
But Jaco and Zamora said they are not opposed to being held accountable as long as the TEA and commissioner are in compliance with state law. Zamora said some district leaders may be concerned about speaking out because it could put their careers at risk. Smaller districts may be less likely to have the legal resources to participate.
“TEA is like, ‘Oh, well, there’s just a small group of people out there and they don’t like what we’re doing, and they don’t want ratings to be released’,” Zamora said. “That’s an absolute lie. I think that in their heart, there are probably 75% of districts that are not involved that would like to be involved.”
Fort Davis ISD Superintendent Graydon Hicks said there should be more local control over how to interpret ratings and testing data — metrics that, while useful, don’t always offer the full picture.
“Probably 90% of the school districts across the state, everybody would say, ‘We’re okay with testing.’ It’s how you use the testing results that matters,” Hicks said. “They use them in a punitive way. It should not be up to the state to make that decision, it should be up to the local educational agency, the school board, because every community has different expectations and challenges.”
While 2023-24 ratings have not yet been released, pending legal review, the TEA did provide districts with a tool to input data which calculates an estimated rating. Marfa ISD Interim Superintendent Arturo Alferez said he was anticipating Marfa ISD receiving a “C” rating based on his calculations.
Alferez said the preliminary C rating felt inaccurate — the district is working diligently to increase CCMR opportunities for its students, he said, and graduated a full class last year. He said it is unfair for the state to assign lower ratings without offering additional monetary support for initiatives like teacher training and tutoring needed to address weak areas. “We have no state funding, we have no resources we can seek out,” Alferez said.
Zamora said preliminary results also showed Fort Stockton ISD’s rating going down, which is extremely frustrating, he said, because of the hard work he and the rest of the staff have been putting in to improve their district, and the fact that the public is not likely to fully grasp why they might be receiving a lower rating.
“We were on the way up, but now you change the standards, and what do you do to the staff? What do you do to the community? Nobody wants to hear that the standards change,” Zamora said. “The only thing that they’re going to look at is y’all didn’t do as well as you used to.”
The need to stand up against Commissioner Morath and the TEA has renewed importance, Zamora said, given the current push for school vouchers as opposed to an increase in basic allotment funding. He said it feels like educators that choose to be in school districts where the majority of students are economically disadvantaged are “the ones that are getting kicked down,” by the accountability system compared to more affluent districts like Boerne ISD outside of San Antonio. “You go to a district like that and you can pop your color all day long saying, ‘Oh, well, we’re an A,’ and all that stuff. That doesn’t matter. Anybody would have done that,” Zamora said.
“Go to a place that’s really hurting. Go to a place where the mentality isn’t one of completely supporting your kid’s education and make a difference,” he added. “That’s why I came here, and I believe that that’s what we’re doing, and that’s what we have done, but the commissioner and the game that they’re playing to push these vouchers is really hurting people like me who are trying.”