Last Thursday, The Texas Education Agency released the 2022-2023 School Performance letter ratings. At first glance, they paint a discouraging picture of San Angelo Public Schools. But how accurate are they? What are they based on, and what do they tell us about the current state of SAISD?
SAISD Ratings
Secondary
- Central High School – C
- Glenn Middle School – C
- Lake View High School – F
- Lincoln Middle School – D
- Lone Star Middle School – D
Elementary
- Belaire Elementary – F
- Bonham Elementary – C
- Bowie Elementary – D
- Bradford Elementary – F
- Crockett Elementary – F
- Fannin Elementary – F
- Fort Concho Elementary – A
- Glenmore Elementary – C
- Goliad Elementary – F
- Holiman Elementary – F
- Lamar Elementary – C
- McGill Elementary – D
- Reagan Elementary- D
- San Jacinto Elementary – C
- Santa Rita Elementary – A
SAISD Responds to Ratings
In a statement provided to The Concho Observer, the District said,
Earlier today, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) released its 2022–2023 accountability ratings. For that school year, a reporting error led to incomplete data being submitted to the TEA. Specifically, grade information from Lake View High School for the spring 2022 semester was dropped from our report during the electronic submission process. As a result, the district received a D rating and Lake View High School received an F — outcomes that do not accurately reflect our academic performance.
San Angelo ISD will file an appeal with the TEA and submit corrected data. Had the reporting error not occurred, the district rating would have been a C, and Lake View High School would have been a D. The TEA allows appeals only after ratings are released.
Upon discovering the error, the district implemented updated safeguards to include targeted checkpoints for data verification involving multiple departments, which now occur numerous times each school year.
While this data error is real and important, it does not fully capture the current state of San Angelo ISD. Regardless of the outcome of the appeal, this rating reflects three-year-old data, which we obtained in the Fall of 2023 and used to make immediate changes at that time. The only new information is the assignment of a letter grade. San Angelo ISD has made significant adjustments since the 2022–2023 school year and has focused on academic growth at all campuses, including aligning instructional resources across the district, implementing additional support and structures for students, implementing additional support for teachers, and increasing instructional time on bell schedules.
As of today, no new ratings have been released for any subsequent academic year. These ratings reflect a shift in the grading system used by the TEA. The almost two-year delay is due to litigation surrounding changes made to the grading system.
We remain committed to transparency and continuous improvement. Our students and staff have worked hard and made meaningful progress, and we want to ensure that their efforts are recognized.
Ratings Raise Questions
While this may explain Lake View’s F and The District’s D rating, it does not address the issues with academic performance in other schools across the District.
To understand where we are we must first understand the basis for these ratings, and assess whether they are a true and accurate way to rate the quality of your child’s schools and their education.
STAAR Test Results Primary Factor in Ratings
The letter ratings are all based on student performance on the much maligned STAAR test. STAAR stands for State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness. The STAAR test is given once at the end of each school year.
It is a high stakes standardized test because everything in Texas education revolves around it. It is so unpopular with teachers, parents and students that there has long been talk of doing away with it. In the 89th legislature, a bill has been introduced to completely overhaul the test.
The rating system is based on three criteria. (1) student performance on the STAAR, (2) school performance on the STAAR and (3) growth in performance (closing the gaps). It also includes a component for college, career and military readiness.
History of Letter Ratings
The state first began rating Districts in 2017-2018. It added ratings for campuses in 2018-2019. Then came the pandemic. The state did not issue ratings for the school years 2019-2020, 2020-2021. In 2021-2022 TEA gave ratings of A, B and C, or not rated.
The state adopted an entirely new rating system in 2022-2023 which was blocked by court order. One of the reasons for this was that TEA changed the rating system. That litigation block extended through the 2023-2024 school year. The court recently lifted the order allowing TEA to release the letter ratings for the 2022-2023 school year. TEA released those ratings last Thursday. The data on which the ratings are based has been public for some time. It is only the release of the letter ratings that were blocked by the court.
The 2022-2023 ratings used a completely different system than the one now used for 2023-2024. According to SAISD Deputy Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer Farrah Gomez, it is like comparing apples and oranges. TEA will release the data for the 2024-2025 in the fall of 2025.
It goes without saying that the testing data is more important than the letter ratings. The District uses the data to identify where changes in the academic program need to be made in order to improve.
It is important to recognize that these ratings are not a measure of how well a child is learning or how well a school or district is doing educating your child. It only measures how well they performed on the STAAR test on that day.
What This Means
TEA has only released letter ratings for one school year. That was first year after the pandemic. It then substantially changed the rating system.
So, if we are trying to grade San Angelo’s public schools performance and growth on the 2022-2023 letter ratings, or even the raw data, we have noting to compare it to. It will take several years of data under the new system before a look at the school ratings can tell us much.
The high stakes, high stress nature of the STAAR test in part is a result of it only being given once a year. STAAR does not provide Districts or students with a baseline by which to measure academic performance at the beginning of or during the school year.
MAP Testing Provides Better Measure of Performance
That is why SAISD began using MAP testing at the beginning, middle and at the end of the year. Recently, the Board of Trustees was presented with the mid-year academic performance report based on this more frequent testing.
That report showed positive improvement in academic performance during this school year. Superintendent Dr. Christopher Moran said at the time that at the end of this year the District will have a full year’s data that will help them be able to assess where more work is needed. While the MAP test results were positive he was not satisfied. “We have a lot of work to do.” Moran said.
Old Data Only Yields Outdated Ratings
The data and letter ratings just released were from three years ago and were for testing that pre-dated the changes in the ratings system.
The letter ratings give us a snapshot of a moment in time under a certain rating system based on one test at year end. It does not reflect a student or a school’s academic growth based on the socio-economic and educational level of the student body over the year, or across the academic career of a student or class.
While the letters are new, they provide no context and do not provide any new information. They also are not a reflection of how the students and schools are performing today. The MAP testing results are a better and more real time assessment of how San Angelo’s public schools are performing.
It is too early to tell from the TEA ratings whether SAISD is making progress under the STAAR system of evaluation. TEA constantly changes ratings systems, and the STAAR test is constantly being revised. This makes it difficult to objectively evaluate the quality of a school or the progress of a child’s education consistently over time
Ultimately, the child’s parents and teachers will be these best judge of that.
