On the left, results for Austin ISD schools in the Texas Education Agency’s ratings for the 2022-2023 school year. F-rated schools are clustered on the east side of Interstate 35, a stark reminder of the city’s 1928 Master Plan that institutionalized racism. As The Texas Tribune points out, poverty and under-resourcing are on display in this year’s ratings.
After months of legal back-and-forth, the Texas Education Agency has released its long-delayed A–F accountability ratings for the 2022–23 school year. This comes after a Texas appellate court ruled earlier this month that TEA could move forward with the release, despite widespread criticism from school districts and education advocates.
The controversy began last year when TEA announced sweeping and sudden changes to how districts would be rated, including by significantly raising the bar for College, Career, and Military Readiness (CCMR). Under the new system, the percentage of graduates meeting CCMR criteria needed to earn an ‘A’ rating jumped from 60% to 88%, a drastic change to the standard that blindsided districts already stretched thin. The catch? These changes were applied retroactively. Over 100 school districts sued TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, arguing that the rules were unfair and rolled out with little to no transparency or warning.
In October, a Travis County judge agreed, temporarily blocked the release of the ratings, and stated that TEA failed to prove the new system was fair or aligned with state law. TEA’s reliance on unproven STAAR data and its shifting standards left districts scrambling, and justifiably frustrated.
Now that the ratings are public, the results confirm exactly what many feared: Only 49% of all students statewide met grade-level standards across all subjects, with even lower percentages for Black (36%) and Hispanic (42%) students. In math, just 45% of students met grade-level expectations. In science, that figure was even lower at 47%. Particularly alarming is that among economically disadvantaged students, only 38% met grade-level standards across subjects, highlighting how TEA’s system punishes students for systemic inequities outside their control.
In total, 1 in 5 Texas schools got a D or F rating under new performance standards, as The Texas Tribune reports.
The issues with TEA’s changes and the resulting ratings aren’t just technical or procedural. The A–F system — including TEA’s shifting goalposts — is working exactly as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) designed it to. Modeled after ALEC’s A-Plus Literacy Act, Texas’ system labels schools as “failing” to justify disinvestment and open the door to privatization schemes like vouchers and charter takeovers. It’s a political tool dressed up as accountability and it hurts the students and educators in our most vulnerable communities.
Now that the injunction has been lifted, TEA is free to publish the ratings for last school year. But it’s important to note that the court is still blocking the release of ratings for the current school year due to a separate challenge.
As we said earlier this month, this fight isn’t over. Texas AFT continues to push for a more honest, transparent accountability system, one that gives educators the credit they deserve and reflects the work happening in classrooms, not just numbers on a spreadsheet. Our schools need support, not public shaming based on flawed metrics. In fact, this is why we encourage all educators and parents to submit public comments or testify Tuesday against House Bill 4 when it’s heard in the House Public Education Committee. This bill would make a significantly problematic situation even worse by further empowering TEA to take over school districts by its own arbitrary and shifting metrics.