Board talks new school rating system

As Bryson ISD did last month along with other school districts across the state, Jacksboro ISD said “No, thanks” to the A-F Accountability Rating System proposed to replace the current rating system for Texas schools.

At Monday’s regular school board meeting, Micki Wesley, Region 9 director of accountability and compliance, presented an explanation of the new rating system which she said was proposed to make ratings more easily understandable for stakeholders (parents and community members, as well as educators), but in reality, misses the mark.

The law is not supposed to go into effect until the school year 2017-18. There are five domains in play. The first three domains make up 55 percent rating at the campus and district levels. Thirty-five percent comes from domain 4 and 10 percent from domain 5.

The rating system stems from the passing of House Bill 2804 in during the 84th Texas Legislative Session in 2015.

“Tomorrow starts a whole new session which brings a lot of opportunity for change,” she said.

HB 2804 created five domains of indicators that will be used to evaluate districts and campuses regarding three goals: preparing students for postsecondary success, reducing achievement gaps among students from different racial and ethnic groups and socioeconomic backgrounds, and informing parents and the community about district and campus performance.

The Lege required a report for all districts including ratings from Domains 1-4 by Jan. 1 which it got, but the system created by the Texas Education Agency for calculating the ratings is not finalized and will more than likely change significantly, Wesley said.

“The ‘what if’ report that you just got should not be given a whole lot of credit because it is just a preliminary rating and does not make any difference on your current rating. It’s purely informational only,” Wesley said.

The current rating system gives schools that are adequately educating students a rating of “met standard.” Schools that fell below that rating were rated as “improvement required” and schools that went above it earned one or more “distinctions” for whichever criteria they excelled at.

All JISD schools earned ratings of “met standard” for the 2015-16 school year. With the preliminary A-F rating report, Jacksboro ISD received a Domain 1 grade of C; Domain 2 - B; Domain 3 - D and Domain 4 - C.

To read the complete article, see the Jan. 13 edition of the Jacksboro Herald-Gazette.

Videos created by the TEA providing an overview of the A-F system and the individual domains are available.