The Texas Education Agency has officially released the A-through-F ratings for every public school and district in the state after months of legal delays. This is the first release using the updated accountability system, and early data is showing significant shifts in performance.
READ MORE: Understanding the Texas Education Agency’s accountability rating
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KPRC 2’s Re’chelle Turner broke down the numbers and their implications, particularly for Houston ISD.
A representative from HISD told Turner over the phone that the TEA ratings show results before the state took over the district in 2023.
Overall, HISD received a grade of C, with a total score of 72 out of 100 under TEA’s new accountability framework.
Here’s what the numbers show:
• Student Achievement: 70 (C)
• School Progress: 74 (C)
• Closing the Gaps: 68 (D)
These ratings reflect a combination of STAAR test scores, year-over-year growth, graduation rates, and how well the district is serving historically underserved student groups — including low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities.
The lowest-performing category was “Closing the Gaps,” which evaluates equity across all student subgroups. The district earned a “D” in that domain.
In 2021–22, HISD earned a “B” with an overall score of 88 under the old accountability system. TEA notes that changes to the system — particularly how student growth and campus-level performance are weighted — make comparisons tricky.
While these ratings offer insight into how schools performed in the 2022-23 school year, TEA is unable to release ratings for the 2023-24 school year due to a separate ongoing lawsuit. Ratings for the 2024-25 school year are expected to be issued in August 2025.
Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina released the following statement:
Educators wish Gov. Abbott and his legislative allies were as eager to adequately increase state funding for public school classrooms as the education commissioner is to release outdated test scores and dubious school accountability ratings.
Even under normal circumstances, STAAR test scores are an inadequate and unfair way to measure student progress and assign A-F grades to schools and school districts. They are particularly unfair to schools in low-income communities, where many children are in critical need of additional resources, not only for their schools but also for health care and other needs. These kids often get the lowest STAAR scores, and their schools get most of the Ds and Fs on their accountability scorecards.
These tests, taken in 2023, as students and their teachers were still recovering from the pandemic, were not scored under normal circumstances. The commissioner changed the grading rules after the tests were taken. He retroactively raised the required passing scores for one key element in the ratings – the college, career and military readiness of a school district’s high school graduates – resulting in lowered accountability grades for many districts.
Accountability ratings, which are mostly tied to STAAR scores, are more about blaming educators for low scores than they are for measuring student progress. The state must find a more meaningful way to measure student success and evaluate schools, one developed with meaningful input from educators, not consultants.
Meanwhile, in the accountability ratings that mean the most for Texas schoolchildren, the governor and his legislative allies continue to get an F in school funding. Texas spends about $5,000 less per student in average daily attendance than the national average, ranking near the bottom of the states, and so far this session neither the House nor the Senate has done much to bridge that gap.
The House has approved a $395 per student increase in the basic school allotment, which won’t come close to meeting the inflationary losses schools have suffered during the six years the allotment has been frozen. The Senate doesn’t want to increase the allotment at all, and Abbott allies in both chambers have passed a voucher bill to squander $1 billion on private schools for a relative handful of students.
The questionable 2023 school accountability ratings the commissioner just released don’t mean nearly as much for the future of Texas children, or hurt them as much, as the failing grades our state leaders continue to get on school funding.
For the full breakdown of school and district scores, visit TXschools.gov.
RELATED: Judge blocks release of this year’s school accountability ratings
Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath emphasized the importance of transparency, stating, “For far too long, families, educators and communities 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. Every Texas family deserves a clear view of school performance, and now those families finally have access to data they should have received two years ago. Transparency drives progress, and when that transparency is blocked, students pay the price.”
The A-F accountability system, first implemented in 2018, evaluates school performance in three key areas: Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps. This year’s ratings include an updated methodology designed to more accurately reflect school performance. To help compare the 2023 ratings with previous years, TEA has also published “What If” ratings for 2022 on TXSchools.gov, using the refreshed calculation system. These ratings are intended to provide an accurate picture for school systems to evaluate their progress and plan for improvement.
Despite the system’s intent for annual transparency, several years saw delays in the release of ratings. No ratings were issued for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 ratings were affected by pandemic-related disruptions and a state law that prevented D and F ratings from being issued. Legal challenges have delayed the release of ratings for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.
With the release of 2023 ratings, families now have the opportunity to assess how their schools are performing, while school districts can use the data to strengthen instruction, close achievement gaps, and drive continuous improvement.
To view the 2023 A-F accountability ratings, visit TXschools.gov.