The release of accountability ratings for Texas schools occurs for the second year in a row

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The Texas Education Agency uses an A-F accountability rating to grade school districts based on their overall performance.

The agency changed those ratings again in 2022 and 2023, leading to lawsuits from hundreds of school districts.

They claim that the ratings are based on a flawed STAAR test and set the bar for college readiness too high.

Given the uncertainty in the system, a charter school in Lubbock says all districts are suffering.

“These are the best policies we have at our disposal right now, and we really need to wait and see what the results show and face reality because that's the only way we can determine how we can improve public education and design our systems to benefit students academically,” said Richard Baumgartner, founder and director of Rise Academy in Lubbock.

Rise Academy is a charter school that says it focuses on low-income and minority students.

He says educators and legislators need to know how they are doing in educating students.

“We can bury our heads in the sand and hope that no one notices that these evaluations have not been published for several years, but in the end that does not serve the interests of our students,” said Baumgartner.

Baumgartner says accountability assessments are a way for parents to be more informed.

“They're trying to decide if they believe the campus is the best choice for their child, what it has to offer and how it performs for the typical student at that campus,” Baumgartner said. “So parents can be informed and make better decisions and judgments about their child's education.”

Baumgartner is working with other charter schools across the state to release last year's ratings.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the TEA has not released ratings for the school years ending in 2020 and 2021.

In 2022, only partial results were published to prevent schools with poor results from being subject to government sanctions.

The ratings for 2023 and 2024 are being withheld in court.

We reached out to other school districts in Lubbock for this story, but they declined to comment.

All rights reserved.