Welp.
A Travis County judge has blocked the Texas Education Agency from releasing its ratings of the state’s school districts and campuses for a second year in a row.
Judge Karin Crump on Monday issued a temporary restraining order after Texas school districts filed their second lawsuit over changes to the metrics that are used to measure their performance.
[…]
The lawsuit filed Monday is the second legal battle over the A-F rating system.
Last fall, a Travis County judge temporarily blocked the release of the 2023-24 ratings. The judge sided with more than 120 school districts who had filed a lawsuit contending the stricter standards would bring unfair drops to their ratings. The judge still has to make a final ruling but has said she will likely side with school districts. The TEA has already said it plans to appeal the judge’s decision.
Families have had five years without a complete set of school ratings. Texas schools and districts did not get ratings in 2020 or 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And in 2022, struggling schools set to get a D or an F got extra relief: Senate Bill 1365 directed TEA to forgo official ratings for those schools to give them time to respond to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chron adds some details.
“The Commissioner radically changed the way the new STAAR test is being administered by replacing human graders with AI grading. This change was made without ensuring that this radical change would not impact the new STAAR test’s validity and reliability,” said the lawsuit, which was filed on Monday. “In fact, it appears that AI grading has resulted in a test that is not ‘valid and reliable’ and cannot lawfully be used to assign A–F ratings for school districts and campuses.”
Test results this year showed a sharp uptick in the number of zeroes scored on essay questions, prompting some critics to question whether the increase was due to the computer scoring. TEA has said the shift is unrelated to the new grading system and attributed the change to new scoring rubric and a higher test difficulty.
The lawsuit is the latest brought by Nick Maddox, the same attorney who helped about 100 districts block last year’s A-F ratings. The plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit are a group of independent school districts, including Pecos-Barstow-Toyah, Crandall, Forney, Fort Stockton and Kingsville.
“We believe that our arguments are valid. They obviously made sense to the judge and our sense of urgency because once you let the cat out of the bag and release those scores, it’s too late,” Maddox said.
A spokesman for TEA said in an emailed statement that the agency is “reviewing the finding and will evaluate appropriate next steps.”
“The A-F accountability system is good for kids. It is why the legislature adopted a strong A-F framework to help improve the quality of student learning across the state, give parents a clear understanding of how well their schools are performing and establish clear expectations for school leaders so they can better serve students,” the statement said. “It is disappointing that a small group of school boards and superintendents opposed to fair accountability and transparency have once again filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing A-F ratings from being issued and keeping families in the dark about how their schools are doing.”
Last year, the districts argued that the TEA had unfairly increased standards in such a way that would depress school ratings, and a judge agreed to block the 2023 A-F scores.
The TEA’s more rigorous formula raised the threshold for high schools to earn an “A” in college readiness, which is determined by the percentage of students who score well on Advanced Placement exams, obtain certain industry certifications or enlist in the military. Schools that previously earned the minimum college readiness score for an A in 2022 would receive a D in 2024.
I assume all this will step on Mike Miles’s messaging a bit. I assume at some point this litigation will be resolved, and it will probably not be great for a non-trivial number of districts once that happens. That’s all too far out for me to think about at this time. If you’re wondering where the full ratings listing is, now you know.
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