A judge ruled Thursday that the Texas Education Agency can release its 2023 A-F school accountability ratings for the state’s public school districts, overturning a previous injunction issued in response to a lawsuit from more than 120 districts.
The TEA typically assigns annual A-F ratings to each public school district and campus based on students’ standardized test performance, although it has not done so for all schools and districts in the state since 2019 due to COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing lawsuits.
The TEA updated the formula to calculate ratings starting in 2023, which included raising the bar that schools need to reach to qualify for higher letter grades. However, a judge initially blocked the TEA from officially assigning ratings after around 10% of the state’s roughly 1,200 districts argued that the agency did not provide enough advance notice about the changes.
Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals — a conservative-majority court created by lawmakers in 2023 to oversee appeals involving the state — reversed the lower court’s decision, arguing that the trial court could not block the ratings’ release and that TEA commissioner Mike Morath did not overstep his bounds in releasing accountability data past certain deadlines.
The TEA and a lawyer for the school districts did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.
Because the formula was not released during the 2022-2023 school year, districts alleged that they were not able to adequately prepare their students.
The districts, which included Fort Worth and El Paso ISDs, also alleged that the 2022-2023 school ratings were not released by their Aug. 15 deadline and that the newly-redesigned STAAR tests factored into the ratings were not determined to be valid and reliable by an “independent” entity.
The Texas Education Code requires a commissioner to release A-F ratings for the prior school year by Aug. 15. The TEA did not release ratings by that deadline and had not done so when a judge issued a temporary injunction in October 2023.
However, no consequences were outlined for not making that deadline. The appeals court ruled that, since the TEA commissioner can eliminate A-F ratings in times of disaster, such as COVID-19, it is within his power to postpone them.
“Generally, a late decision on the merits is better than never,” the court wrote in an opinion by Chief Justice Scott Brister. “The clear legislative intent in Chapter 39 is to publish school ratings, not suppress them.”
School districts also argued that Morath acted beyond his power by releasing the standards used to measure schools after the 2022-2023 school year. According to Texas Education Code, the TEA should formally adopt and publish standards and explanatory materials “during the school year.”
The standards were not released until Oct. 31, 2023, although Morath asserted that schools were given preliminary standards during the prior school year. The court found that major indicators were known during the 2022-2023 year, while critical cutoff scores required to get an A, B, C, D or F rating were not.
“We agree that after a race is over not everyone can be declared the winner,” the court’s opinion read. “But it is not our role as judges to decide whether the Commissioner’s decisions were necessary or fair. The Districts’ burden … was to show the Commissioner acted ‘without legal authority,’ not that he should have exercised his discretion another way.”
[…]
The TEA still remains blocked from releasing the 2024 A-F accountability ratings due to a separate lawsuit from a smaller coalition of more than 30 school districts, including Pecos-Barstow-Toyah, Crandall, Forney, Fort Stockton and Kingsville ISDs.
The districts alleged that the STAAR tests underpinning the rankings were not properly designed and unfairly included the use of a new automated computer system to grade essay questions. Test results 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.
However, the TEA has said the shift was unrelated to the new grading system and previously attributed the change to new scoring rubric and a higher test difficulty. A judge blocked the TEA from releasing the 2024 rankings in August, and the case remains pending with the 15th Court of Appeals.
Thursday’s ruling occurred two days after Houston ISD state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles testified in Austin in favor of Senate Bill 1962, which would amend the Texas Education Code to prevent school districts from challenging the state’s annual accountability ratings in court if passed.
I don’t think I wrote about the 2023 lawsuit, but I did note the ruling in the 2024 case, which as noted is still under review. HISD was not a party to either of these lawsuits and as you know released their own version of the accountability ratings each year. I don’t have anything to add to this, just passing it along. Texas 2036 and the Houston Landing have more.
Re: “A judge …” No, a trio of them
The Texas court of appeals hear cases in panels of three. This opinion comes from the newly constituted Fifteenth Court of Appeals in Austin, which has statewide jurisdiction over appeals involving government entities. It currently consists of only three members, so all of them participated: Chief Justice Brister and Justices Field and Farris. All three are Abbott appointees and the Chief is a former justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
So, a judge (i.e. one judge) did not decide this case. Three did. Chief Justice Brister wrote the opinion for the court but also wrote a separate concurrence, which means that other two didn’t sign on to what he has to say there. This sort of think does not occur too often.
You can find both opinions through the links on the docket sheet.
https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=15-24-00007-CV&coa=coa15
(“Every time a judicial resolution is sought, a final resolution will be delayed for a year or two. That is what the Districts obtained, filing suit and enjoining the 2022–23 A to F
grades until at least 2025. I would make it the law in our statewide district that lower
courts should not entertain disputes about school performance ratings unless the
Constitution or the Legislature provides otherwise.”).
Case style: Morath v. Kingsville Independent School District et al., No. 15-24-00007-CV (Tex.App.- Austin [15th Dist.] April 3, 2025, no pet. h.)[transferred from 3rd Dist.]