Dallas ISD will join lawsuit seeking to block new A-F school scores

The multidistrict lawsuit was filed last month against Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath

4:31 PM on Sep 14, 2023 CDT — Updated at 4:39 PM on Sep 14, 2023 CDT

Dallas ISD plans to join the lawsuit seeking to block the release of new A-F school accountability scores.

A handful of other Texas school boards sued Education Commissioner Mike Morath last month in Travis County court. Dallas ISD will be the largest district to jump into the legal fight and push for a temporary injunction.

Ahead of their unanimous vote, the DISD trustees said the state’s new accountability formula was not made transparently and that districts didn’t have enough notice of the changes.

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“Dallas ISD has always prided itself on holding ourselves accountable,” DISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde said. “That being said, we also think that when we are evaluating students or teachers or any members of our team, that they should always know what exactly they’re being evaluated on, prior to the completion or conclusion of their evaluation.”

The suit was originally filed by seven smaller districts, including Kingsville, Canutillo and Crowley ISDs. In the weeks since, several other school boards have voted to join.

Elizalde has been an outspoken critic of the state’s new system for grading schools. She worries DISD could earn the largest number of D and F ratings in the district’s history because of the revised formula.

Morath has repeatedly said that the changes to the system are part of a five-year cycle. Updates are needed, he said, to ensure schools continually work to improve outcomes for students and set Texas up as a national education leader. His office declined to provide additional comment Thursday, instead referring back to what Morath has previously said about the legal action.

“We think the lawsuit is without merit, but you go to court, judges opine,” Morath told reporters earlier this week.

Texas’ A-F school accountability system evaluates every district across the state, giving families a feel for how their local campuses are performing. The ratings are a major factor in how the community perceives local schools. The scores can influence where people buy homes — and whether they decide to enroll in the public school system at all.

The grades are largely based on standardized test scores, factoring in how well a school grows academic achievement and closes gaps between student groups. The formula has remained largely static since lawmakers created it in 2017, but widespread changes will be factored in when the Texas Education Agency releases the new scores later this fall.

It will now be more difficult to score well in the metric that assesses how prepared graduates are for college, career or the military. Changes will impact other data points as well, including by weighing scores differently based on campus size.

The lawsuit seeks to block Morath “from unlawfully lowering A–F performance ratings for the 2022–2023 school year by retroactively changing the rules in a way that will arbitrarily lower performance ratings for many school districts and campuses even though their performance improved.”

The lawsuit alleges that Morath didn’t give districts enough notice about what measures, methods and procedures would be applied to their new scores.

Without that information, “school districts cannot take steps during the school year to ensure that they are taking steps to achieve high performance rating,” the lawsuit states.

The scores were originally supposed to be published Sept. 28. Morath announced Tuesday, however, that they would not be made public until late October or early November.

He said the delay was not related to the legal action, but rather the need to recalibrate some metrics to better account for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic growth.

How Texas schools are graded

Last year, nearly three-quarters of Texas schools earned an A or B.

Dallas ISD earned a B. But if the new rules had applied to last year’s data, the district’s score would have dropped to a C. The number of middle and high schools scoring a D or F would have nearly quadrupled, from seven to 26, according to the district’s data analysis.

Some trustees were concerned that they could see more failing schools in their districts under the refreshed accountability system.

Trustee Ben Mackey cautioned that the district should not pat itself on the back about its As and Bs if student achievement is still not where it should be. Too many children aren’t reading on grade level, he said, and achievement gaps remain.

Elizalde has said she’s worried people could look at the new scores and falsely believe student achievement plummeted between 2022 and 2023. Dallas students saw growth across several grades and subjects, according to the latest STAAR results.

One tension point is a change to the high school evaluations. In 2017, the state said if 60% of graduates proved ready for college, a career or the military, the school earned the equivalent of an A. Since then, campuses have made major progress in this metric. That standard will be raised to 88%

The formula also awards schools for the number of students who leave high school with an “industry-based certification.” But the new rules will eliminate credit for some of the popular options, like showing proficiency in Google Analytics.

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