GISD hears results of TEA study

Graham ISD both improved and struggled in English as a second language and special education STAAR test passing rates for the 2015-16 school year, the Texas Education Agency said. The TEA used the Performance Based Monitoring Analysis to focus on school district effectiveness within its bilingual/ESL, special education, CTE and Title I programs. The report is done annually to show districts what is, and isn’t, working. Each program receives scores in various categories on a scale of 0-4. The lower the result, the better the score. If a school receives a score of a four then the TEA intervenes, performing analysis and supporting the district resources and documents to help them improve. In the 2015-16 school year, GISD improved their ESL STAAR grade 3-8 passing rates in math by 10.5 percent, reading by 11.2 percent, social studies by 7.7 percent and writing by 9.6 percent. On the negative side the district had a drop of 1.7 percent in science their ESL STAAR grade 3-8 passing rates. “We went up in social studies and we went up in writing so we did a good job with ESL students, lots of improvement in that area, however, we have a long way to go in those areas,” said Robert Loomis, GISD assistant superintendent for administrative services. GISD improved the passing rates of special education students in grades 3-8 in math by 5.3 percent, reading by 1 percent and science by 1.2 percent. But those students scores fell by 4.1 in social studies and 4.7 percent in writing. For the rest of this story, subscribe to our print or online edition.