State releases campus, district A-F ratings

The Texas Education Agency released the A-F accountability ratings for districts and campuses Monday, with Graham ISD improving overall and in every campus from the 2018-2019 academic year, the last year the ratings were received statewide.

The A-F accountability ratings are based on three areas of performance: student achievement, school progress and closing the gaps. Student achievement is based on how much students know and are able to do at the end of the year; school progress is based on how students perform over time and the growth in comparison to similar schools; and closing the gaps is based on how well different cohorts of students within a school are performing.

Due to the impact of COVID-19, all campuses and districts within the state were not rated due to the declared state of disaster for the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 accountability ratings. The progress made during the 2021-2022 academic year was noted Monday by GISD Board of Trustees President Andrea Lowery.

“I got so emotional when (GISD Superintendent) Sonny (Cruse) shared with me our actual STAAR results because I know everything that went into bringing these scores up,” Lowery said. “I just want to make it clear to everyone here, I mean, three years ago, we were in a situation where overall our district was a B (rating), but we had some real areas of concern. Our elementary school and our junior high had scores of a D (rating). Our junior high, because of the closing the gap score, was noted as needed to be in school improvement. The (...) leaders of our administration reached out to Region 9, to various resources, brought people in to help us turn this around and the leaders of these campuses and all the teachers put in so many hours in addition to what they normally do. (...) It seems strange that I’m getting teared up, but this is validation that what they did made a difference.”

For the full story, see the Saturday, Aug. 20 edition of The Graham Leader.