Changes anticipated for school
Navasota ISD is preparing for changes coming to the Texas Education Agency’s A-F rating system for schools.
The TEA A-F rating system focuses on academic growth, student performance and closing inequality gaps in education. The system is updated every five years and the new standard will be used for the 2022-2023 school year.
Navasota Assistant Superintendent of Instruction and Learning, Tracy Stone, said the school’s rating for the 2022-23 academic calendar year will not be a one-toone comparison to previous years. A district’s performance could be the same or even improve, yet still end up with a lower score compared to the previous year. Under the old A-F standard, a district was rated as its own K-12 entity. Under the new guidelines, each individual school’s rating will be averaged together.
Comparing to previous years The TEA is providing school districts with “what if” tools to see how previous years would fare under the new standard. “These don’t replace the ratings we achieved in 2022,” explained Stone. The ratings tool provides districts insight into where schools are at academically. The scores shown under the tool comparison are preliminary, currently for district use only. Retroactive “what if” ratings for previous years will be revealed to the public this September through press release and website TXSchools. gov.
Last year, Navasota ISD was rated with an overall score of 86. Using the “what if” tool applying the updated standards for that same year, the rating would drop to 73. With this in mind, district ratings for 2023 are expected to be lower than the 86 received last year if the changes to the rating system are implemented.
NISD Superintendent Dr. Stu Musik noted that other academic benchmarks such as TAAS, TAKS and STAAR tests changed their names after a transformation, yet the A-F system is keeping its name despite the overhaul. “It’s a completely different system,” said Musik. “They’re completely different scores, calculations and different things counted that didn’t count before.”
The Examiner will continue to monitor changes to TEA’s rating system.