TEA Posts New Video to Explain State Accountability Rating System

The state accountability ratings were published on August 8, 2014, and in an effort to explain them, the Texas Education Agency has posted a video that provides a basic overview of the state accountability system and what goes into the annual ratings of schools, districts and charters.
TEA Posts New Video to Explain State Accountability Rating System  (Also in Spanish)


Accountability Ratings

In addition, districts will post House Bill 5 community and student engagement performance ratings–Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable–for the district and each campus on the district's website by Friday, August 8, 2014.



In case you missed it, here are how other publications shared the news.  Noted are comments from Shannon Housson, TEA’s director for the Division of Performance Reporting, who said the advisory groups that helped create this accountability system wanted it to be more comprehensive than the last system and focus on more than just the state assessments.

Criss Cloudt, TEA associate commissioner for the Department of Assessment and Accountability, said with the prior accountability system, the focus was primarily on getting students just above the passing bar.

With this system, the focus is not just on getting kids to pass the standard, but it also considers student progress from year to year and gives additional credit for students who perform at the highest levels on the state assessment, she said.

The TEA explains the state public school accountability ratings in one minute 41 seconds
(Dallas Morning News © 08/07/2014)
Yesterday, I posted about the state school and district accountability ratings set to be released Friday. I suggested that the system was pretty darned complicated and difficult to adequately explain. Today, the TEA has released a video explanation that takes 1:41. It’s pretty good. I gently suggest that it vastly understates the complexity of the Secret Formulas behind the ratings.

State to release public school ratings Friday
(Tyler Morning Telegraph © 08/07/2014)
The state will release public school ratings on Friday and the standards were raised a bit higher this year. Although the system framework remains much the same as last year, minor changes, such as an increase in certain standards, credit given for high performance levels and the inclusion of new factors in measuring certain categories, raised the bar for the state’s accountability system.