TEA provides overview of A-F changes, timeline

Last week, the Texas Education Agency sent a letter to Texas superintendents providing an overview of House Bill 22, a law passed during the regular session that makes changes to the A-F accountability system, and the expected implementation timeline.

HB 22 takes the Texas A-F rating system and reduces the number of indicators used to evaluate districts and campuses from five to three: Student Achievement, School Progress, and Closing the Gaps.

The law also allows districts to establish local accountability systems, assigning their own overall letter grades to each campus based on locally developed indicators, which must be approved by the TEA and used in conjunction with the three domains mandated by the state.

The new rating system will roll out to districts first, followed by individual campuses. Beginning in August 2018, public school districts and charter systems will receive A-F letter grades for each domain and for overall performance.

Campus ratings will begin in August 2019. Because of their delayed rollout, provisional campus ratings for this school year (2017-18) will be reported to the legislature by January 1, 2019, revealing what letter grades campuses would have received on each domain and overall had campus ratings been in place.

Click here to see the Aug. 9 letter in its entirety, including information on accountability committee meetings, the TEA's local accountability pilot program, and tables showing the extent to which stakeholder input will be gathered, the timing of gathering input, and how stakeholder participation will increase as the process continues.