HOUSTON – Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles held a news conference Tuesday to discuss the analysis of the 2022-2023 state accountability data, which he said was not a surprise to him.
While the Texas Education Agency is under litigation and won’t provide the official accountability ratings, the superintendent said he received the data and methodology used for Assessment Accountability and Compliance to come up with the scores. According to Miles, the number of D and F schools is much higher than in the past. Using the raw data, Miles said that there are 52 F-rated HISD campuses, 59 schools with D ratings and 64 with C ratings.
“These of course are unofficial until TEA, if ever, are able to report it, but they’re accurately based on the raw data, which we have,” Miles said.
Miles expressed that while the TEA has upgraded and made the accountability process more vigorous, the district’s goal is to improve the low ratings.
“We have a lot of work to do is the main message,” Miles said during the news conference. “We have a lot of schools that are struggling... We went into this year knowing that we would have a lot of work to do, especially around the quality of instruction, which is the leading indicator of academic achievement and hence accountability.”
Miles believes there’s a need for a “whole-scale systemic reform” within the entire district.
“We can’t continue to do the things we’ve always done, I’ve said that before,” Miles said. “This data just confirms the distance we have to travel and the need for doing bold, innovative transformation.”
Miles said the New Education System schools are examples of implementing systemic reform. According to the district, NES schools are priority campuses in HISD that are provided with resources and support to dramatically improve outcomes for their students. Miles is also hoping that the district can increase its overall reading scores.
“The message we want to communicate is the same. We need to focus on high-quality instruction in every classroom, in every campus,” Chief Academic Officer Kristen Hole said. “That’s what our students need and that’s what our students deserve.”
Hole said that NES and non-NES campuses are getting the support they need for academic success.
“We’re providing access to high-quality curriculum. We’re also providing access to staffing, professional development, and on-the-job coaching for our teachers and our administrators. Those two things together really get at the heart of what a student is doing every day in the classroom.”
Miles said he isn’t sure when the official ratings will be released. He plans to release the raw data to schools in January.
According to the district’s website, the state accountability system uses student assessments (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness or STAAR) but also makes use of additional indicators to provide parents and taxpayers greater detail on the performance of a district or charter and each campus throughout the state.
The state accountability system uses a performance domain framework that considers three areas:
- Student Achievement: Evaluates performance across all subjects for all students, on both general and alternate assessments, College, Career, and Military Readiness (CCMR) indicators, and graduation rates.
- School Progress: Measures district and campus outcomes in two areas: the number of students that grew at least one year academically (or are on track) as measured by STAAR results and the achievement of all students relative to districts or campuses with similar economically disadvantaged percentages.
- Closing the Gaps: Uses disaggregated data to demonstrate differentials among racial/ethnic groups, socioeconomic backgrounds and other factors. The indicators are included in this domain, as well as the domain’s construction, align the state accountability system with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Overall scores and ratings are determined by a weighted average of the individual domain scores.
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