Raise Your Hand Texas today released a comprehensive report calling for needed changes to the Texas school assessment and accountability systems. The Texas School Alliance urges legislators and other policymakers to take this report seriously and embark on assessment and accountability reforms that will better serve students, parents, teachers and the Texas economy.
The report from RYHT’s Measure What Matters Assessment and Accountability Council includes a call for the state’s A-F school ratings system to incorporate broader measures of school performance and deemphasize the role of the STAAR test. The current ratings system relies heavily on the STAAR test to formulate ratings for schools and campuses, and those ratings often correlate closely with the students’ family income.
Reforming state accountability standards to better measure success will be among the highest priorities in the 2023 legislative session for the Texas School Alliance, which represents superintendents from the state’s largest school districts. The Alliance is also calling for greater local flexibility over the types of interventions provided to students who do not pass the STAAR.
“We applaud Raise Your Hand Texas for undertaking the important work of assessment and accountability reform,” said Dr. Brian Woods, the President of the Texas School Alliance and the Superintendent of Northside ISD. “The state’s narrow focus on the STAAR test in evaluating schools has created frustration for families and educators across Texas. This report provides a roadmap for constructive reforms that will create a more illustrative accountability system.”
Dr. Woods added, “The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, legislators and the Commissioner of Education should take this report seriously and work toward creating a system that is more transparent, thorough and representative of the complex tasks that face Texas public schools. Public education is about so much more than performance on a single test and Texas needs a system that better reflects the work schools are doing.”
The full Measure What Matters report is available here.
The Texas School Alliance’s 2023 legislative priorities are available here.
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