Earlier this month, DISD joined dozens of other Texas districts in suing the Texas Education Agency. At the center of the legal skirmish is TEA’s controversial update to the state’s system for school ratings.
Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde likened the change to an “injustice” in a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.
“We ask folks to be upstanders, not bystanders, when there’s an injustice that’s occurring,” she said. “I consider this an injustice to the work of our teachers, principals, parents, and community partners.”
TEA announced it would boost its scoring benchmark back in January, with Commissioner Mike Morath, a former Dallas ISD trustee, arguing that improvements must be made to student learning. Now a district will receive an A rating if 88% of its students are considered ready for college, a career or the military; previously, the threshold for that portion was only 60%. School officials statewide have argued that the latest grading system is effectively stacked against them.
Other North Texas districts are locking arms with Dallas ISD in the lawsuit, including Fort Worth, Plano, Denton, Frisco, Red Oak and Prosper ISDs.
TEA did not return the Observer’s request for comment by publication time.
Accountability scores help families choose where they want to enroll their child. They also aid developers in determining the marketability of new homes.Remarks from Superintendent Stephanie S. Elizalde, Ed.D. regarding Dallas ISD joining other Texas districts in Texas Education Agency lawsuit. pic.twitter.com/7lmOnX53nZ
— Dallas ISD (@dallasschools) September 25, 2023
If the state sees a certain school or district having trouble with performance, it can swoop in and demand interventions, according to TEA's website. Critics say that the grading system is detrimental to campuses in poorer communities and that such schools could get slapped with state sanctions, including being forced to shut down.
Exhibit A: The state's recent Houston ISD takeover came after a single campus performed poorly on the accountability rating system for several years.
Morath was the keynote speaker last week at a public education conference hosted by the Dallas Regional Chamber. He didn’t explicitly mention the lawsuit against TEA but did reference the grading system.
"We engage in continuous improvement, we publicly report the A–F scores of our campuses, and as it turns out this is a good idea,” he said at the conference, according to NBC-DFW. “It has been studied methodically by researchers and publicly reporting accountability scores and having high expectations in that accountability systems causes children to earn more money when they're in their 20s.”
Under TEA’s rating system, districts and individual schools receive A–F letter grades related to graduation rates, test results and other metrics. Dallas ISD received a B on its report card for 2022, taking home an overall average of 86.
Dallas ISD’s trustees voted unanimously earlier this month to participate in the lawsuit. They took issue with the lack of notice surrounding the system update and said it would work to harm students, families, team members and the broader Dallas community.
The district grading change comes at a time when Texas Republican lawmakers are gunning to expand privatized education. Elizalde and other critics believe that TEA’s move is meant to bolster the push for school vouchers, which Gov. Greg Abbott wants lawmakers to address in an upcoming special session that’s likely to start in October.
Some superintendents have alleged that the update is less about creating upstanding citizens than it is about undoing public ed. Certain proposed legislation would let parents receive private school vouchers only if their public school isn’t passing, according to NBC-DFW.
Elizalde insisted in a Sept. 14 statement that the district believes in accountability and works to reach and exceed lofty standards. She argued that all expectations and rules should be set ahead of time.
“Instead, the new state A–F refresh will be applied retroactively after the test has been taken and a new school year has already begun. This does not reflect our district’s recent improvements, which currently outpace the state in many areas,” she said. “Put simply, our test scores have gone up, but under the new system, our ratings are projected to decrease. This does not make sense.”
TEA has delayed the release of its latest school and district ratings and is expected to unveil them in October.
School leaders statewide worry that the system change will cause their scores to drop significantly at a time when districts are still struggling to address setbacks caused by the pandemic, including growing teacher shortages.
Opponents of the accountability rating update claim that it’s like moving the goalpost mid-game.
"The perception of that is 'I'm doing worse than I was last year,' but the reality is 'I'm doing exactly the same or better but the rules have changed,'" Carolyn Hanschen, Austin ISD’s executive director of accountability and assessment, told the Austin American-Statesman in March.
Dallas ISD recently celebrated making progress in narrowing the academic achievement gap, but Elizalde predicts that overall school ratings may still decline because of TEA’s retroactive rules change. She justified the district’s decision to join the lawsuit in a statement earlier this month.
“Many times, our commissioner, whom we all respect, has said his hands are tied by the law,” Elizalde said. “Our hands are equally tied, and we must take a position to allow the court system to help us all interpret the law.”
