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Superintendent's Report
New State Rating System for Schools and School Districts
In 2015, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring the commissioner of education to assign a letter grade of A-F to each district and campus starting with the 2017-2018 school year. Earlier this month, the Texas Education Agency announced the criteria that will be used to determine those letter grades.
Superintendent Susan Kincannon told trustees that exactly how those criteria will be calculated is unknown but that three of the five criteria will rely exclusively on STAAR test scores. She described that as "just more of the same."
Kincannon continued, "This system is overly dependent on standardized testing and completely fails to capture what is actually happening in our schools. These ratings are a wholly incomplete measure of our students' success. For the most part, they will only capture how our students performed on one test, on one day.
"Belton ISD has a more holistic definition of student success. Our definition includes STAAR test scores, dual credit and Advanced Placement courses, and career and technical education programs but also what students achieve in academic competitions, our athletics program, our fine arts program, in service to our community, and their daily work.
"When the A-F ratings are released, I hope that you'll join me in looking at them in this context: They are just one data point, and looking only at the A-F ratings gives you an incomplete picture of any campus or school district."
District of Innovation
Kincannon also updated school board members on the process of becoming a District of Innovation. That designation was created during the legislatureĀ¹s last session to allow school districts to receive some (but not all) of the same exemptions from the Texas Education Code that charter schools receive.
Earlier this year, the school board appointed a committee of teachers, administrators and parents to explore the designation. The committee has proposed a plan that would address three major areas of the Texas Education Code: teacher certification, minimum attendance for class credit or final grade, and first day of instruction.
If adopted, the plan would allow the district to hire individuals without a teaching certification and/or bachelorĀ¹s degree to teach classes in law enforcement, health science, culinary arts, construction trades and automotive technology. It would also support options for online dual credit courses and for courses that blend online learning with classroom instruction by exempting those from the requirement that students must be in attendance for at least 90 percent of the days that a class is offered. Finally, it would include an exemption from the requirement that instruction begin no earlier than the fourth Monday in August, so the district could adopt a calendar that ends before the start of summer sessions at area colleges and still allow students to be off with their families for federal holidays.
The school board discussed the plan this month and will hold a public hearing on the plan in January. They will then vote on adopting the plan in February.
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