I hope everyone is staying warm on this coldest day of the school year. I believe we reached the high temp for the day of 23 degrees, brrrrrr.
You may have read the article today in the Dallas Morning News regarding the new rating system for schools and districts which will take effect next year. The new rating system assigns each school and district a rating of A, B, C, D or F in four domains. The four domains are:
- How well students performed on STAAR tests
- How much progress students made year to year on STAAR
- How well performance gaps are being closed between lower performing students and higher performing students on STAAR
- Students' college and career readiness
These four domains are already part of our state accountability system for campuses and districts; however, the new system will provide an A-F rating for each domain beginning next year. Another feature of the new rating system will be an overall rating, but the final methodology to determine the overall rating label has not yet been developed.
There have been numerous critics of the new system for its attempt to communicate the quality of education provided at a school or district with a single grade. Other criticism has pointed out flaws in the methodology of indicators used to determine the single score. For example, the college readiness score for elementary and middle schools is currently based on the indicator of student attendance.
Lovejoy ISD has the highest ratings of all of the districts listed in the Dallas Morning News article from Collin, Dallas, Denton, Rockwall, and Tarrant counties. Our scores of "A" in Domains I, II, and III, which are based on the STAAR test performance of our students, are consistent with the performance of our students and equal to just two other high performing districts listed in the article (Allen ISD and Carroll ISD). Although our score of "B" in Domain IV (college readiness) is very respectable in comparison to districts throughout Texas, we would concur with others who have criticized the upcoming accountability system that indicators such as student attendance should not be used as a key data element to inform parents and the public about the college readiness of students. None of the 59 districts listed in the Dallas Morning News article was given a score of "A" for college readiness, and other high performing districts (Allen, Frisco, Highland Park, Plano, Prosper, Carroll, and Coppell) were given a "C".
We will continue to keep you informed about the new rating system. If you have questions, please feel free to send me an email or give me a call.
We hope you love where you have chosen for your child to learn. If you have feedback to help us improve, please do not hesitate to contact me on my cell at 214.385.1967.
