WESLACO Standing with Texas families, educators and taxpayers who deserve to know how the state’s public schools are performing, IDEA Public Schools has filed a petition to intervene in ongoing litigation that is preventing the Texas Education Agency (TEA) from publishing A-F grades for the state’s public schools and districts. The 87,000-student charter school network’s stance is contrary to five traditional school districts that have sued TEA to withhold ratings of the 2023-24 school year.
“Letter grades are not the only measure of a school’s quality, but they are a vital tool for assessing how well Texas’s publicly funded schools are serving students,” Jeff Cottrill, CEO and Superintendent of IDEA Public Schools, said in a news release. “As a school system with a stake in this litigation, we are standing up for the right of Texas families to access information they need to make decisions about their children’s education and for the public’s right to hold schools accountable for their performance.”
The importance of annual school ratings
TEA issues A-F ratings for public schools and districts annually, providing a straightforward and uniform measure of school performance across the state. Typically issued as a new school year begins, these ratings are calculated using a variety of factors, including student achievement on the prior spring’s state assessments and school progress year over year.
Litigation filed by five independent school districts in August 2024 has prevented the release of the 2023-24 ratings, leaving Texas’s 1,200 school systems and the families of more than 5.5 million students in the dark about the performance of local schools. Without these ratings, it is more difficult for parents to make informed decisions about their children’s education, for educators to identify areas for improvement as students recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on learning, and for taxpayers to evaluate the effective use of public funds.
Charter schools support transparency
IDEA’s petition to intervene was not motivated by its schools’ ratings. In fact, while IDEA projects that 63% of its schools earned an A or B this past year, that’s a smaller percentage than the year before. IDEA’s decision to intervene in the other school districts’ lawsuit challenging TEA underscores the charter school sector’s commitment to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement.
“With fewer than half of Texas students meeting grade-level expectations, it is clear that no school district in Texas should be fully satisfied with its performance,” said Cottrill. “Improvement starts with transparency. Let’s all share and own our ratings, celebrate our successes, and focus on where our schools and districts are not meeting expectations.”
The lawsuit to block school ratings was brought against Commissioner of Education Mike Morath by Pecos-Barstow-Toyah Independent School District, Crandall Independent School District, Forney Independent School District, Fort Stockton Independent School District and Kingsville Independent School District. A temporary injunction hearing is scheduled for Sept. 16-17 in the 201st District Court of Travis County.
An overview of IDEA’s projected district accountability ratings for the 23-24 school year can be found here.
A copy of IDEA’s Petition in Intervention can be found here.
