Find Objective Information About School Quality in the Texas Assessment Research Portal

sachartermoms Leave a Comment
rainbow crayons tapr reports

What’s the best way for parents and caregivers in Texas to find objective information about the quality of public schools, including charter schools? Unfortunately, the A–F ratings and school report cards on txschools.gov haven’t been updated since 2022 because of a group of school districts that are suing the Texas Education Agency (TEA). The good news is that the Texas Assessment Research Portal also provides access to data about how students are performing on standardized tests. Compared to school report cards, the portal is not as simple to use and doesn’t give you a letter grade rating, but we can walk you through it and show you some key data points to look for when comparing schools.

Overview of Texas Accountability

All students at Texas public schools, including public charter schools, take standardized tests to measure how much they have learned. Students in grades 3–8 and in high school take STAAR tests in subjects such as mathematics, reading language arts (RLA), science, and social studies. Students typically take STAAR tests in the spring, and then in the summer their families receive STAAR report cards showing how their students performed. We have a guide to reading STAAR report cards, as well as tips for finding personalized resources based on your children’s STAAR report cards.

In 2017, the TEA introduced an A–F ratings system for all public schools, including public charter schools. This brief video gives an overview of the factors that go into the letter grade ratings on school report cards.

In 2023, the TEA changed the way it evaluates schools and districts, especially in the area of College, Career, and Military Readiness (CCMR). Under the new evaluation system, some campuses and districts would have scored much lower. A group of school districts sued to prevent TEA from releasing new ratings. A trial court granted an injunction, and the case is now on appeal. In 2024, there is more litigation to prevent TEA from releasing the latest set of data, arguing that there are problems with automated scoring of essays, among other complaints. There are news links at the bottom of this blog post to help you understand more about the context of the litigation. Also, in the San Antonio Charter Moms discussion group on Facebook, we share education news links daily.

Using the Texas Assessment Research Portal

Another way to approach school quality is to make comparisons between different campuses or districts. The Texas Assessment Research Portal

Advocating for Accountability

As we explained in our resources about STAAR report cards, standardized testing shows you one aspect of how your student is performing, but it’s not the whole picture. It’s important to look at a broader set of data: How happy is your child in school? Do they feel safe? Do they have friendships and participate in activities? Does the learning model fit your family’s goals? You can ask your child’s teacher for data from other types of testing, and also look at the grades on your child’s report card.

Similarly, the accountability system doesn’t tell the whole story about a school or a district. That’s one of the reasons why the San Antonio Charter Moms discussion group on Facebook: parents and caregivers can ask each other about those intangible factors that make up a school’s culture. Nevertheless, every public school (including charter schools) should be doing a good job educating its students in core subjects. Those students should be growing and making progress every year, and ideally every student would be performing at or above grade level by the time they graduate. We need an objective measure to compare performance across campuses and districts.

Accountability ratings are an important tool that parents and caregivers can use in their school search to identify schools were students tend to perform well or show growth on standardized tests. The A–F ratings on txschools.gov are simple to use, but they haven’t been updated in years. For families who are researching schools now, the Texas Assessment Research Portal is the best available tool. In addition, we can speak up about the need for objective data about school quality. If the school districts that filed the lawsuits would drop their opposition to the accountability system, then the public would once again have access to simple A–F ratings and up-to-date school report cards. This would benefit individual families who are searching for good schools and support the overall goal of high quality public education in Texas.

Read More About School Quality

Share with friends:

sachartermoms

A nonprofit that helps parents to research school options and become advocates for high quality education.

More Posts Twitter Facebook