2018 TEA Accountability Ratings for RISD
The Texas Education Agency has released accountability ratings under their new A-F grading system, and Richardson ISD has earned a solid B with an overall score of 88. If feeder patterns of a school district are like siblings in a family, though, Lake Highlands is the underperforming child.
Proposed by lawmakers in 2015, the A-F accountability rating prioritizes student performance on the standardized STAAR exam. Schools’ grades are determined by three domains: student achievement and school progress, which accounts for 70 percent of the overall rating, along with closing the gap, which accounts for the remaining 30 percent.
Lake Highlands High scored lowest of the four high schools with an overall grade of 77 – the only RISD high school to miss the 80 mark. In the domain which measures student progress and compares schools with similar demographics, LHHS earned a 66.
Amongst RISD’s eight junior highs, Forest Meadow had the lowest score with 83, and LHJH tied Apollo for second-to-last at 86. FMJH earned a 75 in the achievement domain – the only junior high to score below 80 in any subcategory.
Two elementary schools, Carolyn Bukhair and RISD Academy, scored below 60 and were designated IR for “Improvement Required,” perhaps to no surprise. These schools, along with Forest Lane Academy and Thurgood Marshall, were chosen last year by RISD for their “campus reconstitution” program and are now ACE academies. Besides Bukhair and RISD Academy, only elementary schools in the Lake Highlands feeder pattern scored below 78: Audelia Creek (62), Forest Lane (66), Stults Road (72), Hamilton Park (72), Aikin (73), Thurgood Marshall (74) and Wallace (76).
You can view Holt Mitchell’s map with test results here.
Make no mistake. The district’s grade of B is worth crowing about, and we’re likely to hear RISD do just that. And teachers, particularly in LH’s most impoverished schools, are teaching their enormous, overextended hearts out. But with the lowest ranking high school, the lowest ranking junior highs and seven of the nine elementary schools which scored below 78 in RISD, Lake Highlands has a serious case of sibling rivalry.
You can learn more on the TEA website here.
