A legal effort to block Texas from releasing school performance ratings has created a divide between district leaders who worry the scores are an inaccurate representation of their work and others who say parents need that information to make choices about their kids’ schooling.

A coalition of about 30 school districts recently sued the Texas Education Agency over the introduction of a computer system to grade the state’s standardized tests, which are used to calculate part of Texas schools’ performance rating. The year before, school districts filed a similar lawsuit arguing that the agency had raised too fast a benchmark that also goes into their score. Judges out of Travis County have sided with the school districts in both cases, ordering temporary injunctions that have kept the TEA from releasing the ratings for two consecutive school years.

The latest lawsuit has been met with wariness from some school leaders, a marked shift from when more than a 100 districts saddled up for the first suit to create a unified front against the TEA.

While the state’s hands have been tied from releasing ratings this year, some school districts in Bexar, Dallas, El Paso and Harris counties have voluntarily released their own campuses’ forecast scores. One board trustee out of Midland’s school district unsuccessfully filed a petition with the court to intervene in the lawsuit, saying time and money were wasted on standardized testing if the public could not access school performance ratings.

“If I’m going to put billboards up and I’m going to put up a fancy website promoting our academic programs or early college high school programs, I believe I owe it to that same community, those same parents, [to] put out scores,” said Xavier de la Torre, the superintendent of the Ysleta school district in El Paso.

The TEA grades every public and charter school in the state on an A-F scale. A failing grade can trigger state sanctions and a district in the worst cases. Poor scores can also push families to leave the district and, since schools get money from the state based on enrollment, could lead to less funds.

Some school leaders criticized the automated computer system used to grade the statewide standardized test this year, saying a third party should have reviewed the tool before it was rolled out. They believe statewide drops in reading scores were due to errors with the system and would result in an unfair school rating.

School leaders also said they didn’t get enough notice when TEA introduced stricter expectations for how schools show they’re preparing students for life after graduation. High schools can now only get an “A” rating if 88% of their seniors enrolled in college, pursued a non-college career or entered the military, up from 60%.

Bobby Ott, the superintendent of Temple’s school district, said he never saw the changes to the career readiness benchmarks coming.

“It wasn’t even a target we could prepare for, and that was just completely uncalled for,” he said. “In no real-time situation do you measure progress improvement by doing a ‘ready, fire, aim’ approach. There’s no system built like that … There’s no chance to build to that goal.”

But critics question if back-to-back lawsuits are the best means to raise concerns about the changes. Families have now gone five years without a full picture of how their schools are doing. Texas did not release school ratings in 2020 or 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic; in 2022, Texas lawmakers ordered the state to only release A-C ratings.

Ott agreed a legal fight wasn’t the ideal way to settle disputes with the changes but he said lawmakers left districts no choice because they haven’t addressed their concerns.

The Dallas Independent School District was among the districts that joined in on the first lawsuit. A year later, it was one of the first to voluntarily release their own ratings.

“We’re all being held to that same calculation. So the fact that [the state’s rating system] is imperfect does not mean that we shouldn’t measure it at all,” said Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde. “I feel like I owe it to our community, and, frankly, to the state of Texas to say, ‘here is where we are.’”

Elizalde said her district joined the first lawsuit because she wanted one more year to understand the new college and career readiness benchmarks before they went into effect. Now that that year had come and passed, Elizalde said her district needed to be transparent about its rating so her team could set performance goals — even if she does share some of the same computer scoring concerns listed in the latest lawsuit.

“If I don’t talk about where we are now, how can I explain how we’re improving?” she said.

Dallas ISD expects to get a C rating this year, a drop from the B it earned in the 2021-22 school year.

Parents lean on A-F scores to understand how their local schools are performing and, if they have the resources, they can use that information to make decisions about where to send their kids to school.

In the El Paso area, school districts in that region are open enrollment, which means families can apply to enroll their child in any school within the district regardless of where they live. The Ysleta, Socorro and El Paso school districts all released their ratings so parents could make informed decisions.

Charter schools leaders say they also benefit from having that information out in the open since many parents find them after assessing local public schools and removing their kids when they are dissatisfied.

“If parents and communities don’t understand the levels of performance of the schools in their neighborhoods … across a state standardized metric, then parents are left in the dark,” said Jeff Cottrill, the superintendent of IDEA Public Schools, Texas’ largest charter school.

The fissures forming between district leaders over the A-F accountability system come as next year’s legislative session looms near. Lawmakers are expected to propose new school voucher legislation, which would let families use taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s private schooling. Districts are also expected to ask for a raise in the base amount of dollars they get per student after five years of no increases.

Elizalde in Dallas worries that withholding information about public schools’ performance might weaken their ask.

“We know we’re going to be asking for funding for schools. Am I really in the position to say our schools need funding, but I don’t want to tell you how we’re doing? It didn’t sit right with me.”

When asked about how he expects the lawsuit to impact superintendents’ legislative requests, Ott said he hopes the lawsuit will be a catalyst for overhauling the A-F system altogether.

Families in his district have lost trust in the standardized testing system, Ott said. Instead, they want school ratings to measure if schools are safe as well as the experience and tenure of teachers, he added.

“There should be accountability and transparency,” he said. “But they have to be good, solid systems that people can trust and have credibility. And that’s the problem right now. It’s an antiquated system.”

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: IDEA Public Schools has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at .

About six years ago, the Kingsville Independent School District across the state to receive a failing grade under the state’s newly introduced A-F accountability system.

Many educators either stepped down or were asked to leave because of the abysmal rating. But the effects extended beyond the district: The F rating caused Kleberg County, home to Kingsville ISD, to lose out on a partnership with the U.S. Navy that would’ve spurred growth in the region, Superintendent Cissy Reynolds-Perez said.

“There’s a ripple effect,” she said. “These letter grades are not just something you take lightly, and that’s why they’re so high stakes. Not only do we need to make the grade because we want our kids to grow and improve, but we know how it can affect the whole community.”

That’s why Reynolds-Perez was one of several Texas school leaders who objected when the state announced stricter requirements to get a good rating: Under the proposed new rules, schools would have to prove that a significantly higher number of high school students were pursuing a career after graduating.

Kingsville ISD, along with 120 school districts across the state, the Texas Education Agency last year and stopped the update. A Travis County judge found that the state’s changes, which were to debut last fall, are unlawful and would harm districts across the state.

The TEA appealed the decision and the trial, which was supposed to be held next month, has been postponed. The release of the ratings, which help inform families and educators about their schools’ performance, won’t be released until the case is resolved.

“This ruling completely disregards the laws of this state and, for the foreseeable future, prevents any A-F performance information from being issued to help millions of parents and educators improve the lives of our students,” the agency said in a statement.

How to hold schools accountable for Texas students’ academic performance has been a contentious issue in recent years, with big implications for the state’s public education system and economy.

The state says it needs detailed data and higher benchmarks to measure schools’ performance to better prepare students for life after high school.

A from the George W. Bush Institute and Texas 2036 found that 70% of jobs in Texas will require a post-secondary degree by 2036, but when cohorts of Texas eighth-graders were tracked, only 22% acquire such credentials within six years of high school graduation.

School leaders agree with the goal but say the changes the state wants would be too abrupt, potentially setting them up for failure and creating an inaccurate narrative about their work.

And for schools, the potential ramifications of a bad grade could be big. Getting an F could lead parents to leave the district, which would mean receiving less money from the state since school funding is based on student attendance. In a worst case scenario, school districts with too many failing grades in a row face the threat of a — just like it happened at the Houston Independent School District last summer.

Accountability in Texas

, the Texas Legislature has mandated a system to evaluate public schools’ academic performance.

Mary Lynn Pruneda, senior policy advisor for Texas 2036, said accountability drives transparency that students, families and policymakers need to drive academic improvement.

“The harsh reality of this situation is that when Texas schools don’t have accountability ratings, the group that suffers the most are students,” Pruneda said. “After the pandemic, only about half of our students are on grade level, and we’re graduating more than 120,000 students each year who aren’t ready for either college or a career.”

Before the A-F system came into effect in 2017, the state only rated schools with one of three grades: “met standard,” “met alternative standard” or “improvement required.”

Now, districts and their campuses are assigned an A-to-F grade based on students’ performance on the state’s standardized test, academic growth and graduation rates, as well as schools’ efforts to prepare kids for careers after high school. Parents and community members use the scores to see how their schools and districts are performing.

The TEA says the 2017 law that required the creation of a new rating system also came with a mandate to keep adding rigor to how schools are graded.

The law states that the TEA commissioner shall “establish and modify standards to continuously improve student performance” to “ensure this state is a national leader in preparing students for postsecondary success.”

The law also stipulated that the agency would not make changes to how it evaluates schools’ academic performance for five years. That waiting period ended last year, and shortly after the agency announced it would revamp the A-F system. One change in particular irked school officials.

Under the current system’s college and career readiness portion, high schools earn an A if 60% of seniors either enrolled in college, pursued a non-college career or entered the military. The revamped rating system, announced in January, raises that benchmark and awards A grades to high schools only if 88% of seniors meet one of those criteria.

This change would’ve bogged down overall school ratings and many high school campuses would’ve received Ds or Fs, Reynolds-Perez said. Under the current system, Kingsville ISD’s only high school would’ve been close to getting an A for its performance in 2022; under the TEA’s proposed changes, the school would’ve gotten a C, Reynolds-Perez said.

“It would have created a false narrative,” she said.

The Kingsville superintendent said announcing the changes in January was not enough time to allow schools to adjust to the change and that the increase should’ve been phased.

At a Texas House committee meeting in February, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, told TEA Commissioner Mike Morath there could be other ways to improve postsecondary success without putting schools’ grades in jeopardy.

The law “certainly doesn’t say Morath must raise the bar for schools as they are recovering from a pandemic,” Hinojosa said.

Other criticisms

Schools have other criticisms of the accountability system, including that it still places an overly large emphasis on the state test.

“You’re measuring a child’s ability on one test,” Reynolds-Perez said.

School leaders also say the system tends to be punitive toward districts that serve low-income families. Under the current rules, a majority of campuses that would have received a D or F based on their 2022 performance serve students who live in some of the state’s poorest communities. That year, the TEA gave those schools a “Not Rated” label as schools were still reeling from the pandemic.

The TEA dismisses that poorer schools do worse because of the system itself.

When the 2022 ratings were released, Morath said there are challenges for high-poverty schools, but believes it is not impossible for them to rate higher.

“Poverty is definitely not destiny,” Morath said. “The idea that this is just some sort of rating of poverty is false. The question is how do we help spread what we identify as the most effective evidence-based practices in our schools.”

For Reynold-Perez, the best outcome of the lawsuit would be for the system’s career readiness requirements to be raised more gradually — or better yet, for the whole system to be revamped with a more holistic approach.

“We believe that we need to be held accountable,” she said. “We just believe that the accountability system needs reform, and it needs to be done lawfully and fairly.”

Resolution to the lawsuit — and the fight over how Texas schools are graded — likely won’t come until later in the spring or summer. In the meantime, families will have to continue waiting to see how their schools performed last year.

“This decision leaves local school system leaders, community members, and families without one of their only tools for understanding school performance and advocating for essential programs and resources specifically designed to lift up their most underserved students,” said Jonathan Feinstein, director of The Education Trust in Texas.

Disclosure: The George W. Bush Institute, Texas 2036 and Education Trust have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Three El Paso school districts achieved a small victory after a Travis County judge in late October temporarily blocked the Texas Education Agency from releasing the 2023 A-F accountability ratings.

That came after dozens of Texas school districts, including the El Paso, Canutillo and San Elizario Independent School Districts, filed a lawsuit against Commissioner of Education Mike Morath, alleging the agency illegally changed the rating system after students had completed standardized testing for the 2022-23 school year.

The rating system gives districts and schools letter grades – A through F – based on a combination of test results, graduation rates and how well students are prepared for a career or college after graduating. Poor performing schools and districts are usually required to go through additional monitoring and interventions and have on some occasions been taken over by the TEA.

Some El Paso school leaders said the TEA’s plan to change the system was a politically motivated attempt to push lawmakers to approve Gov. Greg Abbott’s “school choice” or school voucher program that would allow parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private and religious schools. School leaders say the plan will siphon funds based on enrollment numbers away from public schools.

“The accountability standards were changed to make the districts look like they were not performing,” San Elizario ISD Superintendent Jeannie Meza-Chavez told El Paso Matters. “This would allow the governor to go to the public and say, ‘This is why we need school choice because the schools are underperforming.’”

CISD Superintendent Pedro Galaviz said he felt the change was “designed to create doubt in public education in order to adopt legislation that is going to shed resources to private schools.”

Though a school choice bill failed to get through the Texas House for a third time on Tuesday, that same day in an effort to get the legislation passed. The House Select Committee on Educational Opportunity and Enrichment  approved on Friday the latest iteration of school choice legislation, the first time this year that a voucher bill got through a House committee.

A spokesperson for the TEA, Melissa Holmes, said the agency has appealed the court’s decision to halt the release of the A-F Accountability ratings.

“This ruling completely disregards the laws of this state and for the foreseeable future, prevents any A-F performance information from being issued to help millions of parents and educators improve the lives of our students,” Holmes said in a statement. “Though about 10% of our school system leaders disagreed with the methods used in A-F enough to file this lawsuit, the complete absence of public performance information means that 100% of our school systems cannot take actions based on these ratings, stunting the academic growth of millions of Texas kids.”

Canutillo ISD was among the first school districts to join the lawsuit when it was filed in late August, citing “concerns about its political motivations and its potential to advance the agenda of school vouchers.”

The San Elizario Independent School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Sept. 20 to join the lawsuit, citing identical concerns.

EPISD voted 4-3 on Sept. 12 to join the lawsuit after a closed discussion.  Trustees Alex Cuellar, Joshua Acevedo, Isabel Hernandez and Leah Hanany voted in favor and trustees Israel Irrobali, Valerie Ganelon Beals, and Daniel Call voted against the motion.

Though the TEA provided school districts with metrics and procedures for the rating system in August 2022, the lawsuit alleges that the agency broke the Texas Education Code by introducing new rules that were not set to be announced until the 2023-24 school year.

One of the changes, for example, increased the threshold in the percentage of seniors who enroll in college, pursue a non-college career or enter the military, the reported. The change in the college and readiness portion of the evaluation would have used 2022 graduate outcomes for this year’s ratings, according to the Tribune.

Starting in this year’s ratings, several industry based certifications will also be phased out and only 20% of graduates who earn them will be considered career ready, according to the released in October. This includes dental hygienist licensures, aerospace technician certifications and a number of automotive service certifications.

The new rating system also changed how school district scores are calculated. Previously, 40% of the district rating came from standardized test results; 40% came from the college, career, or military readiness rating; and 20% came from graduation rates. Now, the results from each campus will count proportionately toward the district’s ratings based on enrollment numbers of third- to 12th-grade students.

Some Texas school leaders were concerned that without preparation, these new metrics could lower their district’s rating and won’t be comparable to previous ratings.

“Our systems and processes were based on last year’s rules, so when our commissioner wants to create these new rules and apply last year’s class it’s just unfair,” Galaviz said. “The system being proposed by the commissioner was drawn up after our kids had already been tested, so we’re in the dark as to how they were going to calculate ratings. A school district could perform just as well on the test this year as they did last year and earn a much worse grade.”

In 2022 and 2019, CISD received an “A” in its overall accountability rating. School districts were not rated in 2020 and 2021 when the rating system was paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Under the previous measurements, Meza-Chavez said she is certain that SEISD would have retained its “B” rating. After the measurements were changed, she would have expected SEISD to drop below a “B” grade.

EPISD received a “B” in its overall accountability rating in 2019 and 2022.

Galaviz also expressed concern that the new system would allow the TEA to take over school districts for their low ratings.

Earlier this year, the — the largest school district in Texas — partially in response to years of poor academic outcomes from one of its high schools. The school in question, Phillis Wheatley High School, received an “F” rating in 2019 and a “C” in 2022.

In 2019, EPISD had a number of schools that scored below a “D” rating, including the now closed Alta Vista and Michael Schuster Elementary Schools and Canyon Hills Middle School. Canyon Hills received a “D” rating in 2019, with a scaled score of 64 out of 100. In 2022, the school did not get a letter rating but got a scaled score of 62.

In June, teachers and staff at as part of an effort to improve its performance that EPISD dubbed a “redesign.”

“(EPISD) acknowledges the importance of educational accountability. We are advocating for a comprehensive and equitable rating system as well as an appropriate amount of time for school districts to meet the requirements outlined,” EPISD spokesperson Pablo Villa said about the lawsuit in a written statement.

Meza-Chavez said the lawsuit was a way to hold Commissioner Morath accountable.

“We were holding our teachers and students accountable to what the standards and measurements were before, and when the commissioner changed them, that was unfair,” she said. “You don’t change the rules of the game after the game has been played.”

“We all have dedicated teachers working their tails off, and we just want to make sure that the work that they do is assessed fairly and that the student work reflects the reality of the district. That it’s not some bureaucrat in Austin dictating how to read data in order to best suit a political agenda,” Galaviz added.

The release of the A-F accountability ratings was initially set for Sept. 28, but was postponed for a month to “allow for a further re-examination of the baseline data used in the calculation of Progress to ensure ratings reflect the most appropriate goals for students,” according to a news release from the TEA.

For now, school districts will need to wait on the results of the appeal to see if their accountability ratings will be released.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Texas Education Agency announced Tuesday it would delay the release of its annual school ratings to account for scoring changes that could negatively impact schools under a revamped version of the agency’s accountability system.

The TEA, which was supposed to release the ratings on Sept. 28, now expects the rankings to be released sometime next month. It’s unclear whether the new ratings will be announced before lawmakers reconvene in Austin for a special session on public education and school vouchers, which is expected to be announced before the end of the year.

The delay comes after months of complaints from school officials across the state who have said the TEA’s new accountability system would result in unfair drops in their ratings.

Under the system, districts and their campuses are assigned an A-F grade based on students’ results in the state’s standardized test, academic growth year-to-year, graduation rates and how well they prepare kids for a career after high school. Parents and community members use these scores to see how their schools and districts are performing in educating their children.

The TEA said it delayed the release of this year’s ratings to make adjustments in the “academic growth” category. School districts experienced a huge rise in that category in 2022 as kids returned to the classroom after the pandemic and started doing better on the state test. The agency believed schools could see steep declines in their ratings if it didn’t account for test scores stabilizing and returning to pre-pandemic levels.

“The A-F system is designed to properly reflect how well our schools are meeting those high expectations, and the adjustments we are making this year will ensure it continues to serve as a tool for parents and educators to help our students,” TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said in a statement Tuesday.

Since the new accountability rating system went into effect, school superintendents across the state have protested against one change in particular. Previously under the the College, Career and Military Readiness portion of the rating system, high schools would get an A if 60% of their seniors either enrolled in college, pursued a non-college career or went to the military. The revamped rating system, announced in January, would raise that benchmark and require 88% of a high school’s seniors to meet one of those criteria.

Many school leaders said the change in the benchmark was too big and too difficult to reach, especially since schools are still recovering from the pandemic’s learning disruptions.

Several Texas school districts sued the TEA about a month ago to stop the agency from moving forward with the new rating system, claiming that the changes would damage their scores.

“Accountability is an important orienting aspect for a school district; however, the arbitrary application of new measures without the required advanced notice will potentially give the appearance that schools across the state, including Frisco ISD, are declining,” said Frisco Independent School District Superintendent Mike Waldrip in a statement. “Moving the goalposts arbitrarily is unfair to our students and teachers.”

Matthew Gutierrez, superintendent of Seguin ISD, said that under this year’s changes, schools that improved their CCMR score but didn’t reach the state’s new benchmark could actually see a decline in their overall rating.

Gutierrez said schools need time to raise their CCMR scores gradually.

“Changes should be made, absolutely,” he said. “But not drastic ones.”

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The answer is two-fold. First, it’s important to know we are not going to give parents information that doesn’t help them, or only helps some of them. Second, we have been consistently adding new data, but its type and source may surprise you.

Omitting new assessment data — for now 

The cancellation of standardized testing in 2020 and the partial resumption in 2021 has produced two years of nonexistent or, at best, incomplete data. In collecting data from all 51 state education agencies, we’ve found that student participation levels differ widely, ranging from 97% in Mississippi to just 23% in California. 

Importantly, even in states with “high” participation rates, we do not know which student groups are represented. History tells us the highest-need students often disappear from these data first — and they are also the ones who have from pandemic learning disruptions.

Without disaggregation, it is impossible to discern which student groups are under- or unrepresented in a given data set, challenging our ability to present an accurate view on how schools are serving all students. Using incomplete data sets to update our school quality ratings would be like trying to make a recipe with only a partial ingredient list.

This, combined with the concerns we’ve heard from many of our research partners, is why we are excluding 2020 and 2021 assessment data from our GreatSchools ratings. In most states, this means that parents will continue to see test data from 2019 on their school profiles until we can obtain and display 2022 assessment data. Each state’s timeline and data publication process is unique, but we hope to receive this data and make it available to parents nationwide on our profiles by the end of this year.  

Although we are working to collect and display this 2022 assessment data as soon as we can get it from states, we also know that parents can’t wait. They need recent, relevant school information now. For families, parsing through years of school data isn’t an academic exercise — it’s a matter of their child’s education and well-being. According to the , more than a third of K-12 parents are concerned about how schools are supporting students’ learning and their social-emotional and mental health needs amid the ongoing pandemic. 

Parents need timely, robust school information now more than ever, and we have committed to finding and sharing it from several new sources.

Advancing a broader view of school quality 

Data acquisition challenges aside, we know that . Painting a rich picture of school quality includes sharing information on the resources schools have to offer, the practices they employ to support all students, as well as the outcomes the school is achieving and whether all of these things are equitably distributed. 

Even before the pandemic struck, GreatSchools has been collecting and sharing new, relevant school information with parents that goes beyond test scores. We remain committed to presenting families with a more holistic view of school quality by:

• Sharing new data types. School quality is reflected by more than just assessment data. Components of a school’s culture, such as trust and commitment, to student success. We’ve already added this “school climate” data to GreatSchools profiles in Illinois and New York City. Building upon what we’ve learned, we are now preparing to display climate data in five more states in the coming months. By connecting more parents with this valuable, new type of school quality information, we hope more states will see the benefit of making this data accessible for families.

• Leveraging partnerships to improve data access. High schools with strong college outcomes often to advanced course offerings. To help parents discover schools that offer such classes, we’re partnering with national organizations that share our commitment to ensuring parents have equitable access to this information. Starting this week, parents will be able to browse high schools’ advanced course offerings on GreatSchools profiles and explore for their child’s success.

• Spotlighting best practices for college success. In 2021, we with our annual College Success Award, which offers parents a snapshot of whether high schools prepare students to enroll in college, succeed with college-level coursework, and persist into their second year. In 2022, we launched our bilingual collection to highlight for educators and parents how College Success Award-winners are innovating to create more equitable and effective experiences for their students. The two-year project began with a thorough landscape analysis; consultation with school design experts; interviews with experts, parents, and educators; and a data analysis on schools with outsized success among low-income students. 

• Improving opportunities for school leaders to share information. Who better to share what makes a school great than the dedicated leaders that walk its halls each day? School leaders can of their school, then add information about practices, policies and courses to their GreatSchools profile. This newly revamped feature allows leaders to connect directly with current and prospective parents and provide additional context beyond quantitative data, from band to world languages to extracurriculars and more.

• Elevating the voices of historically marginalized families. The Community Reviews section of our school profiles allows parents, students, faculty and community members to share their school experiences with others. We’ve recently improved our to better support parents of diverse backgrounds in sharing their story. In the past three months alone, nearly 10,000 parents and community members added new reviews to school profiles, reflecting upon school safety, learning, social-emotional well-being and more so families of similar identities can understand how the school will support their child.

A call to action for state education agencies

As noted, we are actively working with states to collect 2022 assessment data and look forward to displaying that on our profiles when it becomes available. In the meantime, we urge states to join our efforts to connect parents with the rich school quality information they want and deserve. To do this, state education agencies must:

• Disaggregate data sets. Giving families access to rich, disaggregated data builds knowledge, expands thinking and strengthens positive communication among families, educators and schools. A recent Data Quality Campaign shows that only 28 states disaggregate data by student groups in their state report cards (and six states that previously did have now removed it). The effects of disrupted learning were not evenly distributed and parents deserve to know who is being left behind.
  
• Calculate growth. Even without consistent assessment data from 2020 and 2021, states can — and should — . There is no reason why 2019 and 2022 data cannot be used to quantify how well schools have supported students the past few years. If we only look at students’ current achievement levels, we will not get a clear understanding of how schools are truly serving their students, particularly children of color. This is why growth is now key to our GreatSchools ratings, and why we continue to advocate for states to gather (and disaggregate) this data to provide a more nuanced lens on school quality.

• Prioritize school climate data. School climate data helps parents understand important aspects of their child’s learning environment, such as leadership, collaboration among teachers, instructional rigor, family engagement and student social-emotional support. Although the pandemic disrupted the collection of this information, it’s coming back much quicker than assessment data. However, many states still don’t collect or report climate data, others do so voluntarily by districts, and some share it only at the district or state level. Every school in the country should have a climate survey and parents should be able to see the results. States can make this happen. 

Combining reliable and valid outcomes data — particularly data rooted in equity — and new information about climate, school practices and parent perspectives will give parents more of what they need to obtain a better picture of school quality today. As the ancient proverb goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Though the pandemic complicated our usual ways of assessing school quality, it has also created opportunities to find new ways of understanding how well schools are serving their students. 

Parents need accurate and equitable school information now. With a bit of creativity and dedication, together we can find it.